The government-imposed COVID lockdowns wreaked havoc on America’s youth emotionally, mentally, and educationally. Now, new data shows that child gun-related fatalities and assaults skyrocketed in four major liberal cities from March 2020 to December 2021.
New data from Boston University published in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows that during the first two years of the pandemic, fatal and non-fatal gun assaults for minors increased from a rate of 30 per 100,000 to about 62 per 100,000 during the pandemic in Philadelphia alone. Meanwhile, the rates in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles also increased.
Black children in particular bore the brunt of these tragedies. Per the study, black children were 100 times more likely than white children to be shot during this time. Based on the data, Philadelphia’s gun violence increased at a higher rate than its counterparts, PBS also reported. The authors of this study also did not include fatal shootings in Chicago, so the actual fatality rate is presumably much higher than the limited findings show.
This new information also comes after numerous studies showed other damaging consequences of the pandemic on children.
For example, in December, Stanford University published a study showing that teenagers’ brains were physically altered and aged at an accelerated rate during the COVID lockdowns.
Researchers studied the brains of 163 adolescents in the San Francisco Bay Area who were already a part of a more intensive study “assessing the effects of early life stress on psychobiology across puberty.”
The study found that those 16-year-olds had brains that appeared “several years” older than 16-year-olds who were assessed before pandemic restrictions began. Those individuals also had more severe mental health problems.
Meanwhile, other reports indicate that children in red states, who were more likely to have less time away from in-person instruction, are doing much better academically than their blue state counterparts, who were more likely to have online schooling during the pandemic.
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Many conservatives warned that such lockdowns would have devastating effects on American children even in early spring 2020. They were demonized for not “caring” about the youth.
Now, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claims that “although children account for ~23% of the US population, they have accounted for ~0.1% of reported COVID-19 deaths.”
Based on ample evidence, can any leftist with a straight face honestly say that the “cure” — the lockdowns — really worse than the disease for kids?
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.