According to federal data, math and reading scores for nine-year-olds plummeted during the first two years of the pandemic. Also, due in large part to COVID restrictions and school closures over the past two years, American teens are now suffering through a mental health crisis resulting in increases in depression, self-harm, and suicide.
Michael Barbaro, host of The New York Times podcast, "The Daily," recently wondered out loud how this could have snuck up on medical and healthcare professionals.
"We were caught off guard when it comes to this mental health crisis among young Americans," he said, deciding that "a big reason why is that the primary medical point of contact for young people -- pediatricians -- were just not trained to handle this."
But Dr. Mark McDonald, a child psychiatrist and medical legal expert, says he and a host of other experts have been warning of this exact problem since the beginning of the pandemic. Even so, the American public agreed to the damaging COVID restrictions because of fear.
"They accepted completely nonsensical and harmful, injurious dictates and recommendations that they would've never even considered just three or four years ago," Dr. McDonald submits.
If parents were manipulated into going along with the recommendations, as he believes they were, then the psychiatrist asserts that teachers' unions and policy makers knew exactly what they were doing.
"They knew full on what they were doing, and they knew it from probably week three, meaning the second or third week in March 2020," he tells AFN.
So he concludes that the ongoing, repeated, and constant denial of that information is not in error; it is intentional.
"It is meant for harm," Dr. McDonald asserts. "It is meant to sow destruction and chaos in our nation as well aggrandize power and money for themselves."
