A new article in the British Medical Journal (a once-great medical research resource) highlights yet another disaster that is a direct result of the school closures/pandemic lockdowns advocated by our public health establishment: an increase in child abuse.

Here's a Reuters report from April 2020 that predicted a rise in domestic violence. Same logic applied to children and school closures, since much child abuse is detected at schools. https://t.co/iri8vQ6fSX

— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) March 27, 2023

The study, co-authored by a child advocate for the American Academy of Pediatrics, details many of the disastrous results that stem from the lockdowns that, unfortunately, the AAP itself didn’t oppose until fairly late in the game. By the fall of 2020, the organization did begin to mobilize in support of reopening schools, but by then the momentum was impossible to stop in Blue states.

The article is sobering, although unsurprising. It echoes what many of us said from the beginning, for which we were viciously attacked and derided as child and grandma killers.

For children, the collateral damage of the COVID-19 pandemic response has been considerable: ‘nearly insurmountable’ educational losses,1 deteriorating mental health,2 low routine childhood vaccination rates,3 39 billion missed school meals by January 20214 and millions of estimated life-years lost among students in the USA alone.5 It is difficult to deny the harmful impact of lockdowns on children, who are society’s most vulnerable members. In this paper, we use the framework of evidence-based medicine to argue that child abuse is another negative side effect of COVID-19 lockdowns.

Almost the entire public health establishment, MSM, and Democrat Party mobilized against people who had the courage to stand up for children. The Atlantic called Governor Kemp’s reopening of Georgia an “experiment in Human Sacrifice,” and we all remember how hard and successful the efforts of Teachers’ Unions to keep schools closed were.

But the reality is that the people experimenting with human sacrifice were the COVID obsessed among us.

While it was certain that school closures would have profound social and economic costs, it remains uncertain whether they have any effect on COVID-19 transmission.8 One such cost is the negative effects on the detection, reporting and prevention of child abuse. Meanwhile, Sweden, which notably did not close primary schools, has emerged from the pandemic with one of the lowest overall excess mortality rates in Western Europe and finds no evidence of learning loss.9 10

There is emerging evidence that lockdowns significantly worsened child abuse on a global scale. Low-income and middle-income countries are particularly vulnerable to increases in child abuse. In Uganda, for example, there was a 1565% increase in the average number of calls per day to the Uganda Child Helpline in the first month of lockdown.11 Yet, even wealthy nations in the West did not escape unscathed. In the UK, there was a 1493% increase in cases of abusive head trauma at Great Ormond Street Hospital.12 In France, there was an 89% increase in national child abuse helpline calls, a 48% increase in home visits by law enforcement officers and a 50% increase in the relative frequency of child abuse hospitalisations.13 14 Furthermore, there appears to have been insidious changes with potentially long-term effects which are more difficult to measure. In the Netherlands, for example, there was a 32% increase in previously rare harsh parenting behaviours, including shaking and name calling.15

Agencies of the United Nations (UN) report that ‘the COVID-19 response’—school closures, movement restrictions, loss of income, isolation, overcrowding and stay-at-home measures—affected the frequency and intensity of risk factors for child abuse.16 First, child abuse tends to increase during public health emergencies. Second, the implementation of lockdowns were often followed by spikes in calls to child abuse helplines. Third, quarantines may be ‘the worst situation imaginable’ for vulnerable children who are pushed closer to their abusers. Fourth, lockdown-related disruptions imposed barriers to accessing community providers who recognise and report child abuse. Fifth, child abuse rates are likely to stabilise at a higher level than before the pandemic due to the persistence of risk factors, including unemployment and financial insecurity.

All of this was predictable and predicted. Yet none of that mattered. The public health establishment decided that they wanted to exercise arbitrary power, so they did. No amount of reasoning, evidence, or persuasion could change their minds or their power lust. Mask mandates, school closures, vaccine passports, and store closings–none of which were necessary or helped even a little–became standard practice.

The results have been devastating. While Sweden is essentially back to normal, with little excess death, no learning loss, and no hysteria to speak of, the rest of the world is still suffering the fallout and will for decades. There was nothing benign about the COVID policies imposed on our country.

Closing schools will have generational impacts, most of which we haven't even really begun to see.

And of course there's no plan. There's no reckoning of how such a disaster was able to play out. We would prefer to just ignore the problem.https://t.co/fRwXYb6c9a

— Daniela (@daniela127) March 27, 2023

A good chunk of what was done was motivated by an obsession with getting Trump out of office. I think that is indisputable, and even a few liberals have admitted as much. A rational discussion was essentially banned–literally banned on social media, as censorship reigned. Outright misinformation ruled on social media, under the guise of “science” that constantly changed based upon the whims of Fauci, Birx, and the CDC.

The results are devastating, and still, we have no reckoning. And probably never will there be one.

Anybody who looks at the results in the OECD–Sweden vs everybody else–can only conclude that any country that didn’t follow Sweden’s path was not only wrong but murderous. Even the AAP participated, by outright lying about the effects of masks on language development. They changed their guidance on how kids learn a language just to promote mask mandates.

While America's children faced this educational catastrophe, @AmAcadPeds had…other priorities. pic.twitter.com/n6WxC4uMc4

— David McCune, MD, MPH (@davidemccune) March 27, 2023

And there is no excuse. Sweden didn’t make it up as they went along. Everybody else did. Sweden followed the protocols that everybody agreed were best until COVID hit.

They weren’t “experimenting” with people’s lives. They were following best practices. Nobody else did. And the results are clear.

In a just world, these people would be held to account. In this one, they are now on to bigger and better things, like promoting the sterilization and mutilation of children.