Children Continue to Pay Too High a Price For Adults' Outdated COVID Fears

A letter from a community pediatrician.

Dr. Kristen Walsh

We first met Dr. Kristen Walsh while developing and launching the Urgency of Normal toolkit in January. Kristen is one of the most caring and child-centered people you will ever know. She is a community pediatrician, working with underserved children in New Jersey. She is also a passionate advocate for restoring kids to normalcy, having predicted that the pandemic response would take an heavy toll on our most vulnerable.

We interviewed Kristen in April for our upcoming documentary series on the impact of school shutdowns and Covid restrictions on children. We released some powerful excerpts from our conversations on our YouTube channel here.

During our conversation, Kristen casually mentioned that, in Spring 2020, as schools were shutting down, she had written a letter to The New York Times, warning of catastrophic damage to children if we didn’t immediately correct course and prioritize their mental and physical health.

With her permission, we are sharing her letter below, along with Kristen’s introduction and epilogue, talking about what we have learned since March 2020.

Please let us know what you think via comments and email us any time at restorechildhood@gmail.com.

And please make sure to vote on Tuesday!

Best,

-Natalya and Dana

As a community pediatrician who serves many underprivileged kids, I watched in horror in March 2020 as public schools throughout the entire Tri-State area closed precipitously, with no plans to reopen. Immediately, I penned the following letter to The New York Times (never published by them):

“I'm going to go ahead and say it: children are paying--and will continue to pay--too high a price for our fears about COVID-19 in this country. As a pediatrician, I have served as the American Academy of Pediatrics' Early Childhood Champion for the state of New Jersey since 2012. In this role, I work with and educate state government, the Department of Education, child care organizations and schools around issues of early childhood advocacy.

Over the past week, I have watched with dismay as many of our schools (including my kids' district) ignored CDC guidelines and closed preemptively before there were even any COVID-19 cases in our community. Then, our governor instructed all schools to close. Everyone in the Tristate area knows what happened next, as restaurants were shut down and curfews were imposed. 

I don't claim to be an expert in epidemiology, virology or COVID-19. But you know who is? Dr. Paul Offit, an Infectious Disease specialist from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He is an internationally recognized, award-winning virologist who helped develop the rotavirus vaccine. A couple days ago, he was a guest on the popular medical podcast ZDoggMD, where he made a very intelligent and well-reasoned case that our COVID-19 "cure" is worse than the disease for ALL of us--as a nation. But I AM an expert in child health, and in social determinants of health: all the aspects of a child's environment that affect how healthy they are.

I have been consumed with worry over the past several days about the effects of our newly-instituted draconian "public health" measures on our youngest and most vulnerable citizens. Apart from my advocacy work with the AAP, I have for years volunteered as the school physician for a school for children with autism. These children cannot be remotely educated from home, and having school closed for an extended period of time will inevitably cause profound setbacks in their treatment.

My own children are very fortunate to live in a district that can provide online instruction while school is closed; many other children are not so lucky. Even worse, many children will go without meals they normally would have eaten in school (most low-income districts provide breakfast and lunch). Apart from school itself, if these closures and curfews continue, most parents who are hourly-wage workers will lose their jobs--and perhaps their homes. Now a child who either never would have gotten COVID-19--or would have gotten a very mild case--is living on the streets. Think for a moment about how many parents will relapse into drug or alcohol addiction from the stress of unemployment and/or homelessness.

I have serious doubts that number of cases of COVID-19 saved will be worth the cost to children and families from a prolonged economic shutdown. This self-imposed economic emergency is going to become a large child health problem very, very quickly, and we need to start asking ourselves if we can justify the price our children are going to pay. 

It is worth remembering that health is always multi-dimensional. In medicine, we pay attention to the side effects of any treatment, and we have a saying that "the treatment should never be worse than the disease." In this current climate of fear, social media (and often cable news) are starting to remind me of Salem during the witch trials: anyone who questions the severe measures imposed quickly gets called "selfish" and is often cruelly trolled on the internet. I'm willing to risk it, though, because I think our children are worth some skepticism about these policies--worth at least asking some questions about what we are trying to achieve. I hope we can return to a place of discourse, respect for each other and due care for the young children who will be our future someday.”

A few months later in 2020, I spoke to author Michael Betrus for a book he was writing. He asked me what I thought would be the most damaging effect of the lockdowns and school closures on children’s health. He was surprised when I answered “obesity.” He said no one else he asked had given him that answer. Even that early on, I was alarmed at how precipitously the children I care for in clinic were gaining weight. Now, according to the CDC:

“A study of 432,302 children ages 2 to 19 years found the rate of body mass index (BMI) increase nearly doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic compared to a pre-pandemic period. This faster increase was most pronounced in children with overweight or obesity and younger school-aged children.”

Furthermore, investigators at Johns Hopkins University have now documented a steep rise in Type 2 diabetes in children during the pandemic. Type 2 diabetes is strongly associated with obesity, and (along with heart disease, with which it is also associated) is a major cause of death of adults in the United States. The study authors note that “cancellation of sports and the switch to virtual learning are environmental factors that likely increased this risk.”

The latest CDC COVID tracker data shows 86% of kids have had COVID, and therefore have at least natural immunity (some also have vaccine immunity). Further, many infectious disease and public health doctors believe the CDC’s number is an underestimate of the actual percentage of kids who have had COVID. With the vast majority of children now immune--and childhood obesity and Type 2 diabetes burgeoning problems-- we should be thinking of ways to engage more kids in sports--not using COVID vaccine mandates to keep them out.

Dr. Kristen Walsh is a board-certified pediatrician in northern NJ. She is the mother of twin teenagers and has over 20 years of clinical experience in both academic and private practice settings. For the past 10 years, she has volunteered at a school for special needs children and been involved in early childhood advocacy on both the state and national levels. She recently co-wrote a BMJ Paediatrics op-ed entitled “COVID-19 and the unseen pandemic of child abuse.”