Excellent and spot-on criticism of the Surgeon General. The main stream media treats covid in the most absurd way when it blames "covid" rather than the "reaction to covid" for issues such as declining educational outcomes, worsened youth mental health, etc, etc. This is perfectly illustrated by a story from PBS: "Test scores show how COVID set kids back across the U.S." This way of framing poor outcomes drives me crazy!
Apparently, MSM journalists and editors are unaware that covid is not responsible for these problems, but the ill-conceived policies driven by public health officials. The Wall Street Journal seems to be one of very few legacy news organizations that challenges the boneheadedness of main stream public health authorities.
Vinay, Slowly but surely the truth will red pill anyone...even you. The trouble with all government is that it seeks power for its own sake. Believing that these are "giving Democrats" is nonsensical -- there may be such a thing but it is not part of government. Virtually every pronouncement/action vis-à-vis Covid was wrong and was done for the wrong reasons ("Yay, we can use this to get rid of Orange Man Bad".) I admire you for admitting this both to yourself and to your ever-broadening readership.
But you must assume that the 87,000 new armed IRS agents are also not their for "your good"...as has already been demonstrated in the persecution of far-left reporter Matt Taibi. This is a bigger issue than science, medicine, or covid but it is one that we will need to address NOW if we are to save the country from its current slide. Sadly, politics are a major part of making this happen, but at least it is clear even to rational people on the left where the problem is.
We would all love some suggestions as to what to do about it all, though. Everything you say is correct but they keep piling on the abuse anyway. Just sit there and write notes to sympathetic listeners? Preaching to the choir is fun but not world-changing. Most of us would love to do more. You have a place for doing that and you do. What else?
Since Covid, more kids are using computers throughout their day for “learning” which is adding to the problem. We need to get schools to move back to actual books to read and pencil/paper tasks to learn math...sadly that doesn’t seem to be likely.
We keep blaming the teachers unions (who do deserve some blame), but who is it that terrified the Randi Weingartens of the world and had convinced them their death was imminent?
Within a century, humans have gone from joint (or extended) family to nuclear family to individuals living alone. But most of those individuals still interact with other people physically (at least when lockdowns allow it).
In the next stage of this social evolution, individuals will intercat with others only in the virtual space. And finally when AI takes over, individuals will interact with only machines. That is when AI will overpower humanity--by divide and conquer. It will brainwash each individual into doing its bidding. The way to prevent AI's takeover of humanity is for humans to stay united (through regular PHYSICAL interactions).
Dr. Prasad - I am not sure if you read these comments, but I have a question. You write...'that social media is harmful to kids— a widely held view, but one that still lacks very high quality causal data.' What data would you like see and how would that data be obtained? Is it really feasible to randomly assign kids to groups, control for social media use and track their mental health for several years? People like Dr. Jean Twenge make a compelling argument that adolescent mental health is deteriorating and when you interrogate the data and other plausible explanations social media use seems at least partly to blame It is possible that the rise in social media use by teens and deteriorating mental health is purely coincidental, but would age-gating social media use or otherwise limiting access for teens be such a bad thing to do while researchers gather for robust data? Higher quality data is, of course, desirable, but do you not think their is sufficient correlational data to warrant some policy intervention or should policymakers demand better data? Thank you.
As a conservative I always knew about "This is deeply concerning to have journalism have two standards, based solely on partisan politics, for asking tough questions. " problem. The issue here is that MSM is not even TRYING to hide it anymore. TDS is real. I'm not even a fan of Trump and I find TDS to be fascinating. As for the surgeon general??? At least he's not stealing women's clothes from airport luggage carousel so that's a win. Name *ONE* decent member of this administration. Just one. I have no words to describe the words that I need to convey via words. I'm sure VP has uttered those words at some point. LOL. What an embarrassment on world stage at all levels. So depressing.
The harmful impact to children and teens of these policies was predicted at the outcome, and during the pandemic, a continuous rise in evidence of more harm was noted by pediatricians, child psychologists, and others. As Dr. Prasad points out, that evidence was ignored or shouted down by the “zero COVID” crowd in the U.S., including health officials, teachers’ unions, and others. It will take a while for American society to review these actions and learn from them, though, as long as those who made and defended these policies are still in power.
Thanks Prasad. In February 2020 before Covid; PhD psychologist Hom at SF DPH spoke of concern of substance use resulting in isolation and subsequently mental health illness. “Isolation to mental illness” link.
Excellent and spot-on criticism of the Surgeon General. The main stream media treats covid in the most absurd way when it blames "covid" rather than the "reaction to covid" for issues such as declining educational outcomes, worsened youth mental health, etc, etc. This is perfectly illustrated by a story from PBS: "Test scores show how COVID set kids back across the U.S." This way of framing poor outcomes drives me crazy!
Apparently, MSM journalists and editors are unaware that covid is not responsible for these problems, but the ill-conceived policies driven by public health officials. The Wall Street Journal seems to be one of very few legacy news organizations that challenges the boneheadedness of main stream public health authorities.
Vinay, Slowly but surely the truth will red pill anyone...even you. The trouble with all government is that it seeks power for its own sake. Believing that these are "giving Democrats" is nonsensical -- there may be such a thing but it is not part of government. Virtually every pronouncement/action vis-à-vis Covid was wrong and was done for the wrong reasons ("Yay, we can use this to get rid of Orange Man Bad".) I admire you for admitting this both to yourself and to your ever-broadening readership.
But you must assume that the 87,000 new armed IRS agents are also not their for "your good"...as has already been demonstrated in the persecution of far-left reporter Matt Taibi. This is a bigger issue than science, medicine, or covid but it is one that we will need to address NOW if we are to save the country from its current slide. Sadly, politics are a major part of making this happen, but at least it is clear even to rational people on the left where the problem is.
We would all love some suggestions as to what to do about it all, though. Everything you say is correct but they keep piling on the abuse anyway. Just sit there and write notes to sympathetic listeners? Preaching to the choir is fun but not world-changing. Most of us would love to do more. You have a place for doing that and you do. What else?
Since Covid, more kids are using computers throughout their day for “learning” which is adding to the problem. We need to get schools to move back to actual books to read and pencil/paper tasks to learn math...sadly that doesn’t seem to be likely.
We keep blaming the teachers unions (who do deserve some blame), but who is it that terrified the Randi Weingartens of the world and had convinced them their death was imminent?
Within a century, humans have gone from joint (or extended) family to nuclear family to individuals living alone. But most of those individuals still interact with other people physically (at least when lockdowns allow it).
In the next stage of this social evolution, individuals will intercat with others only in the virtual space. And finally when AI takes over, individuals will interact with only machines. That is when AI will overpower humanity--by divide and conquer. It will brainwash each individual into doing its bidding. The way to prevent AI's takeover of humanity is for humans to stay united (through regular PHYSICAL interactions).
Dr. Prasad - I am not sure if you read these comments, but I have a question. You write...'that social media is harmful to kids— a widely held view, but one that still lacks very high quality causal data.' What data would you like see and how would that data be obtained? Is it really feasible to randomly assign kids to groups, control for social media use and track their mental health for several years? People like Dr. Jean Twenge make a compelling argument that adolescent mental health is deteriorating and when you interrogate the data and other plausible explanations social media use seems at least partly to blame It is possible that the rise in social media use by teens and deteriorating mental health is purely coincidental, but would age-gating social media use or otherwise limiting access for teens be such a bad thing to do while researchers gather for robust data? Higher quality data is, of course, desirable, but do you not think their is sufficient correlational data to warrant some policy intervention or should policymakers demand better data? Thank you.
As a conservative I always knew about "This is deeply concerning to have journalism have two standards, based solely on partisan politics, for asking tough questions. " problem. The issue here is that MSM is not even TRYING to hide it anymore. TDS is real. I'm not even a fan of Trump and I find TDS to be fascinating. As for the surgeon general??? At least he's not stealing women's clothes from airport luggage carousel so that's a win. Name *ONE* decent member of this administration. Just one. I have no words to describe the words that I need to convey via words. I'm sure VP has uttered those words at some point. LOL. What an embarrassment on world stage at all levels. So depressing.
“They failed to open all schools in 100 days, costing kids massive educational attainment, which will lead to massive years of life lost”. ??? what?
The harmful impact to children and teens of these policies was predicted at the outcome, and during the pandemic, a continuous rise in evidence of more harm was noted by pediatricians, child psychologists, and others. As Dr. Prasad points out, that evidence was ignored or shouted down by the “zero COVID” crowd in the U.S., including health officials, teachers’ unions, and others. It will take a while for American society to review these actions and learn from them, though, as long as those who made and defended these policies are still in power.
“Medical malpractice and iatrogenic injury” nice alliteration! Wait did chat gpt write this?
Thanks Prasad. In February 2020 before Covid; PhD psychologist Hom at SF DPH spoke of concern of substance use resulting in isolation and subsequently mental health illness. “Isolation to mental illness” link.