Pediatric Covid Outcomes By State

Comparing Pediatric Hospitalization Data with opposing state-wide school policies

The entire country seems to be split into two different worlds when it comes to Covid restrictions. While most of the economic and entertainment activities for adults, who are at much greater risk from Covid than healthy children, are more or less “open,” the remaining vestiges of Covid NPI burden falls upon the lowest risk group: kids. It’s time to start asking the question: what do we have to show for it?

Extreme Covid response has manifested itself in schools and in the political interests of politicians who believe they can shore up support from their base if they constantly advertise that they are doing everything they can to “fight the virus.” Aside from the raging debate about vaccine mandates, the most visible form of this is the policies that get implemented in our schools. The burden of Covid NPIs has unfairly fallen upon our children, and it’s well past time to allow them to live normally again.


In some areas of the country, many are convinced that schools are not safe unless kids wear masks. Let’s set aside the debate about mask efficacy for now, and let’s look at the aggregate results at the State level. After all, this is the level where braggadocios politicians set policy. The question we need to ask is whether or not broad, all encompassing, state-wide policies like mask mandates in schools actually have an effect- at the state level. Rather than local decision making where a system might decide their own thresholds for policy, many states have implemented statewide mandates or bans, which you can track here from Burbio.

If keeping kids protected from infection (which is the express intent of masks) is so critical that State-wide policy should be enacted, I think it’s fair to say that the citizen parents of these states should see a measurable impact at the state level. After all, their children are the ones bearing the burden of that, they should expect to have something to show for it.

Let’s take a look at the real world Pediatric hospitalizations from Healthdata.gov and compare state by state. The clip from the dashboard below includes an assorted group of states, each with much different school NPI policies. You’ll notice that DC and Maryland, where schools were closed to in-person learning for the majority of 2020/21 School year, and have a statewide mask mandate in schools- exceeds pediatric hospitalization rates in Florida and Texas, where masks are largely optional throughout their states.

The evidence to support masking children is incredibly poor, yet it remains the most visible and seemingly never-ending measure that remains in place in much of the country. I think it’s time to start asking about the empirical outcomes of this measure.

I have built a tool below that will allow you to compare your state’s pediatric hospitalizations with other states. Take a look. You might not like the results.

Dashboard Preview