COVID Collateral Part 2: Effects of Lockdown on Our Women and Children

Hi friends

The following is an appeal to examine the entire effects of lockdowns on the US population (I did research on the US, although much of the world is feeling the ill effects), in order to move forward with a better plan, and not to criticize any previous actions taken by government officials. I’m willing to hope that the officials had no clue as to the disaster that lockdown proved to be. But from listening to President-Elect Biden’s speech yesterday, one has to wonder if a lockdown is just what our new government has in mind. The following is one part of a series I plan on compiling, so while this installation focuses on the lockdown’s effects on our women and children, I plan also to focus on how the lockdown has devastated our men, our elderly, and I hope to write a paper outlining some ideas I have that might work as a response to the pandemic which don’t involve quarantining the healthy and most vulnerable.

I believe that we have it in us to come together and find a workable solution to the conundrums our nations are facing. This is not about abandoning our elders to a horrible and lonely death. This is about finding ways to continue our lives in as healthy a capacity as possible while finding ways to protect those most susceptible to suffering adverse effects to COVID-19. I always welcome and encourage any comments, refutations, and ideas in response to the research I’ve compiled. Writing some of this information brought tears to my eyes. Real people are behind these numbers and they’re horrifying.


PS: If this looks familiar, it is. I previously posted a lot of this research on a thread, but didn’t have the time or energy at that moment to attempt a more articulate argument using the facts presented. As time is of the essence (Biden promised to implement his new plans on Jan 21st), I thought I’d get this information out as I write it. Feel free to share or suggest edits as I go; my ultimate plan is to send this out to governors and legislators’ emails in hopes they might reevaluate unhealthy edicts.


COVID Collateral: Women and Children

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” [1]. Considering the likelihood of more stay-at-home orders as a response to the COVID crisis, it’s time we took a comprehensive look at the effects that lockdown has had on the physical, mental, and social health of the populace. The little data available shows the fallout of extended lockdowns has ravaged our nation’s health to numbers even the virus couldn’t reach, and particularly that of our most vulnerable.

While the spotlight has been focused on one of the most fragile segments of our population, the elderly (and rightly so), our youngest have been left in the dark. The effects of COVID lockdown on our nation’s youth have been all-encompassing and detrimental, yet they have no advocates among the media and the scientists who have been pushing the nation toward lockdown. From all available information, children are the least likely to suffer from the virus itself, but will have to suffer the most and longest from our response to the virus. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has published a report estimating that children have already lost up to three percent of their projected lifetime incomes, with the poor and underserved hit the hardest [2]. While nearly 100% of our children have been adversely affected, the kids who need the most help are getting hit twice as hard.

An estimated 1.5 million children of school age are homeless, leaving our most vulnerable with little to no access to online learning [3]. With education being the number one path to success, school shutdowns are effectively impeding 1.5 million paths to a better future. In addition to education, shutdowns bar these children from a society they so desperately need, and, essentially, the food and services that schools provide. Parents of these children, as if they did not have enough to worry about, now have to make the impossible choice between going to work or staying at the shelters with their school-aged or young children (shelters do not allow for unsupervised minors) [3].

Our disabled kids are suffering disproportionately during this crisis. From the physically disabled who were cut off from regular services [4] to the hearing disabled who are cut off from society due to face masks [5] to the kids at an intellectual or social disadvantage, disabled children have lost access to nearly every accommodation or service they previously had available to bridge the gap. Researchers determined last spring that the average child lost ⅓ to ½ of a year’s education (worse for the poorer communities) [6]. For children who are already behind, this learning gap may be impossible to breach, and they may never catch up. Imagine a race in which the slower runners were forced into a late start--under what conditions will those runners be able to finish (let alone win) that race? The ones in need of the most help have been neglected by our policymakers.
Otherwise healthy children have also suffered a direct loss to their health as a result of the lockdown policies. Across the nation, kids have been cut off from not only their peers, but also from close contact with their elders and from the community at large. They have become acclimated to seeing masked, stressed-out and unwelcoming faces (let’s face it-- this is how a lot of us are looking!) and to keeping a “healthy distance” from everyone outside of their immediate family. Science has proven the ameliorative and healing effects of human touch [7], the vital importance of peer relationships [8], and depriving children of the benefits of touch and interaction will undoubtedly negatively impact their physical and emotional health; time will only tell to what extent.

(to be continued)

Not every child lives in a safe and comfortable home environment, and for some children quarantine has meant being trapped in with the monster abusing them. March 2020 marked the first time that children made up half of the calls into the National Sexual Assault Hotline, and data shows that 79% of the abused were living with their abuser. Combine the fact that times of crises see increases in sexual and domestic violence with the lockdowns eliminating any means of escape, and you have a disaster of nightmare proportions. And, although the number of calls have gone up, less victims are going in for treatment (distributions of rape kits are way down) [9]. It’s imperative that we protect the children who are abused from being locked in with increasingly unstable violent criminals.

Extracurricular activities are cancelled or drastically altered. Talented young musicians, dancers, artists, and athletes have already been denied key playing and training time, and time with peers and mentors. An NCAA survey of its athletes shows “over a third reported experiencing sleep difficulties, more than a quarter reported feeling sadness and a sense of loss, and 1 in 12 reported feeling so depressed it has been difficult to function, “constantly” or “most every day” [10]. This data is coming from those who are usually at the very peak of human health-- a population that is, for the most part, nearly immune to adverse effects of COVID-19. In addition to all the aforementioned blows to the nation’s health, childhood obesity is expected to rise as a result of “stress eating, inequities, and lack of fitness” [11].

Finding up-to-date statistics regarding suicide is frustratingly hard, but according to the head of the CDC Robert Redfield, “There has been another cost we’ve seen, particularly in highschools. We’re seeing, sadly, far greater suicides now than we are deaths from COVID. We’re seeing far greater deaths from drug overdose.” While other experts in the field say that it would be impossible, given the lack of data, to determine the impact of lockdowns on the already rising suicide rates, information coming out from individual counties does show an increase [12] At the beginning of August, Cook county registered more suicides among the black community than the entire year previous. The youngest victim was 9 years old [13].

The women’s workforce has also taken a devastating hit. In addition to the women who were laid off this year, many mothers were forced to reduce their hours working for lack of childcare, and many more left their jobs entirely as a result of school aged children being kept at home. While fathers, too, were impacted by these changes, “four times as many women as men dropped out of the labor force in September, roughly 865,000 women compared with 216,000 men [14]”. Many of the hard earned gains women have made in the workforce were lost this year (the source cited above suggests 25 years of progress lost). This loss of income will impact families’ immediate needs, earned lifetime income, as well as the community and the economy as a whole.

Alarming trends are beginning to emerge regarding lockdown’s effect on domestic violence. Although the full impact won’t be known until the numbers come out next year, many cities are seeing a horrific uptick in violent crime against (majority) women and children. From the data available in Memphis, Milwaukee, and Jefferson Parish, domestic homicides have already equalled or surpassed those of last year, in Seattle, the 14 domestic homicides as of Oct 2020 surpassed those of the past two years. Other cities have seen double the number of women dying at the hands of their partners [15]. Lockdowns, and the chaos and breakdown of the system which ensued, cut those abused by household members off from any and all outlets. Not only that, but the simulation of a hostage situation empowers the most vile impulses of abusers to act without impunity [15], and stress and economic factors are two key contributing factors in abuse [16].

If you’ve read Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, the ending when Sydney Carton takes Darney’s place on the guillotine block leaves the reader with a sense of catharsis, with the knowledge that a good and noble sacrifice had been made. The reader is able to imagine Carton’s final thoughts with him and to imagine he died thinking, “It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done, it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known." Imagine how the story might read if Carton was a child rather than a grown man. When a child is the one making the sacrifice for others, suddenly the story loses some of its appeal. We can’t let our kids, our women, our children, and our nations poorest and most vulnerable take the brunt of the sacrifice. There must be another way.



Sources:
1. www.who.int...
2.www.parents.com...
4.www.npr.org...
5.data.unicef.org...
6.mn.gov...
7.www.nytimes.com...
8.www.npr.org...
9.www.child-encyclopedia.com...
10.info.primarycare.hms.harvard.edu...
11.www.ncaa.org...
12.www.usatoday.com...
13.www.rollcall.com...
14.www.cookcountyil.gov...
15.www.americanprogress.org...
16.www.nbcnews.com...
www.ncjrs.gov...

More women are committing suicide in Japan than are dying from the actual coronavirus and that are related to other illnesses that lessens the likely of survival with those of coronavirus

originally posted by: zosimov
Hi friends

community at large. They have become acclimated to seeing masked, stressed-out and unwelcoming faces (let’s face it-- this is how a lot of us are looking!) and to keeping a “healthy distance” from everyone outside of their immediate family. Science has proven the ameliorative and healing effects of human touch [7], the vital importance of peer relationships [8], and depriving children of the benefits of touch and interaction will undoubtedly negatively impact their physical and emotional health, time will only tell to what extent.
(to be continued)

Have you got that, 'healing touch' thus far?

a reply to: musicismagic

That's horribly sad. Thanks for the info, though. Most of the world is suffering from the response, and only some of those were ever ill.

a reply to: smurfy
Umm....
?

What is that even supposed to mean? Are you refuting the science?

originally posted by: zosimov
a reply to: smurfy
Umm....
?

What is that even supposed to mean? Are you refuting the science?

He's telling you that you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, and all that matters is the NWO that will rise out of the ashes of our lives created by COVID lock downs.

These women and children had to die for the greater good.

It's evil is what it is.

a reply to: ketsuko

Ah. In that case, I vehemently disagree with said poster.

a reply to: zosimov

I don't honestly know if that's what the poster meant, but the response seemed to be blowing off your concerns about the kids.

As a mother who deals with her own kid's anger and frustration with this whole situation constantly, I did not appreciate the tone.

a reply to: ketsuko

I thought they might be making some inappropriate comment, or maybe just laughing off the scientific evidence of the benefits of human touch.

But I couldn't decipher the code.

a reply to: zosimov

Human interaction is very important especially for little boys. They are very tactile when they're young and benefit a lot from physical contact.

a reply to: ketsuko

I've done a lot of wrestling lately with my 7 y/o

His wrestling name is (he picked it) John Cena, and mine (after the shirt I was wearing during our first match of the year) Pink Floyd.

We also went to one birthday party this year and he and two other boys were playing basketball, running around the yard, and wrestling till they were red in the face.

He needed that.
Basketball was just shut down.


All the best to you and your family

a reply to: zosimov

We're lucky ours does martial arts. They're independent of community center, recs, etc., so they've been running their own operation under rules they put together as a group and using the guidelines. They went back to face to face practice in June.

There has only been one incident of a student who wound up at a practice with symptoms, and everyone at that practice was asked to stay home and practice via Zoom for the appropriate amount of time.

Otherwise, it's optional whether you practice in person or by Zoom.

So he gets to go to practice in person with the other kids and has been all summer and now all fall. That's been a huge help, but he misses seeing family. He missed school terribly, and he constantly complains because things aren't back to normal.

Regarding deliberately giving kids the short straw, mark my words, they will grow over the next decade into what we will look back on and call the Suicide Generation. Those thinking this psychologically abusive isolationist way of life is actually good for them have utterly dropped the ball & will have a lot of soul-searching to do (what I hope actually happens to them is far more macabre)


The only silver lining I can see coming of this is the return to nuclear households with only one parent absent & working. People have deluded themselves into thinking it's not necessary, but are finding a home runs better, kids handle stresses & uncertainties better, when one parent is home. I've no pity for the mothers. Especially the ones who chose to dump the otherwise perfectly good guy and keep the kid, to look the hero raising offspring solo. Bad choice, ladies. This will bite you square in the asses. Look to above for WHY.

Great topic OP and thank you for taking the time to put it together.

Fortunately my kids are older (20's) but I have many friends with young ones and I can see how this mockdemic is affecting them.
I am of the firm believe that we, as a society, are being groomed to remove emotion, interaction, physical communication and the ability to express ourselves as a purposeful directive regarding these mask mandates. The goal? While I can't be sure but I'm leaning towards unchallenged subservience to authority.

It's all simply BS.

I returned from holiday earlier this week in Mexico and entering and leaving the country required us to complete contact-tracing forms, mask requirements at all times on the airplanes and in the airports and constant oversight by both TSA and Mexican security forces.

Were the Covid forms even looked at after handing in? (without gloves, mind you. handed directly to an official). Nope
Were there patrols looking for folks Not wearing masks or adhering to social distancing? Nope.

So answer this simple question. If this 'demic is SOOOOOO dangerious, do you not think there would be high scrutiny on masks and distancing with forces on patrol to remove people not following the protocols? You know...to protect the rest of us (ahem...masks) ?

It's simply a social exercise.

Want to change my mind? Show me the folks lying in the streets, sick with this malady. Show me the trucks lined up to burn the bodies. Show me the tents outside of hospitals to treat the affected.

Sorry for the long reply. I'm so goddamned sick and fed up with this entire thing and not only how it's affecting us as a race, but the messaging and conditioning it's sending to our youth. Let's also not forget the old and infirm. The sights and experiences they've seen and participated in and now, at the end of their lifespans, they have to go out like this???

What a kick in the teeth

a reply to: TXRabbit

Thanks for the excellent reply (glad you took the time to write it all out!). I especially hope people read your last paragraph and take it into consideration.

originally posted by: TXRabbit
Let's also not forget the old and infirm. The sights and experiences they've seen and participated in and now, at the end of their lifespans, they have to go out like this???

What a kick in the teeth

My grandmother died 6 years ago, so she's not around for this crap. But if she was, she'd be liable to be a nationally known old lady. Overall, she was the classic Prim, Proper, and Pleasant old lady, until enough buttons were pushed to piss her off. "Silver-tongued spitfire from hell" is as close to apt as I can think of, lol. When you pushed her to blow her stack like that, you knew you were #ed, and were beet red and very embarrassed for it.

She would not, under any circumstances, settled for being told what to do by, quoting one of her Last Warning lines from my own youth when I crossed the line & was pushing The Stinging Lecture, "a mouthy little # far too big for their britches." (seems normal for today, but when my grandma broke out the swears, she meant business & you'd BETTER cut the crap) The masking, distancing, and isolation demands are things she would have never adhered to at her age, period.

It's almost like the "youngins" are deliberately trying to silence them on purpose. Hide grandma and grandpa away, don't listen to their legitimate concerns, disregard and ignore their wants, stuff them in a care home somewhere, reduce or completely eliminate their socialization, and tell them it's "for their own good". Huh, pretty sure most elderly will tell you none of them are down with forced loneliness to death. Nah, my grandma would have immediately called bull# on the false concern, while jabbing a bony finger around the air to punctuate whatever Lecture she launched into.

Most of the people are suffering from lock downs, but we acaryas, yogis and our families seem to be enjoying about this time. We have more time for meditation, we have constant collective mind uplifting kiirtans, spiritual occasions, meetings etc online. Besides we have country side so called Master Units were we can locate and have collective meditation practises, farming, children's activities, walks in nature etc. Money loss is not that important for us as we share and live simple life even otherwise.

There are lots of kiirtans with uplifting mantras on youtube to listen and dance, here how to do it, www.youtube.com...

Master explaining importance of kiirtan to his disciples, www.youtube.com...

originally posted by: ketsuko

originally posted by: zosimov
a reply to: smurfy
Umm....
?

What is that even supposed to mean? Are you refuting the science?

He's telling you that you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs, and all that matters is the NWO that will rise out of the ashes of our lives created by COVID lock downs.

These women and children had to die for the greater good.

It's evil is what it is.

Don't worry I know what 'he's' at...same as you're at really, face it, the witch is dead.

a reply to: smurfy

You wish.

If y'all get what you think you want, it's only getting much, much worse from here on in.