Remember when questioning school lockdowns made you a science-denying grandma killer?
Remember when parents begging to reopen classrooms were treated like they wanted children to die in the streets?
Remember when anyone who suggested that maybe — just maybe — keeping kids isolated for two years might have consequences was dismissed as a Fox News conspiracy theorist?
Yeah. About that.
A new study just dropped, and it confirms what every parent with functioning eyes already knew: COVID school closures absolutely wrecked children’s mental health. And the “experts” who demanded those closures knew it was happening — they just didn’t want to talk about it.
The Numbers Are Devastating — And They Were Exposed the Second Schools Reopened
Researchers used medical claims data from a major California health insurer to track what happened to kids during the pandemic.
The findings? During closures, 2.8% of children aged five to eighteen needed professional mental health treatment. That might sound small until you realize we’re talking about millions of kids.
But here’s the stat that should make every lockdown cheerleader lose sleep: Within months of schools reopening, children were 43% less likely to need treatment for depression and anxiety.
Forty-three percent. Just from going back to school.
Spending on mental health medications dropped 7.5%. Spending on therapy dropped 10.6%. The improvement started within four months of reopening and kept getting better.
The cure for the mental health crisis wasn’t more Zoom calls or better WiFi. It was letting kids be kids again.
Young Girls Got Hit the Hardest — And Nobody Protected Them
The study found that girls were especially devastated by the lockdowns.
This tracks with everything we saw in real-time. Adolescent girls experienced skyrocketing rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and eating disorders during the pandemic. Emergency rooms reported surges in teenage mental health crises.
And what did the people in charge do? They kept the schools closed. They told parents to trust the science. They called anyone who pushed back a danger to public health.
Meanwhile, girls were falling apart behind closed doors, staring at screens, cut off from friends, watching their adolescence disappear into an endless loop of isolation and fear.
But at least the teachers’ unions felt safe.
The “Experts” Now Admit They Wish They’d Had This Data Earlier
Here’s the part that should make you furious.
Dr. Rita Hamad, a social epidemiologist at Harvard and co-author of the study, told the New York Times: “This is definitely a piece of evidence that I wish we’d had at the beginning of the pandemic to inform the conversations we were having.”
She added: “I think the decisions may have been different if we had seen that the benefits of school closures were being outweighed by risks like this.”
Oh, really?
We didn’t need a peer-reviewed study to know that isolating children for years might be bad for them. Parents knew. Teachers who actually cared knew. Anyone with common sense knew.
But the people who should have known — the public health officials, the school administrators, the politicians — either didn’t care or were too afraid of the backlash to say anything.
Anyone Who Raised Concerns Was Treated Like a Heretic
One of the study’s co-authors admitted something remarkable: During the pandemic, discussing the downsides of school closures was “socially and professionally off-limits.”
People who tried to have these conversations were met with “very political, hyperpartisan responses.”
Translation: If you suggested that locking kids in their homes might cause damage, you were accused of wanting to kill grandma. You were shouted down. You were called a science denier. You were treated like you were arguing for mass casualties.
The “follow the science” crowd didn’t want to follow any science that contradicted their preferred policy. So they silenced the conversation entirely.
And kids paid the price.
The Academic Damage Is Just as Bad — And It’s Not Going Away
Mental health wasn’t the only casualty.
Even now, in late 2025, less than a third of fourth and eighth graders can read at a proficient level. Math scores collapsed and haven’t recovered. A generation of students fell behind — and many will never catch up.
This wasn’t a natural disaster. This was a policy choice. Schools in Florida and Texas reopened quickly. Schools in California and New York stayed closed for over a year. The results track accordingly.
The states that prioritized kids recovered faster. The states that prioritized unions and fear didn’t. That’s not speculation. That’s data.
“The Hope Is to Inform Policymaking the Next Time Around”
Dr. Hamad says she hopes this study will help inform decisions during the next pandemic.
Here’s a better idea: How about we hold accountable the people who made the wrong decisions this time?
How about we remember which politicians kept schools closed while sending their own kids to private academies that stayed open? How about we remember which teachers’ unions fought tooth and nail against reopening while their members vacationed in the Caribbean?
How about we stop pretending this was an honest mistake made with the best available information — and admit that it was a policy disaster driven by politics, fear, and cowardice?
They Knew. They Just Didn’t Care Enough to Change Course.
The data on childhood mental health wasn’t hidden. It was visible in real-time. Pediatricians were sounding alarms. Parents were begging for help. Emergency rooms were overflowing with kids in crisis.
And the response from the lockdown crowd was: Trust us. Stay home. Two more weeks.
Those two weeks turned into two years in some places. And now we have a study confirming what the damage looked like — damage that was obvious to anyone paying attention, damage that was ignored because acknowledging it would’ve meant admitting the policy was wrong.
They didn’t need this study to know kids were suffering. They needed it to have permission to say kids were suffering.
That’s not science. That’s institutional cowardice dressed up in a lab coat.
Never Forget Who Did This
COVID is over. The lockdowns are over. But the damage isn’t.
A generation of kids lost years of education and socialization. Millions needed mental health treatment they wouldn’t have needed otherwise. Young girls in particular were pushed into depression and anxiety at rates we’ve never seen.
And the people responsible? They’re still in charge. Still making policy. Still lecturing you about following the science.
Remember that the next time they demand emergency powers. Remember that the next time they tell you to trust the experts.
They knew what they were doing to your kids. And they did it anyway.