This article was originally published by Chris Calton at The Mises Institute.
It may be years before we fully realize the ramifications of the lockdown policies governments around the world have imposed on their citizens in response to covid-19, but evidence of the costs is starting to trickle in.
A recent study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) surveyed thousands of high school students on the effects of the pandemic. “Since the beginning of the pandemic,” the study reports, “more than half of students found it more difficult to complete their schoolwork (66%) and experienced emotional abuse by a parent or other adult in their home (55%),” which correlated heavily with students who “experienced insecurity via parental job loss (29%), personal job loss (22%), and hunger (24%).”
A related CDC study, released the same day, examined the effects the pandemic has had on the mental health of high school students. It found that “during the 12 months before the survey, 44.2% experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, 19.9% had seriously considered attempting suicide, and 9.0% had attempted suicide.”
These findings should be no surprise. Only a few months into the pandemic, the CDC’s morbidity and mortality report surveyed people of all ages regarding substance abuse and suicidal thoughts, and young people showed the most dramatic increase compared with precovid surveys. This report was all but ignored, of course, as the demagogues in politics and the media predicted Armageddon if the world didn’t embrace their draconian isolation policies.
Now that the Chicken Littles have come home to roost, the real question is whether the findings of these studies are the consequence of the pandemic or the response to it. One CDC representative, speaking of the studies, provided a revealing answer to this question: “This really gives us the evidence to say with certainty that the pandemic was incredibly disruptive for young people and their families” (emphasis added). The “pandemic took a toll,” according to every media headline reporting on the studies.
To some, the distinction between the pandemic and the lockdowns may seem like splitting hairs, but the choice of words can have important consequences on present and future policies. The logic behind the social-distancing mandates has been that such policies are necessary to lessen the severity of the pandemic. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the lockdowns have proven ineffective, the faithful will always find ways to dismiss the naysayers and urge even more severe mandates (the problem is that we haven’t isolated enough!).
If, as the media and researchers claim, it is the pandemic taking such a toll on young people, then it seems to justify even more authoritarian responses to the virus. Lockdown harder! Isolate further! Punish violators more severely! The lockdowners, like Mrs. Lovejoy, need only cry “think of the children” and the effects the pandemic is having on them to drive support for the very policies that, in reality, are responsible for the problems they aim to solve.
This is why it is so crucial to properly link cause and consequence. It is not and has never been, the pandemic that has been creating financial insecurities for families and destroying the social lives of our youth. It is not the pandemic that is increasing the rates of depression, drug abuse, and suicidal thoughts among teenagers (and adults, even if not as severely). These are the costs of the policy responses to the pandemic that have, in the name of keeping us safe, told vulnerable young people that they cannot see their friends, show their faces, or engage in any of the social activities that help them develop into mentally healthy adults.
It is time for the media to start reporting that it is the lockdowns, the isolationism, and the social-distancing mandates—not the pandemic—that have taken such a toll on teenagers.
It is time for the media to start reporting that it is the lockdowns, the isolationism, and the social-distancing mandates—not the pandemic—that have taken such a toll on teenagers.
Good luck getting any MSM to critically think, and to do it out loud. It’s only the independent news sources that are able to do anything (and that’s only if they’re allowed to) and only if the public wants to believe them.
And, it’s not just the teens, it’s actually everyone. Everyone felt the sting of this from day one.
Hear, hear!
Admittedly, I didn’t thoroughly read the Centers for Depopulation Cultists’ entire article. But true to form-unless I’m missing something, the mofos conveniently avoided putting side-by-side numbers to compare in plain English the difference between 2019 and 2020 or even before 2019. Hope those animals stock up on a ton of suntan lotion–although it won’t do them any good. Hear tell it doesn’t work well in hell. These people are repsonsible for the deaths of Millions from the bioweapon in all its forms and consequences of the unlawful imprisonment of perfectly healthy people.
Lockdowns by tyrants were wrong. The idiotic idea of locking-down healthy young people, while crippling society, because a disease similar to flu or pneumonia is dangerous to me (an old person) comes from the SNOWFLAKE CROWD. Life is full of hazards and the SNOWFLAKE CROWD fails to embrace this simple fact. FAUCI’s idea of “keeping everyone safe” is a fool’s errand that will NOT be realized in this century. So the idiots in governance try the lockdown with little, or no, consideration of the repercussions from those decisions. Please quit voting for stupid idiots.
https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/05/newly-released-docs-pfizer-had-to-hire-1800-additional-employees-in-early-2021-to-process-large-increase-in-vaccine-adverse-events/
https://www.countere.com/home/open-letter-on-justice-and-medical-tyranny
It’s just another move in a game of chess, and a good one.
Like any game of chess, or war, the strategies are based on deceit. One player tries to sneak up on the his opponent from one direction without him realizing it so he can trap him from another.
FWIW, you’re just a piece on the board, that’s being moved around on it, not one of the players doing the moving. It may be amusing to guess at the strategy and try to figure it out, but you can do nothing about it since you are not one of the ones moving the pieces around.
You’re only a pawn in the game. (But in this game, you do get to choose which side you are on.)
I and many refused to be a pawn in their game, took the red pill long before COVID and their Globalsh^t Ukraine shenanigans and disconnected from the tyrants and their propiganda. They can fool many useless eaters with one brain cell that is declared an endangered feces, but not those who have critical thinking.
You have no choice.
You’re in the game now as a piece on the board.
Denying that you are simply means that you aren’t aware of it.
This is what occures when stupid (as in lack of Critical Thinking ability), HIGHLY EGOTISTICAL people are given a bogus degree and a title and whatever power comes with the “title”. If we could only rid the world of “Ego” it could be such a Wonderful World….and then, I wake-up to the reality of what it really is and it really sux.
In Omenia Paratus
You sure they’re stupid?
They seem to be getting exactly what they want and more rapidly than would be expected from the stupid.
Never underestimate or dismiss an enemies intellectual and strategic abilities, that’s how you end up with things like Biden in the White House.
They are doing it in China again….with Omicron…