There follows a guest post by Child and Adolescent Clinical Psychologist Dr. Zenobia Storah, Professor of Psychology Ellen Townsend, Clinical Professor of Public Health Allyson Pollock and Psychotherapist Sarah Waters, who say children were subjected to all manner of unevidenced and harmful interventions during the pandemic, not least of which was frequent testing, and we must now prioritise their recovery and ensure it never happens again.
Twice-weekly asymptomatic testing for COVID-19 was introduced in secondary schools in the U.K. in January 2021. Although guidance was specific to secondary education, many primary schools, nurseries and pre-schools also requested routine testing of children in their care. Regular self-testing by students has also been required at colleges and universities.
In the last month, the Government removed its testing advice for staff and pupils in most schools. We welcome this change. Mass testing has been harmful for many, especially for children. Indeed, experts have cautioned against asymptomatic mass testing. The lack of evidence on impact on transmission, high costs, and likely diversion of resources from important activities such as mental health support have all been cited. Incredibly, even though mass testing is screening, the U.K. Government ignored the Wilson and Junger 1968 principles of screening and never sought the advice of the National Screening Committee. We are not aware of any evidence-base for this policy or any risk assessment regarding potential psychological or physical harms.
Swabbing for either PCR or lateral flow devices (LFDs) is an unpleasant and invasive procedure that is distressing to children. In October 2020, when testing was introduced in Italian schools, paediatricians raised concerns about the risks posed by nasopharyngeal swabs, including the breakage of the swab with subsequent inhalation and possible injury to the nasal, oral and pharyngeal mucosa. Subsequently questions were raised in the European Parliament. Disappointingly there has been little interest in such concerns from professionals and policy-makers in the U.K.
Risk of psychological trauma has also been ignored despite widespread acknowledgement amongst parents of children’s distress during testing. Conditioned distress responses have been reported in young children, with older children displaying anxiety around testing, parents restraining children when swabbing, children exhibiting fear responses to parents following testing, and teens experiencing social embarrassment due to physical responses including vomiting following self-testing in school. Staff running testing centres confirm that these stories are commonplace and professionals have expressed concerns. Given that many nursery and school leadership teams insist on testing and that those administering tests are aware of these harms, lack of evaluation of this policy is unacceptable.
Wider-reaching psychological impacts have also been ignored. Routine testing of children teaches them that they are vectors of disease and a risk to others. It places on them a moral and civic obligation to subject themselves to invasive procedure for the supposed benefit of the community. Testing also normalises behaviours which are symptomatic of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder or health anxiety. We have observed parents who, encouraged by Government messaging, behave as if they have a version of factitious disorder in relation to Covid testing. Psychologically problematic practices have been promoted and become normalised. We have similar concerns with relation to other interventions imposed on children, including face masks, social distancing and over-rigorous hand hygiene regimes.
There is no precedent for a generation of children being routinely subjected to such practices. We can only hypothesise as to immediate and long-term consequences. However, we can extrapolate from existing knowledge of the sensitivity of children’s brain to environmental influences and stressors that there is real potential for significant harm. This may include instilling and normalising obsessive compulsive or health anxious behaviours, damage to children’s sense of self and safety, their relationships, their trust in authority and care-givers, and their capacity to engage in normal social interaction and intimacy, both currently and long-term.
The last two years have taken a devastating toll on the well-being of children and young people. There is now compelling evidence of a significant increase in distress amongst children and young people since March 2020. There is also increasing evidence of physical harm to children as a result of the pandemic response. It is clear that for children and young people, COVID-19 does not pose significant risk. However, they are facing an unprecedented crisis of mental health and well-being. As we move to ‘living with the virus’, we must prioritise their recovery. Resources should now be redirected towards promoting health and well-being. Policy-makers and professionals should be reminded of trauma-informed practice – a concept promoted and accepted widely in schools and colleges pre-pandemic, through initiatives such as THRIVE and the Trauma-Informed Schools programme – and urgently promote recovery.
In the U.K., pre-pandemic, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child was universally endorsed. Our legal, clinical and educational systems reflected the principle that children’s best interests are paramount. It is disturbing that, during the pandemic, this principle was forgotten. We must ask ourselves how we got to a point where young people were routinely subjected to harmful and unevidenced interventions. As we support their recovery, we must ensure that they are never subjected to such experiences again.
Dr. Zenobia Storah is a Child and Adolescent Clinical Psychologist who currently serves as Clinical Lead at the Knowsley Neurodevelopmental Pathway in Liverpool.
Dr. Ellen Townsend is Professor of Psychology in the Self-Harm Research Group at the University of Nottingham.
Dr. Allyson Pollock is Clinical Professor of Public Health at Newcastle University.
Sarah Waters is a Psychotherapist and DDP Practitioner.
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A name that will live in infamy, along with the others.
Odd thing about Vallance, he never even looked as if he believed the crap they were all spouting. He simply isn’t as consummate liar as Whitty, Ferguson , …
Oh, Ferguson wasn’t a liar. Just completely deranged.
I am sure he is a liar. An off-the-scale psychopath as well, and entirely bought and paid for.
.”He simply isn’t as consummate liar as Whitty, Ferguson ,” …..Bozo, Handicock, van Tam, Jabbit, Michie, Raine…and on and on…
“Sometimes it’s better to play dumb, rather than open your mouth and prove it,”
Who said that?
I’ve always heard it as “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.” This quote is credited to either Abraham Lincoln or Mark Twain. Given the humourous nature, my vote would go to Mark Twain.
Thank you. I am most grateful.
He didn’t seem to have the qualifications of a political spinmeister, did he? That said, the impression to me back then was that it all looked like another election campaign, as it was only just after the 2019 GE.
The M in Johnson’s PM title obviously stands for muppet.
Love it.
so what can we make the ‘P’ into then?
How about P1SS?
Priapic.
His name is near the top of the evergrowing list of incompetent ,corrupt liars who have conned us all .He will not b forgotten .
Not forgotten by the likes of us but for the majority he is already a distant memory.
Spot on .They are now being groomed on Monkeypox and China/Taiwan .
Nothing to see here….
Crazily he is actually the more personable of the harbingers of covid Armageddon.
Quoting one of the many people who ended up as victim of the Great Daily Sceptic Unpaid Contributors Cull[tm]:
Wouldn’t it be nice if Unbalanced unbalanced and fell below an ambulance?
The head of HM’s torture chamber may well be an affable person in private. One just shouldn’t encounter him in his official capacity.
Good riddance!
The worry is who will replace him? Is it going to be an even more hardcore WEFer?
At the Natural History Museum he’s going to be able to preach woke crap to the children to brainwash them into believing the green climate change crap. That is more scary than his GSK extra money.
It’s a bit rich MailOnline referring to him as Dr Doom given they have willingly been one his chief message conduits. Despicable ‘journalism’ but no surprise there.
Yes, the Mail was disgusting. I remember how they used hidden cameras to photograph people walking out of B&Q with headlines saying ‘Is this essential shopping?’ They helped make things much worse.
Just now and again the Mail likes to be a bit more objective. Of course it never lasts.
It was clear something was very wrong when the Mail was stoking the paranoia, yet columnists were attacking the lockdowns. The same happened at the Telegraph (of course they’d made the mistake of accepting a £3 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which funded Paul Nuki’s propaganda outfit, the Global Health Security Team.) And there was that weird trio of articles across the Mail, Telegraph where Andrew Neil and Philip Johnston wrote vicious articles out of the blue about people who hadn’t had the clot shot, with almost the same turn of phrase, echoed in The Sun by Karen Braddy.
I did quite a bit of work for Patrick Vallance and his department in the past (Van Tam too). I respected him, which is why I gave him the time of day for a short while before the lockdowns. It’s with great sadness and a sense of betrayal that I now equate him to senior members of Hitler’s Nazi regime of the 1930s.
He might not have the harsh German accent and the jackboots, but he evinces an Eichmann-like blandness. The most evil actions are often countenanced by the blandest people, which is why we should always fear the rule of technocrats.
I’ve never been scared of COVID-19. I’m scared of Vallance, the freak Whitty and the other members of Sage, though. I used to have a sick feeling of dread in my stomach when those press conferences were announced. What more abuses were these lying creeps about to inflict on a credulous public?
When I read Johnson’s panegyric dedicated to Vallance, it reminded me of why I’m glad that frizzy-haired bastard is on his way out of Downing Street.
Interesting to note that Vallance’s predecessor as head of R&D at GSK, Moncef Slaoui, headed up the USA’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout…
Vallance, Whitty and Van Tam are all highly intelligent and educated. As Mike Yeadon pointed out, they’d studied the same things he did.
They knew what they were saying was a pack of lies.
Exactly. That’s why I loathe them so much. They are pure evil.
Weirdly though, vaccine R&D was never part of Vallance’s remit (unlike Slaoui). He is superficially nice enough but incredibly political and somewhat narcissistic. I don’t believe he ever thought any of it made sense, but he would swear black was white and up was down if it advanced him in any way. Not the kind of scientist one can believe in (which is probably one of the reasons GSK’s pipeline is considered weaker than most of its peers).
he would swear black was white and up was down if it advanced him in any way.
Yep, that’s my reading of Vallance – entirely motivated and driven by self interest.
Whitty thought – there’s something different about him, as if he’s some demon thrown up from the Abyss
Whitty always looked nervous to me, like he knew he was talking nonsense. Vallance and Van Tam were the smoother performers.
No TV license in the TJN household, so we missed out on direct viewing of most of these public-interest pronouncements.
Van Tam seemed to me to be in love with himself, but I always thought Vallance looked the most shifty, in a sweaty guilty sort of way.
For me though the worst of the lot was Whitty.
And he was the one who over-ruled the JCVI to authorise the stabs for children. Of all the acts in the last two-and-a-half years of tragedy, this was surely the most purely evil.
That was my approach: the press conferences were clearly overseen by the Behavioural Insights mob and used linguistic programming – emotive words, combinations of words, repetition of words and phrases to terrify anyone watching them. A couple of people I know who watched every press conference religiously are now agoraphobic. There arguably needs to be a series of press conferences using similar techniques to deprogramme anyone who watched the originals.
Whitty is evidence of what a nice, incredibly generous people the British are. When the man overseeing the incarceration of 67 million people (on the basis of claims newspapers routinely debunked within an hour of his pronouncements) was accosted by citizens in the street, he was pushed around a bit, laughed at and that’s it. In many countries, he would have stabbed, shot or strung up from a lamppost. We just called him a twat and let him go about his day!
Good riddance. Don’t come back, you lying SOB.
Vallance and Van Tam and the revolving doors:
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2017/12/06/tom-jefferson-the-uk-turns-to-witty-vallance-and-van-tam-for-leadership-revolving-doors/
I think it was Mark who previously shared this on here.
Given that the BMJ published this, what in hell’s name were they doing cheerleading all the Corona nonsense?
Mike Yeadon publicly accused him of lying and invited him to sue. Enough to tell me *exactly* the worth of the CSA.
He should fit in at the Natural history museum, an old dinosaur with nothing in his thick skull.
Unfortunately like Bill, Chris and the rest he’s played the people of this country like the Pied piper of Hamelin Town and the rats were more than happy to follow.
“It is impossible to fully convey the impact Sir Patrick has had…”
Bit of an understatement, that.
Boris Johnson said: “Sir Patrick may not have bargained for becoming a household name when he signed up for the job.
“But I am immensely grateful for him giving me an excuse to destroy Britain.“
His next position should be serving a life sentence in a Category A prison for Mass Murder…..or facing a death sentence for Treason, either sounds like his next best step re career path
Yes, an impact like a meteorite!
It may take a while but I hope to see these charlatans held accountable one day.
Please keep us posted, DS, about whether Sir Pat does step into a role with the pharmaceutical industry (one of his old jobs, maybe, plus promotion?)
I agree that all this governmental bragging about the phenomenal success of the rollout of COVID vaccines could turn out to be a BIG mistake in the medium- term future. Cue much reverse-ferreting.
It’s encouraging to read about the inception of a parallel body of medical professionals in Australia (AMP?) to rival the highly-politicised AMA and it’s unchallengeable yet unevidenced public health messaging. I wish it would happen here!
If you want to be really upset by the machinations of ‘Big Pharma’ please read ‘The Real Anthony Fauci’
I’m three-quarters through it! Not a good bedtime read if you want to be soothed to sleep
One of the Guilty Men.
I hope he rots in hell because sadly, there’s unlikely to be any justice in this world.
Not that I’ve ever had much faith in the MSM’s ability to search for the truth, but what did it for me was listening to this expert virologist/vaccinologist telling the nation via the BBC that covid was new, dangerous and that everyone must be jabbed because antibody levels waned dramatically post infection.
Every O level biology students know that antibody levels wane quite naturally post any infection.- that’s because they’ve done their job and your immune system has a memory, thus obviating the need for vaccination.
Obviously the immune system’s memory seems better than that of Vallances. Heaven forbid that he told lies.
He’s in a very long list of people who deserve everything they’re going to get, on this earth and in hell.
He saved no one, modelling isint real, and no one can ever prove how many people did NOT die or how many were ‘saved’. He was part of the draconian nightmare forced on the nation and part of the collapse of the economy due to lockdowns, ‘vaccine’ rollouts, testing, nightingale hospitals, furlough scheme and now he can walk away……
Ok – never was very good at sums but 650million doses of the jabs divided by the UK population including children and babies I work it out at about 9 jabs per person.
As they appear to be in multi-dose vials lets reduce it to 8 jabs per person to allow for wastage.
Which bright spark decided that the UK needed so many Jabs? Back-handers anyone?
Happy to be corrected re the sums.
Good riddance.
“the U.K. has used just 142 million of the stockpile of 650 million vaccine doses it purchased”
Is that 650 million figure correct? And if so, does anyone know why the government would buy *ten* doses for every person in the country? Seems bizarre!