The COVID-19 pandemic, or more precisely, the enforced measures that were put in place during the past 18 months, are responsible for the elevated stress in pregnant women according to researchers.
This has resulted in children born during this time having significantly reduced verbal, motor and overall cognitive performance compared to children born pre-pandemic. This is because the unborn child is susceptible to genetic and environmental factors that can alter its lifelong trajectory of brain development. Which means that the adverse effects can even be seen during adolescence and have the potential to cause the child to suffer with depression at age 18 years of age.
The government published a report on the 12th October 2021 denying that they knew to what extent their measures would cause disruption to people’s lives. However, the report has no mention of the lives of the children born during the crisis or the harm to them that their measures have potentially caused, that could last way beyond the pandemic.
Can they really deny that they could not predict it?
COULD THE GOVERNMENT HAVE PREDICTED THIS?
Very recently, the House of Commons Health and Social Care and Science and Technology Committee published their report “Coronavirus: Lessons Learned to Date” October 12th, 2021. Within it they state that there was a desire to avoid their own measure of lockdown “because of the immense harm it would entail to the economy, normal health services and society”.
However, they later state that resulting from closed businesses, damaged livelihoods and the separation of friends and families, our lives have been disrupted “to an extent few predicted”. It could be assumed that it would be the role of the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) to not only “predict” but to know the extent of disruption.
