The BFD | Suffer the Children under Lockdown

The bootlickers and cowards cheering on lockdowns like to accuse people demanding their most basic freedoms of being “selfish”. But who’s really selfish?

The person who advocates that the tiny minority vulnerable and afraid should be protected should they so wish, while everyone else be allowed to choose to take the risk of living a free life?

Or the person who demands that everyone, no matter what their risk, should be placed under unending house arrest, just to protect them? The person who says that their safety overrides the most basic human rights of everyone else? Who willingly imposes generations of debt on the young — and worse, happily sacrifices the health, wellbeing and even the lives of the young, just to protect themselves?

Because, make no mistake, the young are suffering badly from draconian policies enacted in the name of the Chinese virus. In Canada, lockdowns have killed many more people under 65 than Covid. The UK is facing a youth mental health crisis, and suicides spiked under lockdown. In the US, states like Colorado have declared a “pediatric mental health emergency”.

Australia’s kids are doing no better.

Nathan Gunn started year 12 at Eltham High expecting to have one of the most amazing times of his life.

Instead, 2020 was a year of isolation, of numbing lockdowns, of cancelled formals and graduations and schoolies trips, and uncertainty around the timing of exams.

“It definitely put a strain on my mental health,” he said.

“I think the fact you’re isolated but also just the fact that it was such an unknown. The biggest thing for me was not being able to be around the people I love, who’re able to help me through times that, even before COVID, would be pretty challenging.”

The isolation has been brutal enough even on adults, especially the restrictions on home visits, funerals, and weddings. But for young people, whose brains are “wired to socialise”, the effects are catastrophic.

In March Mr Gunn lost a friend to suicide. COVID-19 restrictions had eased but he believes it was partly the ongoing impact of last year’s lockdown.

“I’ve noticed over the last couple of months so many of my friends are struggling and that just gets reignited even more when lockdowns are in place.

“It’s like this lockdown fatigue. I am so, so tired of this. I want it to end.”

These are repercussions that will reverberate for decades. Not just the millstone of generational debt that lockdowns will leave in their wake, but the devastating impact of two lost years of schooling.

Mission Australia surveyed more than 25,000 people aged between 15 and 19 nationally in 2020, 1650 of whom said COVID-19, or dealing with the pandemic’s impact on their life, was their greatest concern.

Young people in Victoria in their final years of school were most likely to report COVID-19 concerns, with changes to schooling often leading to disruption and feelings of worry and stress.

“In these contexts, mental wellbeing declined and usual supports, particularly among young people residing in Victoria, were not accessible in usual formats because of restrictions on interpersonal interactions,” said Mission Australia’s Young Voices of the Pandemic report, released on Wednesday.

Nationally, four in 10 (41.1 per cent) respondents who said COVID-19 affected their education were 17 years old, indicating those in their senior years of school were severely impacted.

The Age

These young people have almost nothing to worry about from Covid. Yet a generation is being devastated by policies that have almost no ill effect on those demanding and imposing them.

The people with the most skin in the game are copping it hardest. Those with no skin in the game are forcing it all on them.