Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,
A new study by researchers in Ireland has concluded that babies born during the COVID lockdown were less likely to be able to speak before their first birthday than children born previously.
The study, led by the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, found that children were less likely to be able to reach so called development milestones including waving ‘goodbye’ and pointing at objects.
The study, published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, focused on 309 babies born in the first three months of lockdown in Ireland between March and May 2020, and tested for ten behavioural milestones at their first birthday, with results then compared against 2000 babies born between the years 2008 and 2011.
The study, titled Social communication skill attainment in babies born during the COVID-19 pandemic,
found lockdown babies were 14 per cent less likely to have said their
first word, nine per cent less likely to have started pointing, and six
per cent less likely to wave goodbye.
Babies born in lockdown were less likely to have said their first word by the time they turned one 💔 Lockdowns and mask mandates stunted babies' development: They weren't able to socialize or read facial expressions, study warns! 🆘
— CyberChick (@warriors_mom) October 12, 2022
Daily Mail Online https://t.co/v2XtsXaDim
Researchers believe that face masks limited the children’s ability to see people’s mouths and become accustomed to facial expressions, leading to enhanced difficulties learning to speak.
In addition, prohibiting relatives and friends of the parents from visiting the children is thought to have contributed to the stunting of social development.
“Lockdown measures may have reduced the repertoire of language heard and the sight of unmasked faces speaking to [infants],” a statement from researchers reads.
It continues, “It may also have curtailed opportunities to encounter new items of interest, which might prompt pointing, and the frequency of social contacts to enable them to learn to wave bye-bye.”
“They were still more likely to be crawling… which might be because they were more likely to have spent more time at home on the ground rather than out of the home in cars and strollers,” the statement also noted.
While the study was observational only, it adds to other evidence that lockdowns and masking in particular have had massively detrimental impacts upon children.
A study in Britain found that many children entering elementary school have severely underdeveloped verbal skills, with many are unable to even say their own name.
According to speech therapists, mask wearing has caused a 364% increase in patient referrals of babies and toddlers.
A speech therapist says her clinic has seen a "364% increase in patient referrals of babies and toddlers"
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) January 26, 2022
"For some kids, they can workaround the mask and still learn to speak perfectly fine, but for others, it can cause speech delays" pic.twitter.com/3YsWJIEpDU
Another study revealed how mean IQ scores of young children born during the pandemic have tumbled by as much as 22 points while verbal, motor and cognitive performance have all suffered as a result of lockdown.
A study published in the Royal Society Open Science journal found that lockdowns in the UK caused around 60,000 children to suffer clinical depression.
Figures show that 400,000 British children were referred to mental health specialists last year for things like eating disorders and self-harm.
Education experts have asserted that forcing schoolchildren to wear face masks has caused long lasting psychological trauma.
An Ofsted report also warned of serious delays in learning caused by lockdown restrictions.
“Children turning two years old will have been surrounded by adults wearing masks for their whole lives and have therefore been unable to see lip movements or mouth shapes as regularly,” states the report.
Another study out of Germany which found that the reading ability of children has plummeted compared to pre-COVID times thanks to lockdown policies that led to the closure of schools.
Johns Hopkins University concluded that global lockdowns have had a much more detrimental impact on society than they have produced any benefit, with researchers urging that they “are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”
Yet, many are advocating bringing back restrictions:
As we highlighted last week, a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report highlights a record number of children are also now being hospitalised with common colds due to weakened immune systems.
The CDC data is consistent with research by scientists at Yale who warned that it is not normal to see children with combinations of seven common viruses, including adenovirus, rhinovirus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), human metapneumovirus, influenza and parainfluenza, as well as COVID-19.
As we previously highlighted, there has also been a global outbreak of hepatitis cases in children, with the media asserting the cause is “unknown.”
Biden administration officials have continuously pushed for children to keep wearing masks in schools, and there are still hordes of hypochondriacs forcing their children to do so, despite COVID posing virtually no risk to the health of children in normal circumstances.
