The evidence keeps piling up that children were the biggest casualties of the government’s response to Covid. The latest comes from a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that youth homicides and suicides hit a 20-year high in 2021 following lockdowns and the turn to progressive policing.

Suicides among adolescents and young adults have been increasing more or less steadily for two decades. But the new data show that, after a small decline between 2018 and 2019, youth suicides climbed in 2020 and 2021. The two-year increase among the college-aged (20 to 24) was the largest in at least two decades.

The rise in mental-health problems among young people during the pandemic has been widely chronicled. One CDC survey found about half of 18-to-24-year-olds experienced anxiety or depression during the summer of 2020. Lockdowns and college closures no doubt drove some into depressive funks and down social-media rabbit holes.