Why on earth does the metric include 18 and 19 year olds as children if not for making something look worse.
Honestly, I tried pretty hard to find a good reason and other than the fact that the CDC groups data into <1, 1-4, 5-9, 10-14, and 15-19 age ranges there’s no real explanation. You could go up to 14, and then get individual year data up to 17/18 whatever the cutoff.
I wouldn’t say it’s totally dishonest because it is baked into the data and the CDC considers them developmentally similar, but I think it also an issue NBC wasn’t too interested in fixing because it makes the article’s argument seem more convincing.
Honestly, I tried pretty hard to find a good reason and other than the fact that the CDC groups data into <1, 1-4, 5-9, 10-14, and 15-19 age ranges there’s no real explanation. You could go up to 14, and then get individual year data up to 17/18 whatever the cutoff.
I wouldn’t say it’s totally dishonest because it is baked into the data and the CDC considers them developmentally similar, but I think it also an issue NBC wasn’t too interested in fixing because it makes the article’s argument seem more convincing.