Millions of Children Chronically Absent from School in Multiple Countries. What is Going On?
COVID May Be Causing Long-Term and Irreversible Damage to Children’s Immune Systems
“Almost 1.8 million children missed at least 10% of school in the autumn term in England, according to new estimates.” The number of children missing at least half of school is also greater than previously thought, at 122,000. The figures are based on information gathered from 145 councils for the Children's Commissioner. They didn’t know why they were missing so much school.
In Wales, “the end of school year figures showed 426,783 pupils (88.5%) missed more than a week for any reason between September 2021 and July 2022.” “More than 68,000 pupils were absent for more than 40 days.”
In the U.S., “an analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University’s Big Local News project, and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee found an estimated 240,000 students in 21 states whose absences could not be accounted for.” “These students didn’t move out of state, and they didn’t sign up for private school or homeschool, according to publicly available data.” “In short, they’re missing.”
Going back to an article from October 2020 regarding Canadian children missing school. It states that one in 10 Canadian families has had a child miss school due to COVID. and about 16% of parents had to miss work due to their children being sick. That was in October of 2020. We can see that COVID has had a significant impact on children’s health. The latest articles avoid discussing the health of children, instead pivoting to the stories they found of older teens who decided to work instead of going to school. This is an incredible injustice to the reality of what is unfolding.
Why Is This Happening?
Children First Canada conducted the research for the statistics on Canadian children and parents in 2020, but there is barely a mention of the risk to children’s health in their blog or press releases for the next 2 years. In a blog post, September 6, 2022, that is titled, “Top 10 threats to childhood are putting the lives of 8 million kids at risk," they write, “With health officials predicting successive COVID-19 waves this fall and beyond, the report highlights that children continue to suffer short- and long-term repercussions to their health.” They then go on to highlight everything but the risk to health from COVID. Reading a little further down, it becomes clear why. They acknowledge the generous support of a bank, wealth funds, and hospitals. The bank and wealth funds often have large investments in private, for-profit hospitals.
The majority of hospitals are for profit. An analysis from 2020 states that “the top 10 health systems now control 24% market share, and their revenue grew at twice the rate of the rest of the market.”
Jessica Wildfire wrote in her Substack that “Disaster capitalists had a plan.” “They didn’t want to stop the transmission of the virus.” “They didn’t want masks or clean air. They didn’t want to eliminate COVID. That wouldn’t be profitable.” “Governments around the world have adopted a number of catastrophic policies that only make sense from the perspective of greedy, sociopathic CEOs.” This is, unfortunately, likely how it went down. It is due to a profit-driven mindset that we are continuing to lose rural hospitals, have the number of nurses and doctors reduced, and the quality of care being diminished.
Noble Health, a three year old start up in 2019, acquired Audrain Community Hospital and nearby Callaway Community Hospital in Missouri. Noble Health was funded by Nueterra Capital, a venture capital and private equity firm that has raised millions of dollars to back dozens of health care companies, according to Nueterra’s portfolio and federal filings.” “in addition to Medicare and Medicaid funds, Noble had received nearly $20 million in federal COVID relief money in the 18 months before it closed the hospitals—funds whose use is still not fully accounted for.”
“Private equity investors, with their focus on buying cheap and reaping quick returns, are moving voraciously into the U.S. health care system; investments increased twentyfold from 2000 to 2018, and have only accelerated since. Financially distressed rural hospitals like Audrain are targets, putting vulnerable communities at the mercy of firms whose North Star is profit, rather than patient health. A report in May 2022 found that 441, more than 20%, were at risk of closing or losing services.”
“The saga that followed Noble into these towns may well serve as a warning flare from the rolling wheat and corn fields between Kansas City and St. Louis.” You can read the full story, “Buy and Bust: When Private Equity Comes for Rural Hospitals,” here.
We have to become conscious of what is happening to hospitals and healthcare in the U.S. and around the world. The profit-driven mindset goes too far when involved in our health. The “vulture” capital firms closing hospitals for personal gain, to the pharmaceutical companies wining and dining doctors to peddle their drugs over other drugs or maybe something vitamins or a better diet could fix is all wrong.
The CDC maps on transmission were replaced with the less effective community levels maps. This meant policy advice is only based on how busy hospitals are. This enabled schools to open, and parents to work but it doesn't take into account the long-term, often disabling conditions that affect more and more people as the number of persistent infections rises. It misses the increasing numbers of younger and middle-aged adults having heart attacks, strokes, diabetes & dementia.
The lobbyists the wealthy hire to control politicians put dark money (untracked money) into political campaigns to buy influence. The politicians know who the big donors are and are therefore beholden to giving something back. Politicians then use their power to get the CDC, FDA, and other public health agencies all the way down to local health departments to ignore science and data on many occasions, in favor of corporate lobbyists requests.
For example, the guidance on returning to school or work after only five days without a negative test wasn’t based on the science and data. Seven days is the minimum most people are contagious and testing to return to work or school is necessary. When the CDC and FDA eventually updated their guidance to suggest that 2 negative tests taken 48 hours apart are necessary to return to school or work, they did it without telling anyone. As a result, nobody updated their policy to reflect this change.
The decisions to open schools without any protections in place wasn’t based on the science or data. This has significantly increased the risk of recurrent infections and the harm that it will cause to children's mental, physical, and even reproductive health.
Pregnant women and their unborn children are at risk, “Adverse maternal, fetal, and newborn outcomes among pregnant women with SARS-CoV-2 infection”. We haven’t seen the pro-life groups come to women’s or their babies’ aid. That raises more questions we won’t get into here.
Young men and women are facing mental health issues when a guys sexual apparatus doesn’t work. The women will think it’s because the boyfriend or husband isn’t attracted to them or is cheating on them, and the men will be confused, self-conscious, defensive and traumatized causing couples to fight, and marriages to fail. Is there a public health campaign explaining these risks? Nope. This coupled with lowered testosterone, reduced sperm counts, the increased risk to pregnant women, and their unborn babies, the birthrates will continue to decline. Maybe that’s part of the plan.
A Large Number of Children Are Missing School Because They are Repeatedly Infected with COVID and Other Viruses
Children are missing school because they are sick with COVID or other viruses that have been more prevalent than in the past because they are taking advantage of the weakened immune systems that COVID infections are leaving in their wake.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, as of Feb. 9, 2023, there have been 15,400,581 COVID cases in children, representing 18% of all the cases reported. We know this is a vast undercount.
"Tonsils are major sites of persistent COVID infections in children, according to this study. COVID is leading to heart lesions in children. That same study notes, "Extensive evidence suggests that the heart damage in COVID-19 is triggered by systemic hyperinflammation." We know that persistent infections cause chronic inflammation. Another study discovered that previously healthy children with asymptomatic or mild COVID infection have heart damage and dysfunction.
COVID May Be Causing Irreversible Damage to Children’s Immune Systems
Published in January 2023, a different study looked at mild and asymptomatic cases of COVID in children and adult family members and how this impacted the immune systems of children. All consented samples used in these analyses were collected between 23rd July 2020 and 24th October 2020, so before the vaccines were being used.
They found "Adults but not children develop robust memory T cell responses to SARS-CoV-2." Children do not have the same memory T-cell protection adults develop, so that would leave them more exposed to reinfections or it means they are using more naïve T-cells and damaging the development of the naïve T-cells that accumulate until puberty. This could cause cumulative and lasting damage to children’s immune systems when dealing with new variants every few weeks or months, as they noted below.
"This failure of infection-induced immunity places children at the risk of recurrent infection and progressive restriction of their T cell repertoire and responses as they grow older."
If this is occurring to just a fraction of children that is horrendous but for all we know it is impacting every child to varying degrees. The more reinfections with increasingly efficient immune suppressive and organ persisting variants, the higher the odds are that more children will be impacted in the years ahead. That is the insidious nature of this virus. It is becoming better at making people believe that the disease is mild when in fact it is increasing the risk of multi-organ damage or dysfunction, speeding up the time till autoimmune disorders, cognitive or neurological dysfunction, immunological dysfunction, vascular dysfunction occurs and ultimately shortening lifespans by many years and likely by decades in many cases.
Co-Infections
We have to keep in mind that co-infections happen more often than people think. Co-infections are often more severe. In a meta-analysis of 59 studies, they found that co-infection was significantly higher in hospitalized children than adults. Patients with two diseases were more likely to have trouble breathing, and their chances of dying were increased. “co-infection was associated with a higher case-fatality rate (6.7% in mono-infected vs. 18.2% in co-infected patients)”
Long COVID in Children
Early research reports between 14% and 25% who contract SARS-CoV-2 go on to experience longer-lasting symptoms which can include:
Creating a Sustainable Path to Living with COVID
When kids thrive, all of society thrives. Our collective future depends on the decisions we make today. Investing in kids now is not just the right thing to do, it’s a down payment on our future that will bear enormous social and economic dividends for years to-come.
We must demand that we are provided the protections and assurances because they won’t be given freely. Making sure “Clean Air for Kids” is a requirement that must be met before ending the emergency. The funding to install new HVAC systems or upgrade existing systems to monitor CO2, the air exchange rate, and install filtration that can remove 99% of pathogens from the air hasn’t been approved or promoted. Updating building codes is another path to ensuring that children have the protection they need.
The only sustainable path out of this requires that we significantly reduce transmission, protecting educators, parents, grandparents, and the entire community. Importantly, it protects the children of today and for generations to come, from COVID and other airborne pathogens, ensuring they do well in school, grow up to live happy and healthy lives, capable of leading the world into the future.
See how you can help. tActNow.info/clean-air-for-kids
