Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Abandoned ?

I have wrote often how I believe that “those in the know” have abandoned small business owners with incessant recurrent lockdowns. This abandonment has led to the turning of another entire group of innocent bystanders into victims. Are there more unfortunate groups of similar victims? Without question the answer is a resounding, “yes!”

The group that immediately comes to mind is school children. Without question they been abandoned, and to me, what is worse, is that there does not seem to be any plan on how to proceed. It’s one thing to lock kids out of school, but “Come on, man . . . have a plan!” Back in March, 2020, Congressman Devin Nunes (R,CA) said that it was a mistake to not open schools. But in California, listening to a Republican is a big no-no, and so our elite Governor went his own way, and now close to a year later, the school children are still abandoned.

However, there is another very large group that has been abandoned with close to zero fanfare . . . college students. The following are excerpts from a NYT article that is mainly focused on college students in Europe, but here in the USA, things are no different.

From 2/14/21 NYT:

With curfews, closures and lockdowns in European countries set to drag into the spring or even the summer, mental health professionals are growing increasingly alarmed about the deteriorating mental state of young people, who they say have been among the most badly affected by a world with a foreshortened sense of the future.

Last in line for vaccines and with schools and universities shuttered, young people have borne much of the burden of the sacrifices being made largely to protect older people, who are more at risk from severe infections. But the resilience of youth may be overestimated, mental health professionals say.

“Many feel they’re paying the price not of the pandemic, but of the measures taken against the pandemic,” said Dr. Nicolas Franck, the head of a psychiatric network in Lyon, France. In a survey of 30,000 people that he conducted last spring, young people ranked the lowest in psychological well-being, he said.

The lasting effects on suicide rates, depression and anxiety are still being measured, but in interviews, a dozen mental health experts in Europe painted a grim picture of a crisis that they say should be treated as seriously as containing the virus.

“We are in the midst of a mental health pandemic, and I don’t think it’s treated with near enough respect,” said Arkadius Kyllendahl, a psychotherapist in London who has seen the number of younger clients double in recent months.

This issue is not confined to Europe.

In the United States, a quarter of 18- to 24-year-olds said they had seriously considered suicide, one report said. In Latin America and the Caribbean, a survey conducted by UNICEF of 8,000 young people found that more than a quarter had experienced anxiety and 15 percent depression.

And a study conducted last year by the International Labor Organization in 112 countries found that two-thirds of 18- to 29-year-olds could be subject to anxiety and depression.

Do colleges and universities have a plan for this additional abandoned group?

If they do, I am not aware of it.

Not to toot my own horn, but in my book, “The Keneally Chronicles” a small college town in the Southwest had a unique and ingenious plan to deal with the prospective abandonment of both its college students and its small business owners. (Keep in mind that this was written at the beginning of lockdowns, back in the spring of 2020.)

How did that work out? 

Without spoiling it for you, let’s just say, “prescient.”

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