The Decline in COVID Reporting at The New York Times Continues

This is one doozy of a correction in a New York Times report yesterday on updated CDC guidance for COVID booster shots for kids aged 5–11:

An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the numbers of children aged 5 to 11 with multisystem inflammatory syndrome. About 4,000 have been diagnosed, not died, with the syndrome.

The report, once again, is from Apoorva Mandavilli, who just a few months ago reported that 900,000 children in the U.S. had been hospitalized with COVID, when the actual number was 63,000. By replacing Donald McNeil with Mandavilli as their lead COVID science reporter, the Times has gone from Pulitzer-Prize-winning science-backed reporting to embarrassing uninformed ninnyism.

At this point, when I see Mandavilli’s byline, I immediately start reading with my eyes rolled.

★ Friday, 20 May 2022