Topic: Pediatric Deaths

Former acting CDC director Dr. Richard Besser expressed fear regarding the loss of leadership at the agency during public health emergencies. Besser, now CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, cited 200 annual pediatric COVID deaths as a reason to maintain broad vaccination efforts. The hosts criticize the foundation's focus on "health equity" and question the validity of Besser's statistics.

The CDC corrected a "coding logic error" on its COVID data tracker that had inflated pediatric death counts by nearly 24%. The fix resulted in the removal of 416 deaths from the 0-17 age group, leading to questions regarding the reliability of the agency's public data reporting.