Right on the heels of the Biden administration's belated realization that COVID policies can wreak havoc on the country, the White House is suddenly conceding a major flaw in how we measure COVID hospitalization data, one that critics have been pointing out for almost the past two years:

FAUCI: Many [U.S. children] are hospitalized *with* COVID as opposed to *because of* COVID. And what we mean by that, if a child goes in the hospital, they automatically get tested for COVID, and they get counted as a COVID-hospitalized individual, when in fact they may go in for a broken leg, or appendicitis, or something like that. So it's over-counting the number of children who are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID.

Um...ya think, Fauci?!?!

This is exactly what a relatively small but vocal minority of experts and commentators have been arguing for nearly the whole of the pandemic: That COVID hospitalization data is significantly flawed in that it fails to distinguish between patients who are truly suffering from the disease and those who merely test positive for it.

We know that, in the rare instances where health authorities have made that distinction, the number of true COVID patients in hospitals has appeared to be significantly lower than the raw numbers would suggest.

Just to underscore the point, Fauci made the same argument this week during a White House press conference:

FAUCI: ...Just a word about children: Certainly, more children are being infected with the highly transmissible virus, and with that, there naturally will be more hospitalizations in children.

It is noteworthy, however, that many children are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID, reflecting the high degree of penetrance of infection among the pediatric population.

Glad to hear it, Fauci. Now apply this analysis to the entire population and let's see what the hospital data look like!