<story><title>CDC warns of a steep decline in teen mental health</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/03/31/student-mental-health-decline-cdc/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>spookthesunset</author><text>&amp;gt; From my perspective in the US the lockdowns were about managing hospital capacity&lt;p&gt;And yet there is scant evidence hospitals ever were at risk. We should have relaxed our approach to all this when cities across the country were closing their unused field hospitals. Instead of celebrating the fact that covid wasn&amp;#x27;t nearly as lethal as the earliest models predicted, governors across the country doubled down on their covid restrictions. Two years later, they are finally almost gone.&lt;p&gt;Did any of these restrictions provide enough benefit to justify their immense social cost? It will probably take much cooler heads to find out. It troubles me that we went into this mess with little understanding if the measures even worked. In effect, we took millions and millions of people and had them partake in a massive uncontrolled experiment without anybody&amp;#x27;s consent.</text></item><item><author>after_care</author><text>From my perspective in the US the lockdowns were about managing hospital capacity.  While this might disproportionally benefited older folks, hospitals are a service anyone could need at any time for a wide range of reasons.</text></item><item><author>sva_</author><text>There was a discussion on here, about how the Covid pandemic may have been one of the, or even &lt;i&gt;the&lt;/i&gt; biggest transfers of wealth from &amp;quot;the poor&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;the rich&amp;quot; in the history of our civilization. Somebody remarked, that it has also been the biggest transfer of lifetime from the young to the old, as the lockdowns were mostly to protect the old. The measures taken against the pandemic undoubtedly had a huge impact on young people&amp;#x27;s mental health, but the effects of it will only really unfold in the coming years, and are probably not measurable. People who deny this must be willfully ignorant.</text></item><item><author>lumb63</author><text>It astonishes me to see people defending the idea that the pandemic is not a notable component of this. I agree that social media, internet porn, competitive school environment, economic conditions, etc., are all negative influences on teenage mental health. However, to propose that forcing (or, at the least, very strongly encouraging) an entire populace into self-isolation would not have negative impacts for a group in one of the most social and formative times of life, is absurd.&lt;p&gt;Imagine you spent half the time you were in high school, alone. I cannot imagine any rational person is capable of believing this to not be a major factor to their mental health.&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I am a reasonably strong introvert, and I switched teams at my job during the pandemic after nine months of work from home because it did not feel healthy to my mental state to not have interacted with anyone in so long. I felt that my social abilities had atrophied, and that I had lost sight of a lot of the important things in life that derive from social interaction. I can only imagine that the impact is far greater to someone who can&amp;#x27;t choose to change their life to obtain the social interaction they are missing, and who (I am generalizing a bit here) probably requires mental&amp;#x2F;emotional guidance and support from their peers, elders, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hh3k0</author><text>&amp;gt; And yet there is scant evidence hospitals ever were at risk.&lt;p&gt;What? Omicron absolutely crushed U.S. hospitals -- with some having to set up temporary emergency rooms in their parking structures. Many U.S. hospitals had to put off essential procedures and ran out of practically _everything_ (syringes, saline products, blood, etc.) during the last wave.</text></comment>
<story><title>CDC warns of a steep decline in teen mental health</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/03/31/student-mental-health-decline-cdc/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>spookthesunset</author><text>&amp;gt; From my perspective in the US the lockdowns were about managing hospital capacity&lt;p&gt;And yet there is scant evidence hospitals ever were at risk. We should have relaxed our approach to all this when cities across the country were closing their unused field hospitals. Instead of celebrating the fact that covid wasn&amp;#x27;t nearly as lethal as the earliest models predicted, governors across the country doubled down on their covid restrictions. Two years later, they are finally almost gone.&lt;p&gt;Did any of these restrictions provide enough benefit to justify their immense social cost? It will probably take much cooler heads to find out. It troubles me that we went into this mess with little understanding if the measures even worked. In effect, we took millions and millions of people and had them partake in a massive uncontrolled experiment without anybody&amp;#x27;s consent.</text></item><item><author>after_care</author><text>From my perspective in the US the lockdowns were about managing hospital capacity.  While this might disproportionally benefited older folks, hospitals are a service anyone could need at any time for a wide range of reasons.</text></item><item><author>sva_</author><text>There was a discussion on here, about how the Covid pandemic may have been one of the, or even &lt;i&gt;the&lt;/i&gt; biggest transfers of wealth from &amp;quot;the poor&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;the rich&amp;quot; in the history of our civilization. Somebody remarked, that it has also been the biggest transfer of lifetime from the young to the old, as the lockdowns were mostly to protect the old. The measures taken against the pandemic undoubtedly had a huge impact on young people&amp;#x27;s mental health, but the effects of it will only really unfold in the coming years, and are probably not measurable. People who deny this must be willfully ignorant.</text></item><item><author>lumb63</author><text>It astonishes me to see people defending the idea that the pandemic is not a notable component of this. I agree that social media, internet porn, competitive school environment, economic conditions, etc., are all negative influences on teenage mental health. However, to propose that forcing (or, at the least, very strongly encouraging) an entire populace into self-isolation would not have negative impacts for a group in one of the most social and formative times of life, is absurd.&lt;p&gt;Imagine you spent half the time you were in high school, alone. I cannot imagine any rational person is capable of believing this to not be a major factor to their mental health.&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I am a reasonably strong introvert, and I switched teams at my job during the pandemic after nine months of work from home because it did not feel healthy to my mental state to not have interacted with anyone in so long. I felt that my social abilities had atrophied, and that I had lost sight of a lot of the important things in life that derive from social interaction. I can only imagine that the impact is far greater to someone who can&amp;#x27;t choose to change their life to obtain the social interaction they are missing, and who (I am generalizing a bit here) probably requires mental&amp;#x2F;emotional guidance and support from their peers, elders, etc.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kevinventullo</author><text>&lt;i&gt;there is scant evidence hospitals ever were at risk&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I know several people who had to delay surgeries and other medical procedures because of hospital capacity due to COVID.</text></comment>