"I've been inside of my house for my whole life."
Five-year-old attending his first social event since the pandemic began
My teen daughter is volunteering at a kids' day camp this summer, working with groups of 5 to 7-year-olds. For many of these children, this is their first time interacting in groups with other kids since the start of the pandemic over a year ago.
To a small child, a year is forever. The youngest ones do not remember a time before the pandemic, the lockdowns, the social distancing, the masks, and the environment of fear that has gripped adult society since March 2020.
At the camp, the kids spend their whole day outdoors--hiking, splashing in the creek, and playing around in the dirt. The camp director has a more enlightened view, and does not require masking or social distancing, though some children (or their parents) do choose to voluntarily mask. Some of them carry small bottles of hand sanitizer in their backpacks, compulsively using it at each stop along the trail.
My daughter has observed that most of the kids do not know how to play common childhood field games such as tag or hide-and-seek. Even if they have been attending school or other community youth programs during the pandemic, it has been under strict social distancing protocol.
I don't think advocates of these Covid restrictions (both mandated and voluntary) have really paused to consider the consequences. The entire landscape of early childhood has been perversely altered.
For a child, social distancing means no tag, no patty cake, no pinky swears, no tea parties, no high fives, no hugs goodbye.
All of the experiences we adults fondly associate with a childhood well-spent, are no longer permitted. They've been replaced with chalk circles and plexiglass barriers.
And what about infants and toddlers? Being cared for by masked parents and daycare workers means serious obstruction to the development of object permanence, emotional literacy, and bonding.
Older kids have been having, if possible, an even rougher time. No sports games, no slumber parties, no first dates, no prom. Depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation are on the rise among teens and preteens.
All of this for a virus that leaves children almost entirely unscathed.
It's not too late to patch things up. Children--especially the youngest ones--are extremely resilient. If parents and teachers were to demand an immediate end to this insanity, most of the children would probably come out okay in the long run. Allowed to be kids once more, they'd regain their natural vigor and curiosity and make up for lost time. We could chalk this up to an ill-advised mass experiment in childhood development that must never, ever be repeated again under any circumstances.
But it doesn't appear that's going to happen.
A second (third? fourth?) wave of Covid terror has gripped society. Media outlets are now reporting new scariants that may be more dangerous to children.
We thought that the pandemic was winding down now that everyone who's extremely worried about it has gotten vaccinated. In our area, lockdowns officially ended months ago and the majority of people have stopped wearing masks. But now that the Delta scariant is making its way through the mainstream media outlets, infecting the minds of viewers if not their bodies, some people are beginning to freak out again.
Today my daughter invited a friend (who is fully vaccinated) to join her for a weekly hiking club that doesn't start until September. The friend's answer:
"That sounds like so much fun, but I'm really worried about the Delta variant."
And so the cycle begins anew.
Meanwhile, in New Zealand, where the highly restrictive lockdown policies have been lauded by news reporters, politicians, and Covid Karens worldwide, high numbers of children are being hospitalized with illnesses unrelated to Covid due to bankrupted immune systems.
Who knew that when you kept people, especially children, isolated at home for a year and three months, obsessively using hand sanitizer, their natural immune systems would suffer, leading to unprecedented outbreaks of new diseases?
I'll tell you who knew. The "conspiracy theorists".
Consequences, people.
This domino effect has only just begun, unfortunately. Even if we manage to reverse course, I fully expect to be witnessing the long-term negative effects of the 2020 lockdowns for a decade or more. If we don't manage to reverse course, our children are doomed.
Thanks for reading!
Hi, I'm Starr. I write about dystopias, both fictional and non-fictional. The first four chapters of my dystopian science fiction novel, Technate 2051, are up now on Hive. The novel imagines what life might look like in thirty years if the Great Reset succeeds.
