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We're going to look back on our treatment of children these past 2 years as one of the greatest blunders in the history of public health policy.

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I'm not saying we're doing well, but the bar for "greatest blunder in the history of public health policy" is pretty low, unfortunately:

https://www.ibtimes.com/scarred-life-canadas-uprooted-indige...

We sacrificed the mental health of the young for the physical health of the old.

But hey, grandma gets to live another year now.

Who cares if the poor family never recovers after financial crisis.

Now inverse that statement and see where it takes you, and what it tells about you as a human being.

Downvoters: you want your elders (and not just them) to die and countless others to suffer long-term consequences of a disease not yet fully understood just to earn some money right now and keep the endless rat race going as it is; you make me sick.

You present a false choice. No disease will ever be fully understood; there is always more to learn. We can't keep restrictions in place indefinitely while waiting for more information.

And you make me sick with your ignorant, shortsighted vision of the problem.

Reducing economic crisis to "just to earn some money right now" is borderline idiotic.

I'm waiting for a time when we'll start investigating economic and mental impact on different layers of society.

Don't we accept that our children will die and countless others will suffer long-term consequences every time we take a car instead of walking? As long as the suffering is sufficiently vague and indirect (such as with air pollution and global warming) people choose to sacrifice themselves and others all the time. Covid is new, but this dilemma is old as time.

Whether you like it or not, participating in the endless rat race is how some people are able to (sometimes barely) afford to feed their children, or pay for medical treatment. Do poor people make you sick? How about those who would choose quality of life over a little life expectancy?

Some elders would rather see and hug their (grand-)children more often than live another two years in social isolation. Do you find such elders disgusting as well?

I would suffer financially greatly if it brought back my grandmother, she passed from COVID December of last year. I wish she had another year. She would have had a chance to meet her great grandson. But sure, complain about the numbers in your bank account some more.

Edit after being downvoted: Sure, downvote me and don’t respond over my dead grandmother, coward.

I am sure anyone can recover from financial troubles. It is possible.. The other one? Not so much...

Yep! Anyone can pull themselves by their bootstraps.

Yes.

That sounds like a good reason to re-think ouf current medical and insurance industry, not a good reason to throw grandma to the wolves.

Otherwise, the inevitable end of this logic is folks committing plausibly deniable suicide to get an insurance payout.

Pandemics aren't easy

My kids' mental health would be pretty heavily impacted by the death of their grandparents.

A pretty large number of kids are raised by "the old", too. https://www.prb.org/resources/more-u-s-children-raised-by-gr...

Let's not forget that 40% of adults in the US are obese and some immuno-compromised. As a parent who falls into one of those groups I hope we can find a path forward that balances personal liberty and our health.

And here's the impact of how we've treated children during the pandemic:

>The pandemic then brought on physical isolation, ongoing uncertainty, fear and grief. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers quantified that toll in several reports. They found between March and October 2020, emergency department visits for mental health emergencies rose by 24% for children ages 5-11 years and 31% for children ages 12-17 years. In addition, emergency department visits for suspected suicide attempts increased nearly 51% among girls ages 12-17 years in early 2021 compared to the same period in 2019.[0]

>A total of 83 articles (80 studies) met inclusion criteria. Of these, 63 studies reported on the impact of social isolation and loneliness on the mental health of previously healthy children and adolescents (n = 51,576; mean age 15.3 years). In all, 61 studies were observational, 18 were longitudinal, and 43 were cross-sectional studies assessing self-reported loneliness in healthy children and adolescents.[1]

>Children and adolescents are probably more likely to experience high rates of depression and most likely anxiety during and after enforced isolation ends. This may increase as enforced isolation continues. Clinical services should offer preventive support and early intervention where possible and be prepared for an increase in mental health problems.[1]

Experts think this is just the tip of the iceberg for issues that will affect us for decades.

0. https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/17718/AAP-AACAP-CH... 1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S089085672...

Zero of those mental health emergencies were due to the death of a loved one, right? It's all because of masks in schools and whatnot?

It seems like you're skimming the content because you have a pre-conceived notion of what you want to be true. Both links explicitly mention social isolation and loneliness as being driving forces in the negative mental health impacts.

your kids mental health might also be impacted by seeing a horror movie… that does not compare to being locked inside and unable to socialize for 2 years

Are you comparing seeing a horror movie to people’s close relatives dying… ?

Strawman fallacy.

appeal to incredulity. bravo!

> that does not compare to being locked inside and unable to socialize for 2 years

Good thing my kids haven't been subjected to that, despite being in a blue area of a blue state (New York).

Being angry about imaginary restrictions is silly. There's nowhere in the world kids have been "locked inside" for two years.

The effects of the pandemic on children has definitely been variable. Higher income kids going to private schools are back in school by 6 months, while lower income kid's public schools cannot even get zoom classes organized or access to such classes (laptops, etc) for over a year in some places. Average that out and the overall net effect has probably not been great.

Demand for mental health care during the pandemic has boomed, and the isolation of lockdown and all the other stresses are directly correlated to that.

I had great-grandparents and grandparents die as a kid. It's probably happened to most people.

> My kids' mental health would be pretty heavily impacted by the death of their grandparents.

Hopefully that's not something you could spare them with.

Learning to over come loss is something people have always had to deal with. Forced isolation is not.

Any culture with nasty winters has dealt with months worth of "forced isolation" for millennia. No FaceTime calls, either.

They also dealt with death from infection, commonplace wife beating, lack of running water, all sorts of other things that people these days don't just bend over and take without protest.

You can't just plop people down in a situation that's analogous to something in the past and say "just deal, your ancestors did". Well you can but they'll probable just deal with you.

I live in a Calgary, which has some of the worst winters on Earth. People always gathered during winter. Yea, they didn't do it daily but they did it as often as possible. Precisely because social isolation is literally the worst possible punishment for humans.

Why do you think northern countries all celebrate Christmas?

> My kids' mental health would be pretty heavily impacted by the death of their grandparents.

Yes, because without covid their grandparents will live forever.

You are conflating the emotion of grief with mental disorders.

It's pretty common nowadays, I find it quite strange.

My grandfather died when I was younger and it sucked. I still miss him.

But I could go to his funeral and hang out with my friends in the bar, go on holiday, study hard at University, etc, employ all of the normal time tested coping mechanisms.

Coronavirus restrictions deliberately took and removed almost everything it means to be human from people.

Sitting inside and only interacting with the world through a screen is obviously hilariously unhealthy.

> Coronavirus restrictions deliberately took and removed almost everything it means to be human from people.

Can you clarify which restriction regime you're referring to?

I've got relatives in Australia, and I live in New York state; both are on the heavier restrictions side, and the idea of describing our lives as having "removed almost everything it means to be human" is baffling to me.

We had a consecutive six months of it being literally illegal to visit family in the UK.

My job was banned by the Government and hasn't recovered.

I have _still_ not been able to practice many of my hobbies because the legal framework has made it impossible to plan forward more than a week or so.

Is it a gulag? No. Is it worth it? Worth what? Coronavirus is a 1% IFR disease, lower with vaccines. Boring.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Where's the evidence that any public health measure adversely affecting children worked any benefit to the old?

You may want to read this:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/12/24/omicron-chi...

I couldn't agree more. Children trying to eat lunch outside in the cold in NYC. Children in California barred from classrooms for a year+, and soon children forced to receive one or more medicines they simply do not need.

I always said they should've just let all kids, college kids, etc just get it super quick. Isolate the colleges, let them party etc. Massive herd immunity after 4-6 weeks and then that huge part of society is fine.

Can you clarify more?

> one of the greatest blunders in the history of public health policy

Is it a blunder when malice is involved?

Greed and lust for power. Doesn't need to be malice.

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