GOP Senator Dismisses Deaths of 400 Children From COVID After Assuming They All Had ‘Underlying Conditions’

U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, a Republican of Kansas and an obstetrician, dismissed the deaths of 400 children who have died from COVID-19 during a Senate hearing Tuesday with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

Senator Marshall’s remarks were based on his false claim that “probably zero” of the 400 children who died of COVID (that number has not been confirmed) had no pre-existing condition.

“Children are not supposed to die,” Dr. Walensky told Sen. Marshall, right before he delivered his remarks dismissing their deaths, as if having a pre-existing condition makes it acceptable for a child to die of COVID-19.

In questioning the CDC chief, Senator Marshall touted his credentials as a doctor, before attempting to sow doubt on the need of children to be vaccinated against coronavirus.

“As a physician, we always want to be able to know and discuss the benefits and risk of anything that we’re prescribing, including a vaccine,” Marshall, a hydroxychloroquine-pusher who has said he takes the malaria drug to fight against the coronavirus, told Walensky. “It’s estimated that 40, maybe 50% of children have already had the COVID virus. What are the additional benefits to the vaccine to a child who’s already had the virus?”

It’s unknown where the Kansas lawmaker, whose government website refers to him as “Doc Marshall,” is getting his statistics, but the American Academy of Pediatrics reports that as of July 15 over four million children in the U.S. are believed to have been infected with the coronavirus. One abstract posted by the National Institutes of Health, a federal government agency, says “Almost half of children who contract covid-19 may have lasting symptoms.”

Dr. Walensky told Marshall that “it very much depends on what that variant that child might have had whether they could potentially be infected or reinfected.”

And then she added, “you know, one thing I just want to note with the children is, I think we fall into this flawed thinking of saying that only 400 of these 600,000 deaths from COVID-19 have been in children. Children are not supposed to die. And so 400 is a huge amount for our respiratory season.”

Marshall then moved on to acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock, asking her, “how many children under the age of 18 without a pre-existing condition, a significant health condition, have died from COVID in this country?”

The acting commissioner did not have that information so Senator Marshall declared “the answer is probably zero.”

That’s false, according to the CDC in 2020.

“So,” he surmised, “I think if you if you take a deep dive, most of the children that have died had some type of underlying health condition.”

Senator Marshall voted to overturn the 2020 election, voted against expanding the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, supports repealing ObamaCare, and has said, “I’m not sure that there is even climate change.”

Watch:

“I think we fall into this flawed thinking of saying, ‘Only 400 of the 600,000 deaths from COVID-19 have been in children.’ Children are not supposed to die.”

— CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky responds to question from Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS). pic.twitter.com/0i6ImKoxrC

— The Recount (@therecount) July 20, 2021