evidence: Did U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos say that "only" .02% of kids are likely to die when they go back to school during the pandemic and if that happened it would result in 14,740 dead students? No, that's not true: Lead Stories could find no public interviews or appearances in which DeVos cited a .02% likelihood of students dying from COVID-19 if public schools were re-opened. If that mortality rate proved accurate, the number of dead children would not total 14,740. Not only is the quote fake, but the math is bad. [...] 7/10/20. Today Education Secretary Betsy Devos said "only" .02% of kids are likely to die when they go back to school during the pandemic. That's 14,740 children. [...] The claim came on the heels of a push by the Trump administration to pressure public schools around the United States to resume in-person classes in the fall, despite record numbers of COVID-19 cases reported in many states. Secretary DeVos appeared at a White House coronvirus task force briefing on July 10, 2020, but she never speculated that "only" .02 percent of the students are likely to die if they returned to the classroom. She did downplay the health risks to students in several interviews, including on CNN's State of the Union on July 12, 2020, when she told host Dana Bash: