The Harms to School Students from the Covid Lockdowns By Mrs Vera West
It is almost a statement of the obvious, but one which the Australian state and federal government did not want to think about. A report into Australia’s Covid-19 response by former secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Peter Shergold, Jillian Broadbent, former diplomat Peter Varghese and 2021 Young Australian of the Year Isobel Marshall, has concluded that the strict lockdowns that shut down schools was unjustified since schools were not hot spots for Covid transmission. “For children and parents [particularly women], we failed to get the balance right between protecting health and imposing long-term costs on education, mental health, the economy and workforce outcomes,” the report stated. “The same applies to closing universities and vocational education and training centres.”
Nevertheless, the governments went ahead and did this. The public needs to aim now for accountability, which I hope will come once the ramifications of Covid vaxxes are felt by the general population.
“Strict lockdowns that forced schools to shut as a precaution and made families work and learn from home harmed students, and should have ended earlier as more evidence emerged they were not major transmission hotspots, the government has been told.
The finding is from a report into Australia’s COVID-19 response led by former secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Peter Shergold, high-profile board director Jillian Broadbent, former diplomat Peter Varghese and 2021 Young Australian of the Year Isobel Marshall.
The report – based on an independent review and funded by charities – also canvasses Australia’s approach to outbreaks, and says the former Coalition government’s failure to procure a diversity of vaccines resulted in long, avoidable lockdowns in 2021.
The findings are based on more than 200 consultations with health experts, public servants, epidemiologists, community groups, business and economists. Research was conducted by the e61 Institute.
The review, to be released on Thursday, was funded by the John and Myriam Wylie Foundation, the Minderoo Foundation and the Paul Ramsay Foundation.
It finds that school closures were the correct decision at the start of the pandemic, when little was known about how COVID-19 spread.
But forcing kids to learn from home was the wrong move once it became clear schools were not high-transmission environments, and the decision likely hurt kids’ education, social development and mental health.
“For children and parents [particularly women], we failed to get the balance right between protecting health and imposing long-term costs on education, mental health, the economy and workforce outcomes,” the report says.
“The same applies to closing universities and vocational education and training centres.”
Mr Shergold said there was never much evidence that children were likely to contract a severe COVID-19 infection.
“So if we were giving advice to governments now, it would be to only shut down school systems if there is clear and unequivocal advice that these are children and teachers who are likely to get COVID severely,” he told The Australian Financial Review.
About 60 per cent of parents say secondary school closures affected their children, according to the NSW Mental Health Commission.
The report notes school closures were especially tough on the most disadvantaged students, who often lacked internet access or parents who could act as a “quasi-teacher”.
Too few vaccine doses
Students in the bottom 20 per cent of the socio-economic ladder were more than 40 times less likely to have a computer than students in the top 20 per cent.
Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States had signed deals with six vaccine manufacturers by September 2020, while Australia focused on two candidates, including the AstraZeneca vaccine, until November 2020.
“When the two initial vaccines both encountered problems, we were left with too few vaccine doses to rapidly inoculate our population,” the report says.
Governments became too reliant on lockdowns as their main public health response, while the health advice they took was often narrow and failed to consider broader social impacts, including on disadvantaged people.
Lack of empathy
The enforcement of lockdowns was also inconsistent and sometimes lacking in empathy.
“Business people were often allowed to travel across borders whilst those wanting to visit dying loved ones or newborn family members were not afforded a similar opportunity,” the report says.
“Travelling across state borders was permitted for professional sports stars but not for those who needed healthcare.”
The review also found economic support packages were not doled out equitably.
The authors single out the decision to exclude temporary migrants and international students from JobKeeper and JobSeeker, which forced 2.4 million residents into challenging financial circumstances and fostered a sense of abandonment.
“Over time, some 500,000 took the government’s advice and left the country, but force of personal circumstance, strained finances and the collapse of global air travel meant most could not.”
The lack of a clawback mechanism in JobKeeper was a “significant design fault”, with more than 20,000 businesses that received JobKeeper tripling their profits during the pandemic while accruing $370 million in taxpayer-funded subsidies.
Professor Shergold said policymakers needed to put more weight on conditions facing disadvantaged Australians.
“To be better prepared for the next health crisis, we need to place vulnerable Australians at the centre of our planning. This is the core focus of our recommendations,” he said.”
I hope to see another report into Covid vax injuries in Australia.
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