A new study suggests that COVID lockdowns, mask mandates, and school closures seriously hurt America’s children.
Per BizPacReview:
The study, posted in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, claims that compared to a historical cohort, babies born during lockdown have shown a deficit in social communication. It appears that the stringent precautions taken by state and federal governments across the globe led to babies of the pandemic cohort having “one definite and meaningful word (76.6% vs 89.3%), could point (83.8% vs 92.8%) or wave bye-bye (87.7% vs 94.4%) at 12-month assessment.”
Bans on visiting family members and friends drastically reduced the social interaction infants would typically have. Coupled with mandatory masking in schools and other public places drastically impacted infants’ ability to comprehend and reciprocate certain social cues. The researchers state masks impaired children’s ability to study facial expressions or to see mouths moving.
“In addition to social isolation, babies born during the pandemic have also had to overcome other, new developmental challenges,” the study, led by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, noted.
“Lockdown measures may have reduced the repertoire of language heard and the sight of unmasked faces speaking to [infants]. It may also have curtailed opportunities to encounter new items of interest, which might prompt pointing, and the frequency of social contacts to enable them to learn to wave bye-bye,” the paper reported. “[But] they were still more likely to be crawling… which might be because they were more likely to have spent more time at home on the ground rather than out of the home in cars and strollers.”
The study does stress that further studies with standardized testing will be required to validate their findings as theirs relies on parental reporting. They conclude optimistically, stating that children are resilient and hope that with an adjustment in guidelines and socialization that the deleterious effects of the past two years will be reversed in time.
Great to see so many unmasked faces at @AmerAcadPeds indoor gathering 👇
Good to document their hypocrisy.
This organization pushed masks on 2 year olds with no data, in defiance of UNICEF & WHO, while they were aware that masks impede interactions
Org should be dissolved pic.twitter.com/cCBXt6M5RQ
— Vinay Prasad MD MPH (@VPrasadMDMPH) October 10, 2022
Who needed a study to know the obvious?
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston
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