Wider collateral damage to children in the UK because of the social distancing [...] COVID-19, 2020, Crawley et al. And other papers by Crawley et al

Wider collateral damage to children in the UK because of the social distancing measures designed to reduce the impact of COVID-19 in adults

1. Esther Crawley1,
2. Maria Loades1,2,
3. Gene Feder3,
4. Stuart Logan4,
5. Sabi Redwood5,
6. John Macleod2

https://bmjpaedsopen.bmj.com/content/4/1/e000701


Hmm, reminds me a bit of her Tedx talk.

 

Didn't the UK used to have social distancing between adults and children, for generations.

It was called boarding schools, and nannies.

It was the children who weren't socially distanced, from adults, using these or similar methods that ended up with health problems, as it generally meant they were poor, and 'poor' is not good for health, the average age of death was quite a lot lower then.

I wonder if that's were the word poorly came from.

 

I was trying to figure out the point of this meandering thought salad and, yeah, it's a sales pitch:

In a way this is good for the wellness industry since those children will be in need of more wellness after having been subjected to wellness, kinda like selling both the poison and the cure, but with the added twist that the cure is also poison.

Bold. Psychopathic. But bold.

 

And the evidence for the effectiveness of CBT and online CBT ?

 

I don't understand how an educated person can be so stupid as to say:
We believe that the social distancing measures introduced in the UK and elsewhere, may marginally reduce the infection rate in adults but harms children.

The harm to children is not from the social distancing. It is from the absence of functioning healthcare due to lack of applying social distancing when it was first needed. Healthcare staff are doing Covid tests on people. They could be doing vaccinations if there weren't thousands upon thousands of unnecessary Covid cases.

There is some strange mindset here that has allegiance to some peculiarly distorted psychological perspective - psychopathology in fact. It almost sounds like sour grapes from those whose advice turned out to be disastrous.

 

Ironically, it's basically right there in the text: "it could improve". Don't ask about what "improve" means, though, by her own admission she doesn't know and won't commit to a specific thing because then that could be tested and measured, thus removing the suspension of disbelief.

That's pretty much it. I mean literally it's the whole of the evidence. It "could" help. It's the same evidence for everything it's used on. Which is also accurate of water therapy. It definitely works on dehydration. So it "could" help any condition as long as it includes dehydration (or if by random chance the patient is also dehydrated). That's about the whole of it.

Which seems like a bit of an oversight seeing as it's commonly used as a replacement to actual medicine but I'm not sure the word applies when it's deliberate.

 

And also the claim that social distancing will only "marginally" improve the infection rate in adults!?!?!?

 

I notice she doesn't mention the damage caused to children's mental health by having their parents die of COVID.

 

1) I hardly think that the authors of this paper are qualified to judge the effectiveness of social distancing measures in reducing infection rates.

2) Children are not the only people in the world, for fuck's sake, I'm pretty sure that that article of that UN convention wasn't intended to mean that children's mental health should be prioritised over adults' lives.

3) Anyway they've omitted the fact that dying parents is not in children's best interest.

4) And then there's the potential for long-term sequelae in post-covid patients, which if too prevalent could end up totally crashing the functioning of society, which I'm sure would be bad for children's wellbeing too.

5) The good news is that this is the sort of thing that LOTS of scientists and laypeople will call bullshit (if they come across the paper and read that section of it).

6) Oh also I've spotted two proofreading errors just in that paragraph.

 

And frankly, somebody who promotes the Lightning Process and the concept of "pervasive refusal syndrome", has no right to preach about children's wellbeing and rights.

 

Does unnecessary " cognitive manipulation" also contravene the UN Convention?

 

Couple I know are currently having difficulty getting MMR vaccine. Mum and baby had moved to her parents in Devon as flat in London had mould and mice, joined a week or so later by Dad, so they have been there 8 weeks or so already, but local GP receptionist is saying she must wait for MMR until she returns to usual GP!!

 

What I suspect this paper does not point out is that the rate of vaccination has been dropping off anyway because of the chaotic nature of community health care (not antivaxx probably). Parents have been having trouble getting their children vaccinated for a few years now. And the story above shows clearly that this has nothing to do with social distancing. It is the usual 'jobsworth' attitude of healthcare administrators whose paid function is to stop things from happening to save money.

 

I don´t say not to pay attention to the virus,

but the virus does not seem to be of puplic danger.


In an additional detail, as soon as there are any hints that children are not substantial transmitters, this should matter immediately.

(And this may be even an approach from the wrong side.)

 

[my bold]

Where is their sound scientific evidence that social distancing is only having a marginal effect on reducing infection rate? If they really believe this then surely they are arguing that social distancing is unnecessary. Use of the word 'may' sounds like typical get-out-of-jail-card language. I fully agree that the consequences of social distancing can have a detrimental effect on children, but it's nonsense to downplay the other side of the equation. Such linguistic chicanery seems locked into the DNA of some folk.

 

A study out of Germany recently seemed to suggest that children can carry the virus and transmit it at the same rate as adults they are generally less ill with symptoms though. We believe we contracted it in our household from my daughters school - she only had two days of very mild symptoms whereas 45 days in myself and her dad are still struggling to recover (untested, suspected cases).

I agree with Trish that many children are vulnerable right now and people are not getting the support they need. But many children also have health problems that make them vulnerable to the virus, or they have a vulnerable parent or grandparent that they live with etc. This mad rush to open schools is crazy.
Also just thinking about the new cases of children being admitted to ICU units across the globe for a weird possibly related illness?