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We Know the Damage Lockdowns Did to Our Children, So Never Again

by Hugh McCarthy
19 May 2022 9:00 AM

There follows a guest post by Hugh McCarthy, a retired Headteacher in Northern Ireland who until recently served as a Director on two of the province’s main education councils and who remains a ministerial appointment on one.

The damage to our children highlighted in recent reports and briefly summarised below should act as a clarion call and a warning that we should never close schools again, never send children home to isolate and avoid wearing masks around children. And the whole edifice has been based on the fear-inducing, ineffective and harm-causing masks and the totally misleading and flawed PCR tests.

As I revealed in these two articles, the tragedy is the evidence was there from the start, before we inflicted such damaging policies on our children.

This article addresses the question, What do we do now?

First, a brief reminder of what the education reports found. The Ofsted report highlighted a huge range of damaging impacts including:

  • delays in babies’ physical development;
  • a generation of babies struggling to crawl and communicate;
  • toddlers struggling with speech and language;
  • regression in children’s independence.

Research by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) found that the negative impact of Covid lockdowns continues as children get older. The impact of lockdowns on the development of literacy skills at an early age is of “particular concern”, the report states, as “early reading plays a key part in children’s later achievement”. It adds:

We found that, compared to what we would have expected pre-pandemic, there were well over double the proportion of children who barely scored any marks on the reading assessments in Year 1 and in Year 2 in the last school year.

The observations of the Head of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists in Northern Ireland back up what the reports say: “A growing number of young children are experiencing significant communication problems following the Covid lockdowns. We’re seeing young children who can’t talk at all.”

These findings should set alarm bells ringing.

Does it matter?

The importance of these early years is highlighted in the recently published Fair Start report into educational underachievement.

The scale of the tragedy is underlined by the substantial body of research contained in the report. It emphasises that “children’s early experiences have a profound and lasting impact on their future learning and development”, and confirms that “investing in quality early childhood education for disadvantaged children has significant and long term benefits for individuals and society”.

A study by the New South Wales Government quantifies the harm. Its finding that 90% of brain development takes place in the first five years (2,000 days) of life underlines the crucial importance of not making the same mistakes again.

Are children at risk from Covid? What were the risks to young children for which many have paid such a heavy and potentially life changing price? Data show children have a 99.999% survival chance if they contract the virus.

And we already knew. The data have been clear since March 2020. According to Dr. David Bell, a world renowned public health official, “Most people, working age adults and very young children were at very very low risk”. He maintains that “accurate data and balanced evidence should be made available to the public and key decision makers to make decisions that are in everyone’s interest”.

Unlike the rest of the world, Sweden maintained some semblance of normality. The citizens of this country generally didn’t have to wear face masks, young children continued going to school, leisure activities were largely allowed to continue unhindered. Why didn’t we look more closely?

One analysis compared the death tolls in over 50 countries, including the U.K., that had locked down, countries that had variously shut down playgrounds, forced their children to wear facemasks and closed schools. The research found that they have all been hit worse than Sweden in terms of total Covid mortality. This means that “almost every single government intervention, in particular, lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates, mass testing and ‘contact tracing’”, as well as ‘vaccine passports’, have been entirely ineffective and unjustified while having caused almost unprecedented social and economic harm”.

This is a finding confirmed by Professor Robert Dingwall, who reports on data published by the WHO on estimates of excess deaths globally for 2020 and 2021. It looked at data across Europe and found that Sweden had half the excess death rate of the U.K., Germany or Spain.

This research shows the fallacy of closing schools to prevent transmission and save adult lives.

Learning for children is a continuous process – it cannot take place in fits and starts.

There will be a widening gap between those whose parents are willing and able to help and those who are not. For those who are challenged by education, it is disastrous.

Children need to socialise – playgroup, school, sport, choir, clubs and so on are vital for children’s health, mental health and for their development.

What about children living in cramped conditions, what about the rising tide of abuse and self-harm, how do they learn and develop?

Speaking at the “Question Everything” conference in July 2021, Dr. Zenobia Storah, a Senior Clinical Psychologist within the NHS, said “the Government disregarded everything we know about human beings”, adding “[we are seeing] a massive increase in mental stress across all age groups, a huge deterioration in young people when schools are closed – self harm, abuse, eating disorders… we have totally failed children”.

The children were not in a place where they could work, study, learn and develop.

The Government view that technology can make up for lost learning is not supported by the evidence. The Netherlands, the country best placed to operate a technology-based home education system reported: “Losses are up to 60% larger among students from less-educated homes, confirming worries about the uneven toll of the pandemic on children and families. The findings imply that students made little or no progress while learning from home and suggest losses even larger in countries with weaker infrastructure or longer school closures.”

And how is this technology relevant for babies and very young children?

Just a word about the reliability of the test. Is it a sufficiently robust tool to use to close schools and nurseries, send huge numbers of children home and into isolation and thereby destroy their education, development and life chances?

Professor Jack Lambert, Ireland’s leading infectious disease expert, said:

PCR cannot distinguish infectious live virus from residual dead virus or viral fragments from previous infection. Therefore many ‘cases’ have no real meaning in terms of medical status or transmission potential; it will probably identify harmless viral fragments and the test will be deemed ‘positive’. In Ireland, Ct value cut-offs of 35-45 are the norm. High Ct values (over 35 or even 30) suggest a non-infectious patient,

Yet we have been applying a cycle frequency in the range 40-45.

Professor Richard Ennos of Edinburgh University expressed it thus in the Belfast Newsletter:

The PCR test is completely useless for the purpose for which it is being employed – namely the detection of COVID-19 infected individuals who can infect others. Furthermore since children are hardly affected, and show vanishingly small frequencies of transmission to adults, there is no reason to be worried about SARS-CoV-2 passing through children at school.

Therefore the PCR test results are completely inappropriate for providing evidence of whether there is an outbreak in a school.

As Dr. Ros Jones, retired NHS Consultant Paediatrician, speaking on the Pandemic podcast on January 26th 2022, said: “The closure of schools [was] for no good reason.”

The sad reality is that children’s well being, development and life chances have been seriously damaged by measures designed to combat a virus from which they have a 99.999% survival chance, measures which cause them great harms and were known to do so. The damage to children was immense and potentially long lasting.

What should we do?

  1.  There should be substantial investment in these early years.
  2.  Accurate contextual information should also be provided to the public to enable them to make decisions about their own health and that of their families, including the actual risks to children.
  3. A significant and substantive risk/benefit analysis must be carried out before we embark on potentially destructive policies such as school closures, isolating and quarantining children, mask wearing, mass testing.
  4. Until this is carried out, parents should be informed that it is not scientifically justified to wear a mask around young children and that so doing harms their development.
  5. Children should not be masked.

And we should follow the example of Professor Ennos:

Children are the most precious gift we can receive. They trust us to care, protect and love them in a difficult world. In the last 18 months we have utterly betrayed this trust and subjected them to wholly unnecessary and hugely damaging and degrading treatments in the name of keeping ourselves safe.

I am utterly ashamed of the immoral and selfish behaviour of the adult generations who have condoned this masking and PCR testing of children. The only honourable step that we can take, as adults, is immediately to remove these restrictions on our children, and ask their forgiveness for the wrong we have done them.

Tags: ChildrenFace MasksLockdown harmsMask MandatesMass Testing in SchoolsSchool ClosuresSchoolchildren

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70 Comments
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Lockdown Sceptic
Lockdown Sceptic
11 months ago

Covid Jab Excess Deaths Pile High – latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, your new MP, your local vicar, online media and friends online.  

Start a local campaign. We have over 200 leaflet ideas on the link on the leaflet.

03b-Covid-Jab-Excess-Deaths-Pile-High-MONOCHROME-copy
7
0
Monro
Monro
11 months ago

Go it alone and let Ukraine fire missiles, Keir Starmer told

As far as the Russian Union State is concerned, that decision has already been made.

‘The process has really started, there is such a camouflage discussion. Obviously, the decision has been made a long time ago’

Dmitry Peskov, press secretary, President’s Administration, Russian Union State, 130924.

This is the response that they intend:

‘As you know, the structural divisions of the MBDA UK concern (developer and manufacturer of Storm Shadow missiles) are located in the UK. The headquarters are in Stevenage, and the production sites are in Bristol, Bolton and Stevenage.

In this case, it follows the submarine forces of the Northern Fleet (for example, the 24th Division of submarines and part of the forces of the 11th Division of submarines) and the 201st heavy Bomber Aviation Division of the Long-range Aviation of the Russian Air Force permanent base airfield – Engels at night (to minimize losses among civilian personnel of MBDA UK enterprises) to strike with cruise missiles of the sea (Kalibr-PL) and air-based (X-101) at the production sites of the concern in the UK. To solve these tasks, first of all, use nuclear multipurpose submarines of projects 885M and 971 and strategic bombers Tu-95MS and Tu-160.

The order of action of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation may be as follows: to strike at night with cruise missiles at the production sites of the MBDA UK concern, and as soon as it gets light – a demonstration nuclear strike on one of the areas of the North Sea or the Atlantic Ocean near the coast of Great Britain. Moreover, with such a calculation of the power of a nuclear explosion that the outbreak was visible to the entire population of the United Kingdom.’

Mikhail Mikhailovich Khodarenok, Retired Colonel

And this is what will happen next:

‘We would respond by leading a NATO, a collective effort, that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea’

David Petraeus, Retired General 

Last edited 11 months ago by Monro
0
0
CGW
CGW
11 months ago
Reply to  Monro

Whoopee! And the whole world goes up in flames! Slava what-is-it?

Have a good, last day.

4
0
Monro
Monro
11 months ago
Reply to  CGW

These are the consequences of unbridled imperialist expansionist adventures by totalitarian fascist dictators.

‘Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit — i.e., in the tendency of nations to expand — a manifestation of their vitality. In the opposite tendency, which would limit their interests to the home country, it sees a symptom of decadence.

Peoples who rise or re-arise are imperialistic; renunciation is characteristic of dying peoples.

The Fascist doctrine is that best suited to the tendencies and feelings of a people which, like the Italian, after lying fallow during centuries of foreign servitude, are now reasserting itself in the world.’

Mussolini 1932

Last edited 11 months ago by Monro
-1
-1
Monro
Monro
11 months ago

https://thehill.com/policy/international/4879151-state-department-rt-as-covert-influence-russia/

RT secretly runs several covert influence fronts, including “African Stream,” a YouTube channel, and “Red,” an English-language platform based in Berlin.

“They are engaged in covert influence activities aimed at undermining American elections and democracies, functioning like a de facto arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus,”

RT’s activities are similar to those of other intelligence activities conducted by Russia. 

RT apparently pieced together a crowdfunding network that involved directing funds for armaments that would be deployed to Russian units on the ground in Ukraine.

A specialized Kremin cyber operations unit was also tucked into RT in the spring of last year.

“We know that RT possessed cyber capabilities and engaged in covert information influence operations and military procurement as part of RT’s expanded capabilities,”

$10 million in funding was wired through shell companies backed by Russian broadcaster RT news agency to fund Tenet Media, a right-wing outlet in Tennessee.

The Justice Department in its accusations said RT funnelled the money to help “distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging.”

“RT has built and used networks of U.S. and other Western personalities to create and disseminate Russia-friendly narratives while trying to mask the content in authentic Americans’ free speech,” 

Today, the United States is designating three entities and two individuals for their connection to Russia’s destabilizing actions abroad.

According to new information, much of which originates from employees of Russian state-funded RT (formerly “Russia Today”), we now know that RT moved beyond being simply a media outlet and has been an entity with cyber capabilities. It is also engaged in information operations, covert influence, and military procurement.

These operations are targeting countries around the world, including in Europe, Africa, and North and South America.’

Last edited 11 months ago by Monro
0
0
CGW
CGW
11 months ago
Reply to  Monro

Thank heavens for the BBC. Innocence pure.

4
0
Monro
Monro
11 months ago
Reply to  CGW

The BBC is a socialist fascist state mouthpiece but has not, as far as I am aware, raised funds to purchase weaponry.

I believe ITV, on occasion, some while ago now, allowed troops in the Middle East to use its satellite phones to talk to their families but that appears to have been an act of charity rather than any encouragement of war fighting.

0
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
11 months ago

Pretty old news, and we kind of knew this already, but it does remind us who was behind the deliberate mass immigration and permanent changing of our society;

https://x.com/FancFay/status/1834960709223895133

6
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
11 months ago
Reply to  Mogwai

Thanks Mogs 👍

2
0
Heretic
Heretic
11 months ago
Reply to  Mogwai

Incredible. Well done to you and Peter Mandelson for telling the truth to the people about the Anti-White, Anti-Christian, Sabbatean Frankist agenda, like Brother Nathanael, Henry Makow, Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg, and Prof. N.D. Abrams at Bangor University.

“ In 1989, a courageous young woman exposed the satanic Jewish forebears of the Illuminati cult that now dominates the world. They are Sabbatean Frankists who hate assimilated Jews as much as goyim.” Henry Makow

We shall have to add you and Mandelson to that List of Honour of Heroic Jews.

0
0
soundofreason
soundofreason
11 months ago

“Labour to back away from 2030 petrol car ban” – Ministers are planning to back away from a total ban on the sale of new petrol-powered cars by allowing hybrid vehicles to remain on the market until 2035, according to the Telegraph.

On Saturday a Labour source insisted it was always its policy to allow the continued sale of some hybrids.

We’ve always been at war with EurEastAsia.

1
0
For a fist full of roubles
For a fist full of roubles
11 months ago

Well that was a pretty depressing series of excerpts from today’s news. I am beginning to think that nuclear anihilation might be preferable to a long drawn out and increasingly unpleasant death under today’s Western leadership.

4
0
Heretic
Heretic
11 months ago
Reply to  For a fist full of roubles

It is Satan who will be annihilated, that justice shall be done.

0
0
soundofreason
soundofreason
11 months ago

“Is Reform the Right Future for Britain?” – Warren Alexander takes a closer look at the Reform party in the New Conservative.

Warren Alexander spent most of his career in the not for profit sector woking in fundraising and marketing for causes including overseas aid, higher education and medical research. His final role before retiring was as chief executive of the Charity Retail Association, the UK trade body for charities that operate shops.

(my emphasis added)

2
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
11 months ago
Reply to  soundofreason

https://thenewconservative.co.uk/is-reform-the-right-future-for-britain/

I check in on thenewconservative.co.uk most days and if there is anything worthwhile I post it on DS. I read this piece and came to the same conclusion ‘sor,’ ie an article of little merit written by someone from the wrong side. Not worth our time.

0
0
EppingBlogger
EppingBlogger
11 months ago

Patten says we are too dependent on China. Well who knew.

who facilitated that.

who gave the people of Hong Kong to the CCP.

4
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
11 months ago
Reply to  EppingBlogger

John Major gave Patten a whole carriage on the gravy train and by God has he milked it ever since. An absolutely appalling piece of rubbish who still dirties the public airwaves far too frequently.

0
0
Heretic
Heretic
11 months ago

“Sweden offers immigrants £26,000 to return home”

No “offers”, except the Order of the Boot, are sufficient to persuade Third World Invaders to return to their own ancestral homelands, because nothing can compare to a lifetime of free stuff without ever having to work, which is only available in the West.

Of course they’ll be happy to take the “offers” and then be back next month or next year, using a different name and identity. That’s what the Vikings did with the Danegeld.

It’s like paying a swarm of termites not to eat up your house.

Last edited 11 months ago by Heretic
0
0
Heretic
Heretic
11 months ago

“The killer who claimed asylum” – “The case of Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai exposes the lethal dysfunction of our asylum system, says Tom Slater in Spiked.”

Yes, as the courageous rebel Reverend Gavin Ashenden, former Queen’s Chaplain, said of the asylum system:

“It is Political Deceit”.

0
0
Heretic
Heretic
11 months ago

“NHS staff drafted into schools to coach lockdown children on potty training”

The most crucial fact is omitted: it is not Ethnic European parents, but Third World mothers who are happy to dump their sprogs in schools to be thus “trained” by teachers, whom those mothers regard as mere lower-caste “servants”, like they have back in their own ancestral homelands.

It has nothing to do with lockdown, because it has been a huge problem for primary school teachers for years before that, just like the rarely-mentioned problem of even colleges whose long-suffering cleaning staff have to deal with Islamic students defecating everywhere except in the flush toilets, in order to force the colleges to install the disgusting health hazard called squat halal toilets they prefer.

Last edited 11 months ago by Heretic
0
0

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