There’s been a big “whoopsie” in coding Covid-19 deaths. 

The CDC reported 966,575 deaths from COVID-19 last Friday after correcting the data earlier this week, which reduced the death tallies in all age groups, including children.

In a statement to Reuters, the health agency said it made adjustments to its COVID Data Tracker’s mortality data on March 14 because its algorithm was accidentally counting deaths that were not COVID-19-related.

After making adjustments, the CDC said that the numbers went down by 72,277 previously reported across 26 states, including 416 pediatric deaths. That cut the CDC’s estimate of deaths in children by 24% to 1,341 as of March 18.

Summarizing state-based data, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, children accounted for about 19% of all COVID-19 cases, but less than 0.26% of cases resulted in death. 

And if that weren’t enough, it looks like the CDC is refusing to publish their collected data on the effectiveness of booster shots for people between the ages of 18 and 49. They recently began publishing the data on their website, but only for minors and those 50+.

We’re sure there’s a reasonable explanation for all of this… but we sure would like to know what it is. We know computers (and the humans using them) aren’t immune to errors. We make plenty of our own! Still, this makes us wonder what other “coding errors” the CDC has made. 

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