Claim:

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a television presenter and heart surgeon, said the deaths of 2 to 3 percent more children would make reopening schools worth it.

Rating:

What is true

Oz said during an April 2020 interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity that “schools are a very appetizing opportunity” to return a critical aspect of daily life to normal because it “doesn’t make us would only cost 2 to 3% in terms of total mortality.” “suggest that the risk of an increase in the mortality rate would be an acceptable “compromise”.

What is wrong

However, he wasn’t talking specifically about 2-3% more child deaths, but in terms of “total mortality,” meaning the number of COVID-related deaths across all demographic groups. He explained his comments on April 16, 2020, saying he had “misspoke” previously.

After United States President-elect Donald Trump nominated TV’s Dr. Mehmet Oz to oversee the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in November 2024, a old video clip of Oz began circulating in which, according to some people, he stated that the benefits of reopening schools closed during the COVID-19 pandemic would be worth a 2-3% increase in the number of children who died (archive):

Here is a transcript of Oz’s remarks:

First, we need to get our mojo back. Let’s start with the things that are really critical for the nation, where we think we can open without too much trouble, I tell you, schools are a very appetizing opportunity. I just saw a nice article in The Lancet claiming that opening schools could only cost us 2 to 3% in terms of total mortality.

And you know it’s… every life is a life lost, but getting every child back to a school where they’re safely educated, fed, and making the most of their life with theoretical risk behind… It could be a compromise that some might consider. We need industries back, supply lines, I mean things we can do without putting our nation at risk…

This post had been viewed 1.4 million times and 18,000 likes at the time of writing. “Remember during COVID Dr. Oz said he was OK with 2-3% of children dying so they could open schools,” the post read. The same statement appeared several times on as well as on Instagram. The review Vanity Fair reported the same thing back then.

The reality is that Oz had this interview and he seemed to suggest that a 2-3% increase in total mortality would be an acceptable cost for reopening schools. However, as he later explained, his focus was not just on the child mortality rate, but on the amount of overall deaths linked to COVID-19 (which would still have represented thousands of people).

Faced with the uproar, Oz responded with a job on Twitter (now known as X) on April 16, 2020, saying he “misspoke” (archive):

I realized that my comments about the risks of opening schools have confused and upset people, which was never my intention. I expressed myself badly.

As a cardiac surgeon, I have spent my career fighting to save lives in the operating room while minimizing risk. At the same time, I’m constantly asked, “How are we going to get people back to their normal lives?” An important step in doing so will be determining how to get our children back to school safely. We know that for many children, school is a place of safety, nutrition and learning that is currently lacking. These are issues we all deal with. And I will continue to look for solutions to defeat this virus.

The basis for his comments on school openings and death rates appears to have been a misinterpretation of an article published April 6, 2020, in the medical journal The Lancetwho himself cited another team modeling study from Imperial College London which had not been peer-reviewed at the time. Using available information on how the virus was transmitted in Wuhan, China, as well as data on previous flu outbreaks, the researchers made a calculation for the population of the United Kingdom, assuming that all schools and a quarter of universities would close. They predicted that closing schools would help reduce total deaths (not just those of children) by 2-4%, but that the most effective way to curb transmission would be to combine closing schools with isolation in case of exposure.

Oz turned the statistical prediction on its head, so to speak, by suggesting that opening schools would increase total deaths by the same amount.

A few months later, the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology published a comment on the study of Imperial College. Although the authors acknowledge that the paper has influenced public policy and praise its “reasonable assumptions,” they also caution that the model relies on “a a simplified image of social interactions”, a factor which limits its application.

Sources