This essay is the second in a five-part series.
Tyranny defined: cruel or oppressive government or governance where the rules are in the interest of the rulers.
In the last installment, I focused on the elderly, which is the population that has been most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
While, from the purely raw numbers of infections and deaths, that is certainly true, there is another segment of the population that is also being impacted: children.
Upon the emergence of the COVID-19 virus, the governments of the world made a fateful decisions to close schools and disrupt the social lives of nearly 1.5 billion children worldwide.
In the United States, approximately 124,000 public schools were instantly shuttered, 10,315 of which are in California. It is estimated that nearly seven million California students were instantly incarcerated in their homes.
Why was this done? The short and what would prove to be the most inaccurate answer was “to save the lives” of the children.
Acting upon very sketchy information, U.S. health officials panicked. They spread that panic to all of government, including the departments of education in each state.
Later, we learned, that sending children home would benefit all of society since children were believed to be “super-spreaders” and would bring the disease home to their more vulnerable grandparents.
This theory--like much of what we have subsequently learned about COVID-19--was false. Children are not likely to spread this disease if they are asymptomatic. In fact, according to the World Health Organization, asymptomatic spread of the virus is very rare.
The impacts of locking down children can be viewed from two distinct dynamics: educational and social.
Educationally, there is little debate that sending children home without a structured educational process is a bad idea. Many parents are ill-equipped or too busy to take on the additional burden of being an at-home school teacher.
Chelsea Clark, a third grade teacher in a small Ventura County California School District, gave a dismal report for her class.
“Out of 24 students sent home, only five of them had the necessary support to do the required work,” she said.
The rest did not complete assignments and did not reach out to instructors.
It is, per Ms. Clark, “a classic example of out of sight, out of mind. There was no meaningful new learning in the last eight weeks of the school year for most of my students.”
This was from a smaller school district, which was nimble in quickly developing distance learning strategies. One can only imagine the difficulty students and teachers faced in large, bureaucratic school districts.
While the impact on the educational aspect of these lockdowns cannot be overstressed, they pale by comparison to the social damage experienced by locked up students.
Children learn social skills at school. They find equilibrium in their lives through friendships with fellow students and teachers. Taking that interaction away and locking them in their homes creates real time problems and far-reaching implications for children.
Obesity Magazine studied 41 overweight children and published the results in April, 2020. They found:
- These children ate one additional meal a day
- They slept an extra half-hour a day
- They added an average of five hours a day in front of a phone, television or computer
- They dramatically increased their consumption of red meat, surgery drinks, and junk food.
As Dr. Myles Faith, co-author of the above study observed, “School environments provide structure and routine around mealtimes, physical activity, and sleep.”
Other studies have found that 76% of children miss their friends, while 59% say they are bored, and 13% say they are lonely.
None of this bodes well for a dynamic in American society that is reaching epidemic proportions: teenage suicide. Suicide rates for children 10-14 years old soared 56% between 2007-2017, compared to the previous 10-year period. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death for the age groups of 10 through 24.
Many of the contributing factors to suicide are exacerbated by lockdowns:
- Eating disorders
- Drug abuse
- Trauma
- Social rejection
- Anger/guilt
- Domestic violence
- Academic failure
- Loneliness
- And other insecurities
The full effects of this experiment of locking children in their homes is yet unknown and may not be fully understood for many, many years.
What we do know is that this tyranny is not in the best interests of the children of this country.
Sources
1. Comments by Dr. Van Kerkhove, Head of Emerging Diseases as seen on Tucker Carlson June 9, 2020. Note: Van Kerkhove , apparently under pressure from WHO, later walked back this statement.
2. Obesity Magazine as seen on ScienceDaily.com – Italian study
3. Ibid
4. NCHS Data Brief No 352 October 2019 found at CDC.Gov/NCHS/data/Databriefs/DB352.h.pdf
5. Wikipedia.org/teenage-suicide-in-the-United-States
