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Death rates among American children are on the rise. Young people are killed by homicide and car accidents, and they are killing themselves by drug overdose and suicide. Mortality rates for ages one to nineteen rose by 10.7 percent between 2019 and 2020, and went up another 8.3 percent in 2021. These increases are the highest over a two-year period since the government started collecting data on these matters fifty years ago.
Undoubtedly, the COVID lockdowns contributed to the problem. The lockdowns were sold as a heroic effort to “save lives.” In the stampede, a few courageous epidemiologists such as Jay Bhattacharya warned that this draconian measure would be bad for young people, retarding their forward progress in education and undermining their mental health. They were censored by social media and widely denounced, only to be proven right.
Disastrous as the lockdowns were, larger factors are driving the rise in mortality among the young. Over the last generation, progressives have gained control of nearly all our institutions, aside from religious communities that cleave to orthodoxy. Those once charged with sustaining norms now sponsor transgression. We are beginning to see the deadly consequences of their leadership.[...]
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