Rita Panahi: Devastating consequences of lockdown on children now finally realised

The entirely predictable health impact of lockdowns on children is now coming to the surface and Covid catastrophists should be ashamed of themselves.

Australian children continue to suffer the devastating consequences of our Covid-19 response.

Many of these consequences were obvious to anyone with a fully functioning frontal cortex and yet those of us who raised such concerns were shouted down by the Covid catastrophists focused solely on one health issue to the exclusion of all others.

By now we all know about the mental health crisis created and exacerbated by lockdowns and harsh restrictions, but there are plenty of other issues we’ve made worse from childhood obesity to learning difficulties.

For some weeks now the leading cause of paediatric admission to Victorian hospitals hasn’t been the flu and it certainly hasn’t been Covid.

It’s been an illness called respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

Why are so many more children being struck down by this illness?

By now we all know about the mental health crisis created and exacerbated by lockdowns.

Dr Belinda Hibble, Australasian College of Emergency Medicine’s Victorian chair, offered this explanation to Seven News: “Having less children mingling during the pandemic we definitely have now seen that many toddlers may not have developed some of the immunity to those common childhood illnesses.”

This was entirely predictable given healthy children were kept from school, playgrounds and friends and family, thereby becoming “immune deprived” and more susceptible to a number of illnesses.

A year ago I quoted a paper released in May, 2021 by a team of French doctors on “the immune debt of the COVID-19 pandemic in childhood”.

The doctors concluded that the lack of immune stimulation during lockdowns induces an “immunity debt” and that the longer these periods of “viral or bacterial low-exposure” are, the greater the likelihood of future epidemics. “This is due to a growing proportion of ‘susceptible’ people and a declined herd immunity in the population,” they said.

At the same time, microbiologist and immunologist Professor Brett Finlay explained in layman terms what happens when you interrupt children building natural immunity: “Because of the whole Covid lockdown, kids are being immune-deprived and their microbes are being screwed up. So their immune systems are a bit screwed up”.

And yet chief health officer Brett Sutton and the scaremongering dial-a-quote experts disregarded the full consequences that harsh Covid measures would have on the health of Victorians.

We knew from the start of the pandemic that children were in the lowest risk category for Covid-19 but we nevertheless enforced restrictions that disproportionately damaged their development including school closures, playgrounds bans and ineffective mask mandates.

But the health impact of Covid restrictions won’t be limited to children with doctors warning of a cancer and heart disease crisis due to delayed diagnoses.