Children were forgotten by policymakers during Covid lockdowns because they rarely got seriously ill from the virus itself, a report from University College London has found. The Telegraph has the story.
Infants, children and teenagers endured numerous lockdowns during their most formative years, despite accounting for a diminutive proportion of Covid hospitalisations and deaths.
A group led by University College London (UCL) found that because the elderly and vulnerable were more likely to get sick and die, the development and well-being of children were deprioritised.
UCL scientists created a paper looking at the impact of the coronavirus global health emergency on children worldwide, specifically in England, Brazil and South Africa.
It found that politicians did not consider children and young people a “priority group” when English lockdowns were enforced. Large policy gaps were created as a result of the ad hoc and ever-changing nature of the lockdowns, which the scientists say disproportionately affected children.
The impact of lockdowns on children and the knock-on effects are expected to feature heavily in the Covid inquiry which last week heard from ex-Prime Minister David Cameron and former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
This week Matt Hancock – the Health Secretary when Covid emerged – will give evidence, as will Nicola Sturgeon.
The report found that childhood access to food, education, the internet and playtime was curbed, and schemes to fix the flaws “took too long to be equally implemented”.
“What is apparent is that the voices of children and young people in England were mostly ignored during the pandemic as this age group was not considered as a priority nor ‘at-risk’ from a public health perspective,” the report states.
“In a context where the response to COVID-19 has been driven by science but also politics, strategies and policies in the future need to adequately consider, and include, children and young people’s priorities.
“Children, young people and the most vulnerable of this group need to be engaged more thoroughly to tackle resilience and social justice.”
They add that the impact of closing schools and keeping children inside their homes for days on end will be felt for decades and in myriad ways, many of which will not be apparent for years to come.
“The impact of the pandemic [sic] will have detrimental consequences for children and young people in the short and long-term, with many not yet visible,” the report said.
“It will have continuing consequences for their future in terms of professional life trajectories, healthy lifestyles, mental well-being, educational opportunities, self-confidence and more besides.”
Many children before Covid did not have computers at home as all education was done in schools and it is estimated that a quarter of children had no internet access during Covid.
This not only impacted their education but also their social sphere and shut them off from the world outside their home.
Why do they insist on blaming the ‘pandemic’ when what they mean is the lockdowns and school closures? It wasn’t Covid that closed the schools. It was the Government.
Worth reading in full.
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Confirms what we knew already. The Civil Service runs the country how it sees fit, and the Government is just window dressing.
I’m sure the Civil Service tries to run it as it see fit, or some of them at least, but we’ve had TWELVE years of Conservative governments. What have those governments done to push back?
I fear you’re hoping rather too much that a Minister and their team can cut though the work of thousands of CS determined to stymie progress. As we have seen with the Home Office and Rwanda, if by good fortune, something does get done, the Unions are there to pick up the tab for the court cases to stop it happening. Its the deep state at work…
I’m not hoping for anything, or expecting anything – just pointing out that voting Conservative doesn’t appear to have conservative results, IMO because the senior leadership of the Tory party and a substantial number of MPs are metropolitan left wing big state “liberals” who are out of touch with or despise their core supporters.
Yeah, I’d agree with that. Add in the influence of supranational forces like the WEF and UN and Agenda 2030, and thats pretty much it
Indeed
There’s a general trend “leftward” it seems to me, but it is being hugely accelerated by the kind of organisations you mention and many sheeple are only going to notice when it’s too late
So it appears that Children and their welfare should be a priority of any government.
ive not seen much of that over last two years.
throw childrens future health on the scrap heap for the sake of liberal ideology. We are at the mercy of the f ING dogooders
There is a fine line between FGM and gender reassignment surgery.
No line.. just the same brutal attack on an innocent.
All this does is confirm what we already know: the Civil Service is institutionally left-wing, suffers from group-think, works to block Minister’s policies it doesn’t support and therefore needs a complete clear out.
The problem we have is that the CONs won’t do it.
We have another problem. What do we do with the brainwashed tens of thousands when we’ve got rid of them.? Inflict them on private companies..? Or will they just find gainful employment from the public purse, buggering up something else. This may take two generations to fix, if we can fix it at all.
Remind me. Communism in the Soviet Union lasted how long, and there’s still a sizeable rump who look at the time with romantic eyes and a sense of nostalgia.
There are already plenty of senior and middle managers in the private sector who are pursuing the woke agenda with equal vigour.
That is for their employers to accept or otherwise. Consumers have the choice to use or not their products and services. And there is mounting evidence of “Go woke, go broke”
However, we have no choice in our dealings with slither serpents.
As always, those who benefit most from the exercise of power want it to continue. Quelle surprise.
They could become our WEF quota of “useless eaters” They could then be shipped off into the glorious future designed for such a class of humanity and save us the rest of us a lot of heartache.
Boris and Carrie Johnson should hang their heads in shame.
“Yes Minister” portrayed what we all suspected was the case in government in the 1970’s and 1980’s that the government was run for the benefit of the civil servants. The show was good for some rueful laughs but the case of Keira Bell demonstrates it’s not funny anymore..
On trans issues, critical race theory, net zero, trade policy, inflation, government spending, the operations of the NHS and education blobs, it is clear that the civil service has now become the enemy of the people.
Kemi said she couldn’t have done it without the backing, support etc of Liz Truss, Matt Hancock, Sahid Javid etc. Very diplomatic with an eye to the future…
Sir Humphrey rules!!!
Here lies the fundamental problem with the British Civil Service: it’s an entrenched organisation where failure is rewarded with a move to a different department and is easily infiltrated by the far left through the fast stream system.
It’s ludicrous that an incoming government is appointed Civil Service secretaries and the like by the Civil Service itself. Why shouldn’t an incoming government appoint its own people? An outgoing Labour government’s Civil Service should be cleared out and replaced by a Tory one when the Tories get into power. The Government should appoint its own heads of department and hire its own people to run each streamlined division. That way, a government’s agenda can be pursued and that government is responsible for the success or failure of its manifesto.
The British Civil Service is plainly inefficient and corrupt. Prior to March 2020, a friend who worked in the Home Office told me that on an average day at least one third of staff is always absent due to leave, ‘sickness’ and ‘duvet days’ and more are offline while ‘working from home’.
Plainly, the Civil Service needs reform: how many taxes exist that purely fund the department that oversees that particular tax, for example?
The far left, postmodern, groupthink is deeply worrying. Postmodernism denies objective reality: if the people running the Civil Service are living in a subjective, imagined world and pretending that that world exists, no wonder we’ve had things like lockdowns and climate mania when the empirical evidence denies their world view. No wonder Civil Servants allowed the butchery of children to take place in the Tavistock Clinic when they won’t say what a woman is anymore.
There are two sexes: male and female. There are three genders – masculine, feminine and neuter (he, she and it) – in language. Everything else is the deranged, reality-denying rantings of delusional, far left academics.
The views espoused by those climbing the career Tory party ladder have no bearing whatsoever on the views and actions taken when high office is achieved. Boris Johnson is perfect example of the latest person to play to the centre Right party faithful and head off in the opposite direction when party leader