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By Ian Miller

COVID-19 lockdowns deeply harmed child development, with new research confirming widespread cognitive and emotional decline.

In what we now understand were completely theatrical attempts to control the Covid-19 pandemic, experts demanded and politicians mandated all sorts of intrusive policies. Mask mandates were one of the most obvious. School closures. Lockdowns. Curfews. Capacity limits. Fear campaigns. The list is and was endless. And unfortunately the public willingly complied with all of them.

On and on they went, for years in some cases. But in their discussions of those useless policies, one thing they always, without fail, ignored was the ancillary cost.

Sure, you can mandate masks, but what are the effects for those who are forced to wear them? What does it cost in terms of lost social cohesion, normalising anti-social behaviour? What are the trade-offs that result from closing schools, from forcing businesses to shut down, or locking down society?

Are there harms to physical, emotional, or verbal development?

These are important questions that were completely ignored by those in power during the pandemic, because they were inconvenient to the architects of the covidiocy.

But new research is out confirming yet again that the collective absurdity of Covid policies caused immense damage and permanent harm to a generation of children. For nothing.

Covid Lockdowns, Masks Stopped Childhood Development

A new study was released this month tracking the developmental outcomes among young children growing up during the pandemic period, aged between 1-5. This study was a systematic review; essentially an examination of over a dozen studies on childhood development for those who started learning and growing in the era of masks and mandates.

Sure enough, of the 17 studies included that covered how developmental outcomes unfolded during the pandemic, “almost all” of them reported a “negative association” between the Covid years and educational and emotional development.

“Among the 17 studies that reported developmental outcomes, almost all reported a negative association between the pandemic and developmental domains screened,” the study says.

It wasn’t just one issue either; children saw significant “negative associations” in multiple areas in 15 of the 17 included studies.

“Fifteen out of 17 studies showed negative associations in several domains (behaviour, communication, language, gross motor, fine motor, problem solving, emotional, and personal-social skills), measured with ASQ-3 and ASQ SE-2 (Ages and Stages questionnaire).”

Children who were born and started growing up during the era of Covid restrictions fell behind in virtually every single important area of development.

They were worse behaved.

Worse at communicating, worse at learning languages.

Worse at their physical capabilities.

Worse at solving problems.

Worse at handling emotional situations and growing their capability for social interaction.

Good thing none of that’s important for growing into well-adjusted, productive adults, right?

Every Study Found Children Fared Worse

Lest there be any doubt as to the explanation for this catastrophic decline in childhood growth, every single study that used the Ages and Stages questionnaire found that pandemic-era children fared worse than those born prior to Covid shutdowns. Every single study.

“…all studies that used the ASQ-3 and ASQ SE-2 found at least one deficit in developmental domains when comparing pandemic cohorts to pre-pandemic cohorts,” the study says.

Remarkable. We set back a generation of children in every important area of learning and physical and social growth. All because prolifically incompetent or even in some cases wilfully malicious adults were too self-obsessed to listen to those warning of side effects and ancillary harms.

Among 3-4 year olds, those who should be approaching the start of traditional schooling and accelerating in terms of verbal, motor and cognitive skills, the effects were even more pronounced. While there were just two studies that examined neurocognitive assessment based on an early learning system, the results were devastating.

“Neurocognitive assessment using the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL) found that children born during the pandemic had significantly reduced verbal, motor, and overall cognitive performance compared to children born before the pandemic and that these skills continued to decline incrementally across the population level as the pandemic progressed,” the review explains.

It’s not possible to overstate how monstrous this is. Anthony Fauci, authoritarian politicians, teachers unions, and the collective media harmed millions of children unnecessarily with “significantly reduced” skills in every single important category. And worse, because these indefensible simpletons refused to admit they were wrong, those harms only grew over time.

When politicians like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wanted schools open, teachers brought coffins to protest.

When outsiders brought up Sweden as a counterpoint demonstrating that schools should be open, they were laughed at, ignored, or demonised.

When the Great Barrington Declaration provided a blueprint for obviously correct pandemic strategy, Fauci and NIH’s Francis Collins worked with the media to orchestrate a “quick and devastating takedown,” because they couldn’t handle being proven wrong. And this is what they did to children as a result.

‘Significantly Lower Performance’

Put simply, “The authors found that children born in the pandemic period showed significantly lower performance on the neurocognitive assessments compared to infants born prior to the pandemic.”

The review’s authors highlighted that these studies provide overwhelming evidence that children were harmed during the pandemic, because these effects were consistent when using a “wide range of assessment tools.”

“The studies included in this review used a wide range of assessment tools, measured a variety of between-group differences, recruited different age groups, and had different reporting periods; therefore, the results warrant further exploration,” it reads.

Well that’s the understatement of the century; of course it warrants further exploration, because children born during this period have had their futures seemingly deliberately affected by Anthony Fauci.

Of course, since we all know who’s at fault for these abhorrent policies, there will be no further exploration. Just quietly pretending as though none of it ever happened.

And as a clear example of purposeful ignorance, even with these horrific results which underscore the damage mask mandates, school closures, and lockdowns caused to children, the review authors just can’t bring themselves to go against the scientific herd.

“It is still not well understood why and how the pandemic may have been associated with changes in certain domains of development for children,” they write.

Really? It’s not well understood why and how the pandemic may be associated with development milestones for children? Really? Not the pointless masking that covered faces and expressions and hampered their ability to learn verbal cues? Not the school closures that stopped their learning and academic growth? Not the lockdowns that forced them to stay home and miss out on valuable socialisation and observation? None of it comes to mind when thinking about children and their delayed development during the pandemic?

Imagine writing that sentence — ostensibly as a scientific researcher — and feeling satisfied with what it says about your intellectual honesty.

The explanation for these results, as any functioning adult knows, is that Anthony Fauci, the CDC, and the cohesive class of self-important “experts” advocated for harmful policies that had no basis in evidence. They apparently never even considered the downsides to those policies because their sole focus was supposedly trying to stop the spread of a highly infectious respiratory virus. And look what they did to children in the process.

What makes this all even more infuriating is the lack of accountability, the lack of even the minimum amount of acknowledgment of the harms they caused. Randi Weingarten. Fauci. Rochelle Walensky. Gavin Newsom. All of them. They’ve either ignored what they did, gotten away with it, or, in many cases, been rewarded for it.

The people who haven’t been rewarded? The children whose lives they destroyed. That’s the real legacy of Covid.

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Republished with thanks to Brownstone Institute. Image courtesy of Unsplash.