When we look back at the Covid era, will we proudly congratulate ourselves that we saved the lives of a relatively small number of people at the cost of the future and health of many of our children?
The collateral damage of what might be termed a neurotic mass formation is mounting, and the kids are not doing very well. Some parents have noted this is happening in subtle ways – even while many of them simultaneously support the policies that cause these problems – as have conscientious teachers.
This all seems intuitive for anyone who knows anything about children, but these days it seem nothing is true unless “an expert” says it’s so. Well, cue the experts.
A Brown University study has just concluded what the dogs in the street already knew, we are creating a crisis amongst the children of this era and we are sowing the seeds of serious consequences in the coming decades.
In its abstract, the study (a preprint) states:
“Leveraging a large on-going longitudinal study of child neurodevelopment, we examined general childhood cognitive scores in 2020 and 2021 vs. the preceding decade, 2011-2019. We find that children born during the pandemic have significantly reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre-pandemic. Moreover, we find that males and children in lower socioeconomic families have been most affected.”
“Results highlight that even in the absence of direct SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 illness, the environmental changes associated COVID-19 pandemic is significantly and negatively affecting infant and child development,” they added.
So there you are. The policies pursued by the Government are wrecking children’s development across all metrics, and they are particularly cruel to the poor. How very unprogressive, from our “protect the vulnerable” government.
It isn’t the only study. There are plenty others focusing on all age groups. One report by Carl Heneghan of Oxford University’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine concluded that 80% of children had suffered some adverse psychological effects because of the lockdowns. “The evidence shows the overall impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents is likely to be severe,” they asserted.
Anecdotally, the evidence is manifesting broadly. I am hearing from teachers of the younger classes who say they are spending much more time in class on basic communication and motor skills. Children are coming into classroom social situations who are completely underdeveloped in verbal skills, just as the Brown study reported. They are also severely behind normal levels of development in ordinary movement and balance (their play is more awkward and they have difficulty doing basic functions like jumping and running). This is possibly down to increased social isolation and neglect during the lockdowns.
By the time I left primary school, I had played in the county grounds in three schools’ finals. These were huge occasions for the players and for the entire school. They made an impression on our young characters and allowed us to imagine our possible potential. It was an experience in making things happen through our own initiative. We didn’t win but we learned that we take from the experience what we put in.
We were in control of our own destiny, and in falling short we had to react with grace. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of occasions like this on a young person’s mind and character. Even in failure, it gave us confidence to bring forward in the rest of our lives.
My daughter is in 6th class, she is mad for sports, and she has never played for her school thanks to lockdown. It looks like she will probably go through primary school without ever lining out on a field with her classmates to engage in a healthy competitive activity. Is this really an insignificant consequence? Is it really a minor trade off for this “safe new world”
The obsession with safetyism – a univariant focus on one aspect of safety at the expense of all other consequences – has lead our society to do crazy thing and lose sight of the purpose of our lives.
For almost the first time in history, humanity has decided to sacrifice the children for the sake of the elderly. How did this complete reversal of human priorities happen, and how did it get to be seen as “the moral and responsible” response to challenge?
(Note: this children versus elderly dilemma is not an inevitable consequence of the decisions we make. A strategy of protecting the elderly and vulnerable, while not locking everybody else up is a feasible and tested one. We are still under the spell of this false dichotomy, even though the experiences of Sweden and Florida have proved its falsehood.)
The unseen costs of the damage this is doing to children is beginning to manifest in subtle ways. The signs are beginning to show. They are more than signs at this stage, they are banners pointing to serious problems that we are compounding with each passing month of this covid mania.
Our children will suffer enormously for this, and the adults who will be lamenting the teenage mental health and suicide crisis in years to come have the opportunity to act now, because the preteens being conditioned by coronatarianism today will be the troubled teenagers unable to deal with life in a decade’s time.
The same parents will be bellyaching about lowered test standards and lowered IQ – as the Brown University study noted – but they are willing to go along submissively with what often is hysteria around covid.
The delirious notions concomitant with coronatarian social control, are leading to a positive feedback of terrible policy and a society who are willing to go along with delusional ideas and authoritarian leadership. The extreme of this social pathology has been described by some as Mass Formation, including observant intellectuals such as Professor Mattias Desmet of Ghent University. Dr. Robert Malone talked about the issue in a viral Joe Rogan interview.
On Joe Rogan, Dr Robert Malone suggests we are living through a mass formation psychosis.
He explains how and why this could happen, and its effects.
He draws analogy to 1920s/30s Germany “they had a highly intelligent, highly educated population, and they went barking mad” pic.twitter.com/wZpfMsyEZZ
— Mythinformed (@MythinformedMKE) January 1, 2022
While the damage of isolation to the 5-18 year old cohort is significant there is another terrible and possibly more significant problem in the offing for the pre-verbal and early school children who have not seen an adult face in full outside their homes for the past two years.
It must be remembered that for millions of years before humans developed language, the most important means of communication was through facial expression. This is still the case for infants and for children up to the age of five or six who are beginning to develop their verbal capacity.
Marketers understand this implicitly – that to get a message across it is all about the human face. Politicians have to have a face that implies trust or competence. Actors who can’t signal these subtle signs don’t exist. This even goes for pop stars; the voice doesn’t matter if you don’t have a marketable face. As anthropologist, Jane Goodall, discovered (nearly at the cost of her life), make the wrong face at a chimpanzee and he’ll tear the arm off you. This is how primal and fundamental facial expression is in communicating.
Unfortunately this vital means of learning and developing socially within our children has been significantly denied them in the past two years. Say what you will, learning in the classroom has seriously deteriorated since the teachers started wearing masks. Anecdotally this is coming from everywhere, but until the study comes out it is like Schrödinger’s cat, and RTÉ et al will deny its existence.
As a parting shot on the theme of safety. Is time not of value? When we prioritise this idea of safety against time (and we have been at this nearly two years now), are we not insisting on the lesser-valued option? Ironically these steps in safetyism have been taken on behalf of the elderly, the people who have least time.
I parted with any notion that this made sense two months into the pandemic when visiting my elderly parents. We stayed out in the garden as they stood at the window. After several of these visits my mother opened the door and ordered us in for a cup of tea. “I’m too old for this nonsense” she said. “I don’t have time left to be avoiding my children.”
Since then many elderly people have died alone and in fear of catching a bug that might finish them. Many elderly people have been buried without their loved ones attending due to the rules the government imposed “for our own good.” Have we forgotten the old and sensible adage: “life is a terminal condition none of us are getting out alive, so live your life.”
And while we are at it: stop toying with your children’s future.