Who among us can forget the last two years as we cowered in our homes shunning contact with friends, neighbors, even relatives. When we dared open our doors, we were sheathed in masks, many of us went the final mile and donned gloves. “Social distancing” kept us isolated. What happened to our kids was equally damaging to their psyche. Their schools were shut down and education became a haphazard system of “remote” learning, which is to say very remote and very little learning. The usually docile servant of the establishment finally spoke out — “The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading” [NYT, 9/1/2022] even though of the over one million Americans who died of Covid, an infinitesimal percentage were children (1,332) and less than 2% of them needed to be hospitalized. Yet despite being the least likely to suffer serious illness or die, children were subject to the same restrictions as the elderly who were the most likely to die. Fast forward one year and the chickens are coming home to roost. The pandemic lockdown, including mask mandates, social distancing and lack of exposure to germs, a guaranteed immune booster, have left millions of children unusually vulnerable to early-onset RSV. “Where these infections might have been spread out over time, they’re happening all at once now,” [Céline Gounder, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation and infectious-disease specialist]. If you’re finding it hard to believe such stupidity (and cupidity), read “Big Pharma’s Latest Get Rich Quicker Scheme” and see up close and personal how greed rules the healthcare system of the exceptional nation.
