One of the awful ironies of the pandemic lockdowns is that the people least at risk from Covid were among those whom the lockdowns hurt the most. We refer, of course, to the restrictions placed on children. Parks, zoos, and swimming pools were shut down. Little League seasons were canceled. In many states schools went remote for over a year. The evidence shows that these disruptions have had a substantial impact on children’s learning, their expected lifetime incomes, their life expectancies, and their mental health. The kids are not alright.
This is from Ryan Sullivan and David R. Henderson, “The Kids Aren’t Alright,” AIER, March 21, 2022.
Another excerpt:
Once these earning losses take hold, they lead to lower life expectancies. This connection was highlighted most prominently in a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association that analyzed data on school shutdowns early in the pandemic. The authors found that missed instruction in the United States could be associated with an estimated 13.8 million years of life lost.
What makes these outcomes even more tragic is that they were experienced by children who, as was known early on, never had a significant risk of dying from COVID-19. As of the first week of March 2022, out of the nearly 950,000 Covid-19 deaths, only 865 were children under the age of 18. That amounts to about 433 children annually. This is comparable to a bad flu season in the US. For example, the CDC estimates that the actual number of flu deaths for children in the 2017-18 flu season was about 600.
Ryan is especially passionate about this. He lives in California and has 2 young children whose lives were incredibly disrupted for 2 years.
Read the whole thing.
READER COMMENTS
AMW
Mar 21 2022 at 2:27pm
Kids were at the lowest risk, but they also can’t vote, so they bore the brunt of our COVID restrictions.
Alan Goldhammer
Mar 21 2022 at 5:10pm
But of course they can transmit COVID to teachers and other school support staff as well as other students. Of course all of this could have been mitigated with better air handling in school buildings but little effort was made to effect the necessary changes.
JFA
Mar 21 2022 at 7:17pm
But of course that’s why teachers were put in the first group to get the vaccine and then the booster. But then a lot of places didn’t bother adjusting to that reality until August of 2021.
Todd K
Mar 21 2022 at 5:01pm
“That amounts to about 433 children annually. This is comparable to a bad flu season in the US.”
Actually, it is not comparable because children also get PCR testing and the “with Covid” issue mostly doesn’t occur when measuring flu deaths for children. 65 children died from Covid in Germany over the past two years where the PCR cycles have been kept at 25, not way beyond normal at 37 to 45 as has been the case in the U.S. 65 children in Germany is equivalent to 240 children in the U.S.
Alan Goldhammer
Mar 21 2022 at 5:08pm
How can this statement possibly be true? There is absolutely no longitudinal data to support this. Now, there is the possibility of decreased income and life expectancy but we cannot possibly know this until about 40-60 years have passed and we see the results and analyze the data. Learning and mental health are easier to assess over a short time span and we should get a good understanding of this.
I am surprised that David clipped this paragraph out of the paper and didn’t take a hard look at this particular sentence.
Jon Murphy
Mar 21 2022 at 5:27pm
Yes, it’s too bad there isn’t some sort of statistical method that would allow us to make predictions about the future given past events.
JFA
Mar 21 2022 at 7:30pm
I think Alan is probably right on doubting the expected effects on future income and life expectancy. From what I could tell, the extrapolation doesn’t account for the likely catch up students will achieve in their learning. It would be like trusting the CBO’s 50 year prediction of government deficits and US GDP. Does anyone actually trust their 10 year predictions let alone the longer term predictions.
But the school closures did have a large and immediate impact on currentearning and mental health.
JFA
Mar 21 2022 at 7:31pm
“current learning” not “currentearning”
Those dang fat thumbs.
zeke5123
Mar 22 2022 at 9:54am
It is an interesting question of whether there is a “catch up.” We can hope for one, but who knows? I think it is fair to say we don’t know what the long-run harms are, but there easily can be significant long-term harm.
Monte
Mar 21 2022 at 6:47pm
I’m not sure I would agree they were morally wrong (which would be deliberately evil), but as NPIs go, the reasoning behind the lockdowns was certainly reckless and destructive. Most of the research appears to indicate that their effectiveness was marginal, at best. And I believe, like many, that the lockdowns will go down as perhaps one of the greatest peacetime policy failures in modern history.
Interestingly, there remain a significant number of people who adamantly support lockdowns, masking, and social distancing, which I believe is more a manifestation of coronaphobia than anything else. And if that’s how they continue to vote, well… President Lincoln said it best:
JFA
Mar 21 2022 at 7:36pm
“This is comparable to a bad flu season in the US.”
Actually, if you use the estimated child deaths from 2010-2019 seasons, the average is ~430 (though with lots of variation… I think it was the 2012-2013 season that had ~1100 deaths for those under 18). So it’s about as bad as an average flu season.
Joseph Hertzlinger
Mar 22 2022 at 1:48am
The Other Side is taking notes on arguments for expanded school budgets.
Comments are closed.