"... brain areas that respectively control access to some memories and help regulate fear, stress and other emotions. They also found thinning of the tissues in the cortex, which is involved in executive functioning. These changes happen during normal adolescent development; however, the pandemic appeared to have accelerated the process, [Professor Ian] Gotlib said. Premature aging of children’s brains isn’t a positive development. Before the pandemic, it was observed in cases of chronic childhood stress, trauma, abuse and neglect. These adverse childhood experiences not only make people more vulnerable to depression, anxiety, addiction and other mental illnesses, they can raise the risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other long-term negative outcomes...."
There's also this anecdote (have you seen cases like this?):
Stacy Gittleman, 54, of West Bloomfield, Mich., saw the pandemic derail one of her children. An aspiring musical theater actor, he was a junior in high school when school and theater shut down. “So much of how my son thrives depends on moving, acting, doing hands-on work and interacting with others,” Gittleman said. “He spent much of his time in bed, which was very painful as parents to watch, as my son before the pandemic was so lively and social.”
And this:
Meg Martin, 55, of Gaithersburg, Md.... [says h]er son, now a senior in high school, previously intended to apply to a four-year residential college, but after years of online and hybrid learning, feels unmotivated and disengaged from school. “I really think the way his high school years unfolded are going to have ripple effects for years to come,” Martin said.
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40 comments:
This is all on Fauci and the teachers’ unions. Closing the schools was completely unnecessary.
New book out this week by NIH whistleblower. Fauci knew it was a lab leak and NIH paid for gain-of-function research.
Fauci belongs in jail.
People were warned about this. They were told that locking kids down for years would have negative consequences. They chose to attack the messengers, to declare that snyone who disagreed was anti-science, to sneer and virtue signal and double down. All because orangemanbad.
I hope there will be studies of the brains of the kids in states where the governors ended school lockdowns early compared to those in states where remote learning was mandated to the bitter end.
Japanese born during WWII tended to be small due to lack of childhood nutrition, there was even a Japanese name for them. What shall we call teenagers who matured during the Covid war waged by Collins and Fauci?
The Hunter Biden story wasn't the only major story that was systematically censored by social media companies; there was a second story as well and that was anything related to COVID which challenged the establishment narrative. Both were censored for the same reason: to get Trump. The overarching narrative of 2020 was that the Orange Ogre was killing people through his incompetence, but that Biden was the Saintly Paw-Paw, the elder statesman who would restore competence and dignity at home and abroad. Both of those assertions were lies. The Hunter Biden laptop was proof that the Bidens were slimy grifters. Meanwhile, any free discussion of COVID would have quickly revealed that the establishment was wrong while others who opposed lockdowns or who, like Trump, wanted the country quickly reopened and who blamed China for the initial virus, were correct.
@Althouse, why do you bother? What happened to the kids was done (1) in contravention of the best available science at the time (meaning not in retrospect, the science was clear at the time), and (2) solely at the behest of the teachers’ unions. The teachers knew that there would be very negative effects on the children, but the the simply did not care in the slightest. If some teacher expresses sympathy for what happened to the children, hit that individual hard in the mouth because you are being lied to your face.
They forced this on us. Who do we sue?? Another conspiracy theory is TRUE??
see? it was Fine! that we locked up Everybody, and closed schools for two years!
it was Fine!
After all, our Only Other Option would have been to concentrate on the sick! And that would have been Gross
European countries got their children back into the public school classrooms quicker during the pandemic than the U.S. Hell, private schools in the US were back full time in the fall of 2020. I remember talking to a parent of Catholic school students here in Wisconsin who told me the kids were back full-time in the fall of 2020 when the public schools in the same city were still shut down. Damn those public school unions! This is on them as well as the Democrat politicians who backed the unions on keeping the schools closed. The only good thing about the public schools being closed was that parents discovered that the public schools had been indoctrinating their children with CRT without their knowledge and woke up to the fact that the teachers unions and their union controlled school boards weren’t preparing the children for adulthood like the parents thought they were. I don’t know if it was too late to save our country from being destroyed by these wokesters.
Some of this were seeing and saying this from day fucking ONE. What do some of you have to say to us covidiots and grandma killers addicted to our freedumb now?
My kids were somewhat protected from this, living in a red state, but not completely, especially the oldest who was a freshman in college when this began. She has autism and the social things she relied on to keep her head above water were stripped away from her by stupid blowhards and I will never ever EVER EVER forgive. EVER.
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After a year of denial, my local public school district is finally quietly admitting that the lockdown had serious mental health impact upon a significant minority of its students. Parents, who had been howling for help, are now getting the individual and group therapy for their kids.
Ever hear of School Avoidance Anxiety? Neither did I until last month. Turns out 4-5% of kids refused to go back after things opened up. With 2700 kids in our district, that well over a hundred children severely impacted.
Of course losing 5% of the student population also means losing 5% of state funding, so maybe that provided the motivation for action.
Michaele said: I hope there will be studies of the brains of the kids in states where the governors ended school lockdowns early compared to those in states where remote learning was mandated to the bitter end.}}}}
Fantastic point!
In our family, we dodged several Wuhan bullets. Our two kids were out of college and in their mid-twenties when this unbelievably catastrophic lock-down shit started. Our daughter lost her job as a head-hunter; the business went from literally the best employment economy anyone there had ever seen to massive lay-offs. Her husband has his own business selling fun vacation-type clothing online--you can guess what happened to that business. Our son, the young accountant, had his pay slashed.
But they had intact social circles and no kids to worry about so they got through this with their mental health intact.
I'm a very measured person but I don't know what to do with the rage still inside of me at what was done to all of us by our Caring Overlords--- scientists and politicians covering their own asses.
No surprise and it affected me like that too. But what are you going to do when a lot of your teachers call out sick?
So many subs are old and dropped off the rolls, that there was a terrible shortage of adult supervision.
Some schools just herded the kids into the cafe-torium where a couple admins tried to keep the peace while students "studied," or rather played in their phones.
So basically we fire anyone who gets sick, and - ?
Carol,
COVID exposed just how fragile many of our institutions were, and how much waste, fraud, and mismanagement there was in the system. A school system reliant on older, medically fragile teachers is one that is in desperate need of larger reforms. The problem is that any such discussion was shouted down, so no rational policy could be developed. It was "100% lockdowns and masking forever, or you want to kill grandma."
I presume this information was in the pipeline when the vaccines were approved to be given to children. I know they are saying stress was the cause for this problem, but why take more chances with the lives of children by giving them unproven vaccines?
We want to see what happens?
Children are the least at risk of serious harm by covid.
(i realize this comment will probably be censored, but I feel like this is not noise)
Let us be clear ... the "before Covid" group did not contain the same children as the "after Covid" group. Two groups.
“That allowed us to compare 16-year olds before the pandemic with different 16-year olds assessed after the pandemic,” Gotlib said.
...
He [Chien -- not involved with the study] cautioned, however, against making broad interpretations based on the changes the researchers observed. “It’s pretty interesting that they observed this change,” he said. “But I’m reluctant to then jump to the conclusion that what it signals to us is that somehow we’ve advanced the maturation of the brains of kids.” In particular, brain regions can show nonlinear patterns of growth, so simply seeing a thinner cortex or larger amygdala volume doesn’t necessarily indicate an older brain, he said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/12/01/pandemic-stress-aging-teen-brains/
A school system reliant on older, medically fragile teachers is one that is in desperate need of larger reforms.
I suggest you check "LibsofTickTock" to see your "older medically fragile" teachers. Education majors have been the lowest quintile of college students since the 60s. Now, they have become the crazies' favorite major.
The Dems want kids to grow up as dopes and on dope. Compliant Dem drone voters.
I imagine that constant exposure to the notion that climate change poses an existential threat will have similar effects on children.
Look at poor Greta, for example.
How DARE you!
A product of democrat "leadership". It was known that school children posed the least of threats WRT Covid. Cuomo and Whitmer killed thousands by sending sick seniors back into senior care facilities who had told these two morons they had no means to provide medical care. They weren't wealthy whites, so it was merely cleaning the Medicaid rolls. Ho Hum, so sad, suppress press coverage and move on.
Social, socializes contagion with "benefits".
Cuomo and Whitmer killed thousands by sending sick seniors back into senior care facilities
Planned parent/hood, then a Whitmer [entrapment] event (wag the dog, indeed). The former, his Choice, to spite Trump, no less.
I have four teenaged grandchildren aged 14-18. My two grandsons in San Diego appear to have come through the COVID lockdowns undamaged. I wish I could say that for my granddaughter and grandson in Colorado Springs. The lockdowns and remote learning had a very bad impact on them, especially my granddaughter.
I have four teenaged grandchildren aged 14-18. My two grandsons in San Diego appear to have come through the COVID lockdowns undamaged. I wish I could say that for my granddaughter and grandson in Colorado Springs. The lockdowns and remote learning had a very bad impact on them, especially my granddaughter.
“I really think the way his high school years unfolded are going to have ripple effects for years to come”
Thesis: Covid policy was an episode in the War on Boys.
Question: what proportion of the mothers who now report harm to their kids voted for lockdown Dems?
The harm the Covid gap in education did to students pales in comparison to the climate scare being taught. Young children are being taught that the entire world will be a dangerous dark place for them in the future. Death and destruction is what awaits them.
My oldest granddaughter went through a portion of her college years during Covid shutdowns. She graduated last May and is now is a Masters program. She survived. My grandson went through some of his high school years during Covid shutdowns. He graduated and is now a sophomore in an engineering program. I suspect most young people will survive and go on to do what they would’ve done anyway. Those young people with underlying issues can catch up and thrive. Life goes on after global disasters, for some it will be much harder to get back to normal. We can have patience and hope for these young people and give them the help they may need.
I'm glad I had kids before the commies took over...
I'll describe current college students, since I talk with them every day. They were absolutely, unequivocally damaged by the (unnecessary) lockdowns and the (useless) masking and the (stress-inducing) testing and the whole (dystopian) 'report people not following the rules' regime. They have immense gaps in their learning. Multiple students have said "I feel like all of us now have social anxiety." Some students confess to feeling like they no longer know how to make friends, though they never worried about that before the pandemic.
However, although they have been hurt and are trying to heal from that, these students also have the strongest "character" (in the old-fashioned sense) of any I've taught in the past 25 years. They're tough, gritty, resilient, sarcastic, and deeply suspicious and dismissive of nomenklatura authorities, which they (almost always correctly) assume is perpetually self-dealing, with all calls to do thing "for the greater good" being lies. Even more importantly, they are just remarkably generous with each other, tolerant of social awkwardness, patient with those who are struggling to understand something that seems very simple, and amazingly willing to help each other.
I think a comparison to the WWII generation is not crazy. Like those young men, these students have suffered enormously; many have been traumatized to varying degrees; and they have had to experience things that young people shouldn't have to experience (and which the generations since WWII have, as WHOLES, not experienced). But from all of that suffering, they have gained strength. I am hopeful that these young men and women will act like the WWII generation did when it returned from the War knowing how to how to do things (how to lead, how to follow, how to be organized, how to teach others). They went into their home towns and cities and fixed stuff, built or rejuvenated organizations, taught the young, and cleaned out the decay and the corruption that had grown during the interwar years. (Unfortunately, they also raised the Boomers, so they have that big strike against them, but I see it as the inevitable result of over-correction: they wanted their children never to have to suffer and struggle as much as they had during the Depression and the War, so they ended up spoiling them--and for that GenZ has paid paying the biggest price).
Thesis: Covid policy was an episode in the War on Boys.
Question: what proportion of the mothers who now report harm to their kids voted for lockdown Dems?
Probably the same mothers who backed feminism/masculinism in #MeToo etc., until the hunters and judges came knocking on their sons' doors.
Good for speech therapists and mntal health practitioners.
The only actually good thing about school interventions is that a lot of parents got a glimpse at their kid's "education" via Zoom. Imagine if it was standard to have parental access to class cams...or even just audio of teacher.
The sad part is the Cloward/Pivening of crap/concealed data, "testing", antibody metrics and corrupt hospital protocols has too many ensnared in confirmation bias and liability avoidance that this mountainous mess will likely go largely uncorrected and ready to be deployed again. Hell, it hasn't even stopped now.
From Pandemic Stress? That's the cause? How is that known. I might ask if more screen time helped push along those changes.
I forgot to add that schools had guvmint financial incentives to do all this.
That partly explains the stonefaced schoolboard members basically ignoring parents' complaints.
More? DOE giving contractors bonuses to have 90% plus jabbed workers.
Inga said...
"My oldest granddaughter went through a portion of her college years during Covid shutdowns. She graduated last May and is now is a Masters program. She survived. My grandson went through some of his high school years during Covid shutdowns. He graduated and is now a sophomore in an engineering program. I suspect most young people will survive and go on to do what they would’ve done anyway. Those young people with underlying issues can catch up and thrive. Life goes on after global disasters, for some it will be much harder to get back to normal. We can have patience and hope for these young people and give them the help they may need."
On the one hand, I'm glad to hear that your children were soared the worst effects of the lockdowns. Other people's experience may, in fact, probably does differ. But this is not a global disaster; it is a manufactured crisis, intended to disrupt our political process, which it has done effectively, with the enthusiastic participation of many European countries (foreign interference in our elections? Hello?). I was suspicious when several state boards of pharmacy banned the use of HCQ and ivermectin before any credible testing could be done to test their efficacy, which has since been shown to reduce hospitalizations and mortality for those most at risk.
The quoted article shows adverse reaction to the lockdowns. Of course, that's not a tragedy; just a statistic.
I lost a lot of respect for Althouse when she accepted lockdowns and school closures and the whole Covidian cocktail. Why anyone is surprised by tragic stories like these eludes me. And lockdowns didn’t even WORK.
This may not be related but let me tell you about Santa. This year, I introduced to my area a program called the Wonder of Santa. The kids spend an hour with Santa, engaged in several activities, while I captured their interaction and expressions. Parents then could buy some high end, lovely portraits of these scenes. It's meant to be a great "once in a childhood" Santa experience, as well as a money maker for my photography business. Did well enough with a few hiccups that I will bring it back.
But something I noticed was that there were kids who were not so much afraid of Santa as much as hesitant or confused about interacting with him. I expect older infants and toddlers to have the "stranger danger" factor but I noticed kids 6, 7, or 8 years old who just seemed nervous and would always be glancing at their parents in the room for some sort of approval. For some it was a scenario of the parents saying, "Just have fun" . . . and the child not knowing how to do that. I was fortunate in that the fellow I had as Santa is very talented as a professional Santa in getting kids to open up but even he agreed with me, a likely combination of too much screen time plus the isolation of lockdown during the pandemic produced kids who just did not know how to be a kid. And this even in a state that "opened" early (Tennessee).
Prof M Drout: I’ve taught at the college level for better than 30 years, and I heartily second your observations about the current crop of graduate and (particularly) undergraduate students. Also, I admire your Tolkien scholarship.
"Kids are resilient, why do you want to kill grandmas; stop denying Science!"
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