The Cost of Covid Lockdowns

One would like to have an extensive report from an American source, but alas, we are obliged to settle for a long article from Great Britain, via The Telegraph. The good news is that the report includes some research from the United States. Mostly, however, it’s from the British Isles.

The subject is covid lockdowns and the impact they had on children. Doubtless, by now you know that the decision to close schools has produced significant damage in young children. The article explains in detail how bad it was. 

Were it not for the fact that in America the fault for this disastrous policy lies at the feet of the teachers’ unions, the media would be making more of it. 

As for the numbers, in Great Britain, 40% more people are on sickness benefits since the pandemic hit. 

In the United States, a study from the University of Washington suggested that lockdowns had caused “premature ageing to teenagers’s brains.” The phenomenon was more pronounced in girls. 

To go back in developmental time, a study in Ireland suggested that children born during the lockdown were suffering from slower cognitive development:

In 2022, an Irish survey found babies born in lockdown were slower than usual to reach milestones such as talking, pointing and waving goodbye. By the age of one, only 77 per cent of pandemic babies could say one meaningful word, compared to 89 per cent born before Covid. While almost all (93 per cent) of those born pre-pandemic could point, only 84 per cent of lockdown babies could do so by 12 months. 

Now, lockdown babies are now going to school. Among these five-year-olds, more than half were still in diapers. Needless to say, this is highly disruptive. 

As for teenagers, they were consigned to their bedrooms during much of the day and missed out on face-to-face interaction with their peers. The prolonged social isolation damaged their emotional development.

A systematic review led by KCL’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience found lockdown was associated with psychological distress, loneliness, boredom, fear and stress among young people. Again, girls were found to have been hardest hit. 

Since students missed classroom instruction they did poorly on the standardized tests that Britain uses to give access to university education. The problems that arose are consonant with the problems that arise in America when children who cannot do the work are given passing grades and are promoted:

Instead of sitting their GCSEs and A-levels in 2020 and 2021, pupils were awarded grades based on teacher assessments. Under this improvised temporary system, a record number of pupils in England, Wales and Northern Ireland secured top A-level grades. If this sounds like a win for the students concerned, some paid the price later, Paskins notes. “What it meant is there were young people who had better grades [than they might have done otherwise] and went on to college or university, then couldn’t do the work and so dropped out,” he says. “That can impact mental health [too].”

It is about the price of grade inflation:

While neither grade inflation nor poor mental health explains every case, it’s notable that more than 18,000 students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland had dropped out of university courses by February 2022, an increase of more than 4,000 compared with the same point in 2021, and 3,000 more than the figures for February 2019, according to experimental Student Loans Company data.

And, in Britain, the lockdowns caused teenagers and adults to abuse alcohol:

The long-term health effects of increased alcohol or drug use prompted by lockdown are yet to fully hit home. But the excess drinking alone could lead to thousands of extra deaths and hospital admissions over the next 20 years, research from NHS England and the University of Sheffield has indicated. Young adults aged 25 to 34 who were already heavier drinkers than their peers pre-pandemic were more likely to up their alcohol intake still further during lockdown than any other age group, the study found.

The Telegraph article offers a picture of the damage inflicted at all developmental stages. Amazingly, the damage is pervasive.

Added to this was the acute anxiety, stress and boredom of lockdown, which drove so many to self-medicate with alcohol. Among them were those who were furloughed or laid off, and found the boredom propelling them into a vicious cycle whereby “someone who’s not working starts drinking then finds that drinking escalates, and then they’re just not motivated to get into work, and they’re more bored,” says Piper. “Lots of people were bored in the pandemic and were drinking more.”

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