College COVID Hysteria Will Permanently Damage Students

 

Colleges and universities are supposed to be bastions of science and logic.  Simple calculations of risk show that young people have a near zero mortality risk from COVID.  Yet college students are subject to far harsher lockdown and testing requirements than even the very old.  This not only defies common sense.  It is permanently harming an entire generation.

Social scientists are well-aware of the scarring effect.  Trauma in the early stages of life have an impact on our lives many years in the future.  In a classic in the field of life course studies, sociologist Glen Elder found that men who came of age during the Great Depression were more likely to be withdrawn, cyclical and depressed many decades in the future.   

Here's a clip from CBS news on the harm to children.  This clip was edited out by CBS news but is available on the internet.  The same could be said for college-age young people.

The COVID pandemic has been particularly hard on young Americans.  Like young people during the Great Depression, young people in America have been disproportionately harmed by job loss.  But young people today have the additional trauma from the hysteria that is gripping colleges and universities today.

One source of trauma is learning loss.  Two years into the pandemic, many colleges continue to conduct instruction through online learning.  Studies show that students at colleges that shifted to online learning had lower test scores than those who continued to learn on-campus. 

Another is the loss of ability to network and socialize with faculty and fellow students. 

But perhaps the most significant harm to young people is being traumatized by the constant fear mongering by college administrators.  According to a survey by BestColleges.com, 95 percent of college students say that they have experienced negative mental health symptoms as a result of COVID and 48 percent believe that mental health effects have negatively affected their education. 

Measures that have been taken by colleges are far out of line with the health risks to college students.  According to the CDC, the risk of death from COVID for Americans between the ages of 15 and 24 is 0.001 percent.  And colleges students are generally in good health so their risks are likely a small fraction of 0.001 percent. 

Yet at colleges like Boston’s Emerson, students are still confined to their rooms and at Georgetown subject to constant testing and confinement even  though they don’t show symptoms. 

The damage to the psyche and intellectual development of young people from these draconian measures are inflicting deep scars on the younger generations.  The effects have only begun to become apparent.  

Victor Davis Hanson on the Demonization of the Past

Brilliant essay by Victor Davis Hanson at Real Clear Politics.  Read the whole thing, download and save.  Here are some of the best parts.  

Critics assume their own judgmental generation is morally superior to those of the past. So, they use their own standards to condemn the mute dead who supposedly do not measure up to them.

Yet 21st-century critics rarely acknowledge their own present affluence and leisure owe much to history's prior generations whose toil helped create their current comfort.

And what may future scolds say of the modern generation that saw over 60 million abortions since Roe v. Wade, even as fetal viability outside the womb continued to progress to ever earlier ages?

What will our grandchildren say of us who dumped on them over $30 trillion in national debt - much of it as borrowing for entitlements for ourselves?

What sort of society snoozes as record numbers of murders continue in 12 of its major cities? What is so civilized about defunding the police, endemic smash-and-grab thefts, and car jackings?

Was our media more responsible, professional, and learned in 1965 or 2021? Did Hollywood make more sophisticated and enjoyable films in 1954 or 2021? Was there less or more sportsmanship among professional athletes in 1990 or 2021?

Was it actually moral to discard the "content of our character" and "equal opportunity" principles of the prior Civil Rights movement of 60 years ago? Are their replacement fixations on the "color of our skin" and "equality of result" superior?

Are we proud that most standardized tests of student knowledge and achievement continue to decline, despite record investments in education?

Do we ever pause to consider that we enjoy our modern standard of living and security because we were once a meritocracy that quit judging our workforce by tribal affinities and ancient prejudices?

Our generation talks of infrastructure nonstop. But when was the last time it built anything comparable to the Hoover Dam, the interstate highway system, or the California Water Project - much less sent a man back to the moon or beyond?

If prior generations were so toxic, why do we continue to take for granted the moral and material world they bequeathed to us, from the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to our airports, freeways, and power plants? Did we ever defeat anything comparable to the Axis powers or Soviet communism?

Japan PM: No Mandates or Discrimination Against the Unvaccinated

 

The loss of civil liberties as well as civility resulting from the COVID pandemic will haunt the United States and young people in particular for decades to come.  

The way that American politicians speak to us belies the contempt that they have in their hearts for the people of this country.  The division between the people and powerful in the United States has become particularly evident in the last two years.    

While leaders of many other nations address their countryman as intelligent individuals capable of evaluating risks and taking appropriate measures, American politicians like Joe Biden constantly talk down to American citizens. 

Contrast the rhetoric of American politicians and government officials with those in Japan. 

The Japanese government offers a balanced view of vaccine risks and completely rejects mandates and discrimination based on vaccination status.   

From the Japan Ministry of Health website:

Although we encourage all citizens to receive the COVID-19 vaccination, it is not compulsory or mandatory. Vaccination will be given only with the consent of the person to be vaccinated after the information provided. Please get vaccinated of your own decision, understanding both the effectiveness in preventing infectious diseases and the risk of side effects. No vaccination will be given without consent. Please do not force anyone in your workplace or those who around you to be vaccinated, and do not discriminate against those who have not been vaccinated.

The Prime Minister of Japan took a similar measured, adult tone in his address to the nation in which has also rejected mandatory vaccinations and urged people to avoid discrimination against the unvaccinated. 

From Prime Minister Kono’s speech:

Vaccines will never be administered without the recipient’s consent. We urge the public never to coerce vaccinations at the workplace or upon others around them, and never to treat those who have not received the vaccine in a discriminatory manner.

Contrast the measured, reasoned statements of Japanese officials with the near-hysterical rhetoric of Joe “dark winter” Biden and Anthony Fauci. 

Contrast also the rejection of mandates in Japan with the authoritarian requirements and restrictions imposed by Joe Biden, Charlie Baker and now Boston Mayor Michelle Wu.  These mandates demonstrate that politicians like Biden, Baker and Wu don’t believe that the American people are intelligent enough to make their own healthcare decisions.

Japan’s politicians and government officials offer and treat their countrymen with respect.  American politicians and government officials treat their countrymen with disdain. 

Hopefully the American people will soon tire of being talked down to and will find leaders that respect the intelligence and reason of the American public.  Until then we are lions led by donkeys.

New Harvard Youth Poll Out

Results of the fall 2021 Harvard Youth Poll are now out.  I'll be commenting on the results in future blog posts.  

Many young Americans are in a pessimistic mood.  

Approval of the Biden Administration is down.  Young people are divided on whether the Biden Administration is a failure or if it is too early to tell.

This round of the poll asked a large number of questions concerning the level of anxiety that young people feel regarding the future of our country and whether democracy is working.

Researchers also asked about the willingness of young Americans to serve in the military if they were called up.   

The Harvard Survey provides an extremely useful tool for taking the pulse of young Americans.  

A Game Changer for Higher Education

How many times have we heard “if you don’t like it here, go somewhere else”?  That presents a problem for colleges and university faculty as higher ed in America is uniformly woke.  A group of academics has a promising solution—start a new college. 

The University of Austin (UATX) is a new university.  UATX is dedicated to free inquiry, free speech and innovation in instruction and curriculum.  At the same time, UATX plans to keep education affordable by keeping administrative and overhead costs down. 

The founders of UATX are established academic and public policy leaders including historian Niall Ferguson, author Bari Weiss, former AEI president Arthur Brooks and economists Larry Summers, Glenn Loury and Tyler Cowen. 

Universities were once places of discovery and excitement.  As Niall Ferguson writes, UATX seeks to restore the campus environment to that he experienced in his student days. 

“Those of us who were fortunate to be undergraduates in the 1980s remember the exhilarating combination of intellectual freedom and ambition to which all this gave rise. Yet, in the past decade, exhilaration has been replaced by suffocation, to the point that I feel genuinely sorry for today’s undergraduates.”

Ferguson is right. I too was an undergraduate in the 1980s. The freedom and excitement of undergraduate and graduate college life that I experienced is rare today.

  Study after study have show that cancel culture and conformity have taken over academic life in the United States and other Western countries. 

Universities are not just failing to live up to their ideals regarding academic freedom.  They are also failing to provide value to students.  The cost of attending the typical college has almost tripled since 1980 while earnings of college graduates have remained flat. 

UATX promises to provide a home for scholars and students disaffected by the current college climate.  It also provides an alternative business model for students and parents fed up with funding bloated university bureaucracies with the tuition and tax dollars.    

The Generational Unfairness of COVID Restrictions: European Edition

 

Young people in Europe increasingly view the never-ending lockdowns and COVID restrictions as unfair to their generation.  Young Europeans have sacrificed their careers and education to address a virus that only presents a risk to the very old. 

Moreover, the restrictions and lockdowns have made no difference in fighting the virus.

Laure Mandeville lays out the reasons that young Europeans are angry.  Ms. Mandeville is the chief U.S. correspondent for Le Figaro and a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Below is a clip from Ms. Mandeville’s appearance on Feudal Future podcast with Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky.

You can see the whole podcast here.

He’s Not Wrong: Vladimir Putin Knocks Woke Culture

 Social justice warriors in the modern West are no different that the Bolsheviks of the old Soviet Union says Russian Leader Vladimir Putin. 

If Putin is right, modern progressives are ushering in a world that is very dark indeed.  Young people should take note.    

Speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club, Putin laid bare the parallels between the old oppression of the Soviet past and the now oppression of the woke progressives in the modern West.

Putin calls out the erasure of the great works in art and literature: 

“Looking at what is happening in a number of Western countries, we are amazed to see the domestic practices, which we, fortunately, have left, I hope, in the distant past. The fight for equality and against discrimination has turned into aggressive dogmatism bordering on absurdity, when the works of the great authors of the past – such as Shakespeare – are no longer taught at schools or universities, because their ideas are believed to be backward. The classics are declared backward and ignorant of the importance of gender or race. In Hollywood memos are distributed about proper storytelling and how many characters of what colour or gender should be in a movie. This is even worse than the agitprop department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”

Citing Martin Luther King, Putin call out the obsession among the left in dividing people on racial lines:

"Countering acts of racism is a necessary and noble cause, but the new ‘cancel culture’ has turned it into ‘reverse discrimination’ that is, reverse racism. The obsessive emphasis on race is further dividing people, when the real fighters for civil rights dreamed precisely about erasing differences and refusing to divide people by skin colour.”

Putin also cites the parallels between modern progressive ideologies on sexuality and gender and those of the old Soviet Union:

“Zealots of these new approaches even go so far as to want to abolish these concepts altogether. Anyone who dares mention that men and women actually exist, which is a biological fact, risk being ostracised. “Parent number one” and “parent number two,” “'birthing parent” instead of “mother,” and “human milk” replacing “breastmilk” because it might upset the people who are unsure about their own gender. I repeat, this is nothing new; in the 1920s, the so-called Soviet Kulturtraegers also invented some newspeak believing they were creating a new consciousness and changing values that way. And, as I have already said, they made such a mess it still makes one shudder at times. Not to mention some truly monstrous things when children are taught from an early age that a boy can easily become a girl and vice versa. That is, the teachers actually impose on them a choice we all supposedly have. They do so while shutting the parents out of the process and forcing the child to make decisions that can upend their entire life.”

It has often been said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  Putin’s discussion of the parallels between the old Soviet Union and modern Western progressive ideologies is a good one.  One question remains.  Is it that modern progressives have failed to learn from the old Soviet Union or are using the old Soviet Union as a “how to” manual?