Another week in the paediatric clinic, another week of #Covid19 induced massive difficulty for children & families, particularly the poorest.

Please! Whatever we think about schools, can we stop auto-speaking "children are resiliant" and they'll "bounce back" because... 1/n

whilst MOST children we very much hope will be fine, (& some will even thrive!)... 2/n
for many, pandemic is destructive and damaging. We know that adversity through the early years sticks, and can manifest through childhood, adolescence, and onwards into adulthood... 3/n
And it's hard to see how things are going to get wonderfully better "post-COVID" 4/n
Childrens lives go way beyond schools but are certainly key. In this country we currently have situation where parents are expected to work and look after young children simultaneously (impossible) and where playing with your friends is illegal 5/n
Nevermind that health, social, and voluntary-sector services - usually a lifeline - have broken down or disappeared

I sadly don't think it's an exaggeration to say that children and families have been abandoned 6/n
The problems of #Covid19 are hugely difficult, the solutions are nearly unfathomably complex.

Children are currently locked away to protect us adults. Lets give they & their families huge respect & thanks.

Just saying kids'll be ok isn't enough, we need to invest & act.

7/end
p.s more on this from @guardian

https://t.co/M7sRDRxbtd
p.p.s a call for commission on post-covid childhood

https://t.co/viRWjb88ni

More from Society

global health policy in 2020 has centered around NPI's (non-pharmaceutical interventions) like distancing, masks, school closures

these have been sold as a way to stop infection as though this were science.

this was never true and that fact was known and knowable.

let's look.


above is the plot of social restriction and NPI vs total death per million. there is 0 R2. this means that the variables play no role in explaining one another.

we can see this same relationship between NPI and all cause deaths.

this is devastating to the case for NPI.


clearly, correlation is not proof of causality, but a total lack of correlation IS proof that there was no material causality.

barring massive and implausible coincidence, it's essentially impossible to cause something and not correlate to it, especially 51 times.

this would seem to pose some very serious questions for those claiming that lockdowns work, those basing policy upon them, and those claiming this is the side of science.

there is no science here nor any data. this is the febrile imaginings of discredited modelers.

this has been clear and obvious from all over the world since the beginning and had been proven so clearly by may that it's hard to imagine anyone who is actually conversant with the data still believing in these responses.

everyone got the same R
This is a piece I've been thinking about for a long time. One of the most dominant policy ideas in Washington is that policy should, always and everywhere, move parents into paid labor. But what if that's wrong?

My reporting here convinced me that there's no large effect in either direction on labor force participation from child allowances. Canada has a bigger one than either Romney or Biden are considering, and more labor force participation among women.

But what if that wasn't true?

Forcing parents into low-wage, often exploitative, jobs by threatening them and their children with poverty may be counted as a success by some policymakers, but it’s a sign of a society that doesn’t value the most essential forms of labor.

The problem is in the very language we use. If I left my job as a New York Times columnist to care for my 2-year-old son, I’d be described as leaving the labor force. But as much as I adore him, there is no doubt I’d be working harder. I wouldn't have stopped working!

I tried to render conservative objections here fairly. I appreciate that @swinshi talked with me, and I'm sorry I couldn't include everything he said. I'll say I believe I used his strongest arguments, not more speculative ones, in the piece.

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