CDC knows lockdowns harm the mental health of children – but it supports them anyway

04/14/2022 / By Arsenio Toledo

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has known as early as July 2021 that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdowns are harmful to children. But even with this knowledge, the CDC continued supporting lockdowns.

Investigative journalist Jefferey Jaxen, during an appearance on “The Highwire” with host Del Bigtree, pointed out that Robert Redfield himself, former director of the CDC under former President Donald Trump, spoke about the toll lockdowns have on children as early as July 2021.

At the time, Redfield said: “There has been another cost that we’ve seen, particularly in high schools. We’re seeing, sadly, far greater suicides now than we are deaths from COVID. We’re seeing far greater deaths from drug overdose that are above excess that we had as background than we are seeing deaths from COVID.”

Jaxen also pointed out that, long before Redfield admitted the harm lockdowns caused children, many of the world’s leading infectious disease epidemiologists and other public health scientists came together in Dec. 2020 to publish the Great Barrington Declaration.

This open letter pointed out that the lockdowns enacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were very harmful to people’s physical and mental health, which could lead to “greater excess mortality in the years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden,” they wrote. “Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.” (Related: Experts: COVID-19 policies worldwide have negatively affected children and their education.)

“That’s what Redfield was talking about,” said Jaxen. “In that clip, he was saying, we need to open the schools, we need to find common ground because this is what’s happening now,” said Jaxen. “And this is what the Great Barrington Declaration signatories said was going to happen.”

Latest CDC report shows American teens are experiencing mental health crisis

The CDC has also recently come out with a report highlighting the worsening mental health crisis among teenagers in the United States.

In the CDC’s latest report, based on a survey of high school students conducted from January to June 2021, the agency found that over 44 percent of them reported persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. More than 37 percent of high school students also said their mental health was in a poor state.

“These data echo a cry for help,” noted CDC Acting Principal Deputy Director Dr. Debra Houry. “The COVID-19 pandemic has created traumatic stressors that have the potential to further erode students’ mental well-being. Our research shows that surrounding youth with the proper support can reverse these trends and help our youth now and in the future.”

But even supporting teenagers might not be enough, as the study noted that when teens felt a sense that they were supported or cared for, more than a third – 35 percent – still felt hopeless during the lockdowns.

Kathleen Ethier, director of the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health, noted that the forced closure of schools significantly contributed to the deteriorating mental health of children.

“School connectedness is a key to addressing youth adversities at all times – especially during times of severe disruptions,” said Ethier in a statement. “Students need our support now more than ever.”

Dr. Lisa Coyne, senior clinical consultant at the Child and Adolescent OCD Institute at Maclean Hospital in Massachusetts, noted that teenagers are at a critical stage in their development and keeping them locked in their homes can cause significant damage down the line.

“They’re in this developmental period where they are going to seek autonomy and independence, and that’s also a scary thing sometimes,” she said. “In addition to that, their whole world … all of our worlds have been thrown into disarray, but especially for them, they have a story about what the teen years are supposed to be like. That story is getting rewritten in real-time.”

Watch Jefferey Jaxen speak with “The Highwire” host Del Bigtree about the mental health crisis the lockdowns have caused among America’s teens.

This video is from the channel The HighWire with Del Bigtree on Brighteon.com.