I wouldn't call it irresponsible. It's just reporting data - not scientific content.
How about this one? It was linked in the above article.
Study: Number of Kids Hospitalized for COVID Is Overcounted (nymag.com)
I mean, the headline is "Our Most Reliable Pandemic Number Is Losing Meaning." So it's not couched. The earlier one actually has a better headline, with a bit more nuance and caution.
We're in this weird place where folks are mad at the media for misconstruing things and boiling them down to something that washes over the nuance, but this is constructed in a way to be waved around by folks who aim to do, just that. As we share this, what's the main takeaway for many? That situations are overblown, we're being lied to and we should really be thinking less about it.
And somewhere low in the article is a nice point: "The study also demonstrates that hospitalization rates for COVID, as cited by journalists and policy makers, can be misleading, if not considered carefully." This is true, but so too should we consider the study and its implications carefully.
It's saying we should take those numbers with more context (we should, as we should take all numbers that way). And we should also take these numbers in context. They include impact of the vaccine, making more cases low-to-non-symtomatic, and that with the timeline, this was going to happen to a degree because we'd put the clamps on less serious hospital visits. So a nuanced takeaway, I'd think, is narrow: A spike now isn't a spike from back then, which is a good addition to a nuanced perspective.
