Toll Is Greatest for Children in the Pandemic of Fear

January 11, 2022 | ALL, Education, Healthcare, Politics

Medical professionals are warning that while children are suffering the least from COVID illness, they are bearing the brunt of the emotional toll of this pandemic of fear.

The pandemic is not about a health crisis. We have early treatments that are being used throughout the world to help most people recover from COVID illness.

The pandemic is about control, and the way to get control of a population is to instill fear. Parents are increasingly stressed as they are forced to shift from one COVID variant to another with the threat of government-mandated vaccines that usurp freedoms, upend businesses, and cause a devastating loss of jobs.

Children are absorbing this sense of constant fear and they have their own physical reminders of it – wearing a mask all day in school and constant pressure to get vaccinated against a virus most of them will not suffer from, but the long-term effects of the vaccines for which we have yet to discover.

Los Angeles-based child psychiatrist Dr. Mark McDonald told the Epoch Times’ The Nation Speaks pandemic lockdown policies and mask mandates are tied to lower IQ, signs of social brain damage, and increasing behavior disorders.

The author of United States of Fear: How America Fell Victim to a Mass Delusional Psychosis, McDonald said mask mandates and school lockdowns have led to “deprivation” of social contact for children and a failure to learn to read facial expressions – both causes of social brain damage.

Citing a study published this past August at Brown University, McDonald noted researchers found children born during the pandemic – currently babies and toddlers who are not yet two years old but are, essentially, the “children of the pandemic” – were given standardized cognitive tests and found to have significantly reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre-pandemic.

Males and children from families from lower socioeconomic levels were found to be most affected.

The researchers concluded:

Results highlight that even in the absence of direct SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 illness, the environmental changes associated with the COVID-19 pandemic are significantly and negatively affecting infant and child development.

McDonald noted that, in his own practice, young children forced to wear masks are not learning to make eye contact and some are experiencing night-time bedwetting and fearfulness of separation from their parents, even for a sleep-over with friends.

Teens who are victims of pandemic fear have become further enmeshed in social media, he observed. Adolescents are “so wrapped up in social media and phones and Zoom school, because they’ve been trained for the last year and a half, that they do not even want to go out anymore,” he said.

In another study published in October at Oxford University in the UK, Professor Carl Heneghan showed the impact of COVID mandates and  restrictions on the mental health and well-being of children and teens is likely to be severe.

Heneghan did a review of data from various sources and found the following:

a) Nearly eight out of ten children and adolescents report worsening of maladaptive behavior, psychological symptoms, or increased negative feelings due to the pandemic.

b) School closures contributed to increased anxiety, loneliness and stress; negative emotions due to COVID-19 increased with the duration of school closures.

c) Deteriorating mental health was found to be worse in females and adolescents over the age of 12, mostly due to peer pressure and social pressure experienced even on social media.

“The first thing is to deescalate any fear and anxiety around COVID for children,” Heneghan told The Nation Speaks.

“For children, [COVID] is actually a very safe disease” and children shouldn’t be worried about the impact of COVID “on themselves, or their future health,” he added.

Of course, we’re seeing the exact opposite around us, with continued mask mandates in schools, and children and adolescents being coerced into getting vaccines and now even booster shots. The message to them is their health is in danger, when that couldn’t be further from the truth for most of them.

Another study from the UK in July found five times more children and adolescents committed suicide than died of COVID-19 during the first year of the pandemic in that country.  The researchers also concluded that lockdowns are more detrimental to children’s health than the virus itself.

In an ongoing study out of Northwestern University, results showed mental health-related visits in 2020, when pandemic lockdowns and restrictions were first imposed, increased by 24 percent in 5- to 11-year-olds and 31 percent in 12- to 17-year-olds, compared to what they were in 2019.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that, in May 2020, emergency visits for suspected suicide attempts began to increase among teens, aged 12-17 years, especially females.

During February 21–March 20, 2021, suspected suicide attempt emergency visits were 50.6% higher among girls, aged 12–17 years, than during the same period in 2019; among boys aged 12–17 years, suspected suicide attempt emergency visits increased 3.7%.

What can parents do to help their children not become victims of pandemic fear?

• RESIST the narrative the pandemic is one of “health and safety”
• RESIST the narrative schools and government are just “following the science”
• RESIST the narrative that our children must follow along with what other people decide is the “common good.”
• Model CIVIC RESISTANCE to children through organized efforts against mandates
• Sitting on the sidelines is NOT AN OPTION any longer for parents
• RETHINK Education and consider the following

In April, the U.S. Census Bureau found 11.1 percent of K-12 students in the nation are now homeschooling. That statistic represents a significant jump from the 5.4 percent who began homeschooling when schools closed throughout the country in the spring of 2020, and from the 3.3 percent who homeschooled prior to the pandemic.

Of particular note in the Census Bureau data is that homeschooling rates are surging among black families. The proportion of black families homeschooling increased from 3.3 percent in spring 2020 to 16.1 percent in fall 2020.

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This content is solely for educational and discussion purposes. Any treatment undertaken in terms of COVID (or any illness) should be discussed with a licensed medical professional.