We must throw off the shackles of fear for the sake of our children
by Laura Dodsworth:
Fear has defined the last two years.
Humans are hardwired to fear infectious diseases, but the government turbo-charged fear to ensure compliance with restrictions and silence opponents so effectively, that the nation turned in on itself and, worse, on its children.
Fuelled by that fear, we locked our young in their rooms for days on end, padlocked their playgrounds and stopped them from seeing their grandparents and friends. We tossed their education to one side. A woman in Texas locked her own child in the boot of her car to escape his infection; a university in Manchester barricaded its students into their halls of residence; and a mayor in New York gagged the city’s toddlers with face coverings for months.
We breached our species’ most basic social contract: to protect our young. Sometimes we pushed children’s into harm’s way – mentally and physically – to save ourselves.
We taught children they were “vectors”, “silent spreaders”, “reservoirs of infection”, posing a danger to the adults around them. “You people are just vectors of disease to me, and I don’t want to be anywhere near you, so keep your **** distance,” yelled one university professor in Michigan in January 2022.
By weaponing fear it appears the government managed to terrify itself. Fear fuelled a chain reaction of bad decision after bad decision- school closures, masking of children, pushing a medical intervention they did not need, stigmatisation and suspending vital safeguarding protections. Perhaps society was not as cohesive and child-friendly as some previously imagined.
These decisions leave a debilitating legacy.
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