A viral post wrongly accusing Betsy DeVos of using figures to show that the coronavirus fatalities were not as severe to children as adults has been debunked. The post made it seem like Betsy DeVos was advocating children to return to schools amid dangers of losing their lives.
Reopening of schools in September has become a top priority issue for Trump administration in the past few weeks. As the government pushes for school reopenings, it has faced a backlash from various organizations, teachers and unions who argue that reopenings will lead to a massive spike in coronavirus cases.
Betsy DeVos wrongly accused
Betsy DeVos, the education has been at the forefront urging parents to send their kids to schools once they reopen. She has also made arguments for the return of in-person classes, blushing aside risks of a spike in coronavirus across the country.
However, a claim that has been attributed to her has caused uproar and criticisms in social media, as a viral post claiming that Betsy DeVos had said that the mortality for children was 0.02 percent, and therefore it was safe for children to return back to schools.
So, Betsy Devos today said "only" .02% of kids are likely to die when they go back to school.
?
That's 14,740 children.
✏️Welcome ? back! ?— James Scott #TeamOrca (@LongerTables) July 12, 2020
Users started sharing the post, which by using the latest figures from the US government that 56.6 million children were expected to return to school, the number of child fatalities would be 11,320. People who were sharing the post were outraged that such a statement would come from the education secretary, with many saying such a high number of children fatalities is unacceptable.
Debunking the post
The only problem was that Betsy DeVos never said anything of the sort. The claim from the viral post that the mortality rate figure came from Betsy Devos was false and could not be verified.
Although Betsy DeVos has been pushing aggressively for the school reopenings, the viral post was spreading a fake story. However, in the past, Dr. Birx has indicated that the fatalities from coronavirus among people under the age of 25 including children were about 0.1 percent. This was in the context of the severity of the coronavirus between different age demographics.
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