It’s been almost three and a half years since public health officials first urged the locking down of America in order to prevent the spread of a virus.

As talk of a possible repeat scenario grows louder, perhaps it might be prudent to stop and reflect on what we have gone through psychologically, socially, and emotionally, particularly our children.

When the lockdown was implemented, some prominent professionals questioned the policy. For doing so, they were maligned and sometimes even censored.

Dr. Martin Kulldorff (Harvard), Dr. Sunetra Gupta (Oxford), and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya (Stanford) are three highly qualified epidemiologists, who at a pivotal point in history came together to publish a document.

The document, titled the Great Barrington Declaration, made the case that lockdowns have a deleterious effect upon children. Additionally, an argument was made that denying children the opportunity to attend school was particularly harmful.

The scholars were subsequently disparaged by public officials and certain media figures, as if there were some kind of effort in place to avoid open debate of the document’s content.

In recent coverage of the “Twitter files,” journalist and former New York Times reporter Bari Weiss brought to light the story of Dr. Bhattacharya, whose social media accounts were systematically banned.

Evidently, the professor of health policy at Stanford University ended up becoming one of the victims of high-tech suppression.

Dr. Bhattacharya, who holds both an MD and PhD from Stanford, had published 135 articles in top peer-reviewed scientific journals of medicine, economics, health policy, epidemiology, statistics, law, and public health. The doctor was treated outrageously for having countered the lockdown narrative.

Weiss documented how Dr. Bhattacharya was attacked and censored for asserting that the lockdowns could cause harm to children.

“Still trying to process my emotions on learning that @twitter blacklisted me. The thought that will keep me up tonight: censorship of scientific discussion permitted policies like school closures & a generation of children were hurt,” the Stanford professor tweeted.

During a podcast, Dr. Bhattacharya also spoke of the cost to the children as a result of the lockdowns and school closings, calling them “devastating” and “almost unimaginable.”

He pointed to Sweden as a compelling case study.

“Sweden did better than most countries, certainly better than the United States, despite not putting in place school closures and a whole host of lockdown-related policies,” he said.

The doctor revealed that shortly after the Great Barrington Declaration had gained attention he received hate mail and death threats.

Time, of course, has passed, and although Dr. Bhattacharya’s ideas were once rejected and hidden away, data have been gathered, indicating he was correct.

Here’s a look at some additional studies:

— Nine researchers published a systematic review, using multiple databases from December 2019 to December 2020. The review is titled “Effects of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health of children and adolescents: A systematic review of survey studies.”

It showed that the impact of the pandemic on the mental health of children and adolescents was multifaceted and substantial. Survey studies indicated that anxiety, depression, loneliness, stress, and tension were the most-observed symptoms of children and adolescents during this time period.

Thirty-five survey studies involving 65,508 participants, ages 4 to 19 years-old, revealed anxiety (28%), depression (23%), loneliness (5%), stress (5%), fear (5%), tension (3%), anger (3%), fatigue (3%), confusion (3%), and worry (3%) to be the most common mental health issues reported.

— Another recent study from the University of Virginia Health showed that suicide attempts among children (via overdose) rose sharply during the pandemic.

The rate of suicide attempts (via poisoning) reported to U.S. poison centers among children and adolescents ages 10 to 19 showed an increase of 30 percent during the year 2021, when compared to 2019.

2021 was the first full year of the pandemic and its attendant lockdowns. The rate of suspected attempts by intentional poisoning among children ages 10 to 12 showed an increase of 73 percent, when compared to the year 2019.

“These findings suggest that the mental health of children and adolescents might still be affected by the pandemic, raising concerns about long-term consequences, especially given that previous attempted suicide has been found to be the strongest predictor of subsequent death by suicide,” the researchers wrote.

— Boston Children Hospital epidemiologist Dr. Mainuna Majumder and colleagues assembled data from 14 states on suicides in 2020. Findings indicated that 10 to 19-year-olds accounted for a more significant share of suicides in 2020 than in prior years, with percentages going from 5.9 in 2015 through 2019 to 6.5 in 2020 (a statistically significant increase of 10 percent). The study appears in JAMA Pediatrics.

The two-year study period (spanning 2019 through 2020) looked at approximately 3,800 children, ages 4 to 18, who were admitted to inpatient units for mental health-related reasons. In the year prior to the pandemic, 50 percent of admitted patients had suicidal ideation or had made suicidal attempts. This figure jumped to 60 percent during the first year of the pandemic.

— A separate study by the communication charity I CAN asked primary and secondary school teachers across England, Scotland, and Wales about the impact of lockdowns on their pupils.

I CAN found over two-thirds (67 percent) of primary school teachers believe the children they teach had fallen behind in their speaking and/or understanding and were worried that these pupils would not be able to catch up.

The I CAN data indicated that 1.5 million children were having difficulties with speech and comprehension.

— Independent provider of mental health services Cygnet Health Care, which operates over 150 centers with more than 2,500 beds across the UK, recently provided important data regarding the mental health of children who had suffered lockdowns.

Data indicated referrals to Cygnet’s psychiatric intensive care units in its hospitals that treat children and adolescents had more than doubled between 2019 and 2022. Following the lockdowns, young people were referred for problems that included low mood, insomnia, stress, anxiety, anger, irritability, emotional exhaustion, depression, and post-traumatic stress symptoms.

— A recent study in the UK by the Institute of Fiscal Studies and University College London connected children’s social and emotional development with the lockdown-related employment status of their parents.

Forty-seven percent of parents reported that their children’s social and emotional skills had declined during the pandemic. Fifty-two percent of children 4 to 7 years-old experienced a decline in social and emotional skills, and 42 percent of 12-15 year-olds reported the same.

Proof of collateral damage to children due to lockdowns continues to surface. Still, many public health officials and politicians seem to be urging a revival of the lockdown policy.

In retrospect, the doctors and other professionals who were disparaged and/or censored were accurate in their assessments of the negative effects of lockdowns on school-aged children.

Millions of young people could have been spared the negative psychological, social, emotional, and academic ramifications of the lockdowns.

Heaven forbid that we have a repeat of this history.