On March 13, 2020, changed my life forever.
It was the last normal day when I woke up, sent my kids to school, and started working. By the end of the day, everything had changed. Schools were closed for two weeks to “flatten the curve.” All my kids’ activities were canceled and then restaurants and “non-essential” businesses closed.
I was skeptical immediately, and it took me three weeks to start writing to Governor Wolf about his misguided policies. That is when I became an “accidental activist,” and my life has never been the same.
I write about this because too many people want to put the lockdowns and school closures behind them. They are grateful to have their kids back in school, work out at their local gym, grab coffee at Starbucks, and eat at their favorite restaurants. They are happy to attend their kids’ sporting events and go into the office at least a few times a week to collaborate with colleagues.
Don’t get me wrong: I am also grateful for all of those things. But far too many people want to forget those years, and as long as I am able to write, I will continue to remind our readers of the devastation to our children that will continue for decades to come.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
In April 2020, I predicted academic losses and a mental health crisis to the like that we have never seen, exponential child abuse, and a widening gap for economically disadvantaged youth. Sadly, my predictions were underestimates.
It took the liberal media years to begin reporting on the devastating consequences of closing schools.
Today, as a result of the misguided reaction to Covid, our public education system is a mess and that is only in part related to academics. The challenges facing our schools and teachers were exacerbated by locking away children who had the lowest risk of serious illness, keeping them from their friends and activities, and pushing them into a virtual world.
Any parent who lived through virtual schooling witnessed first hand the rapid increase in screen time. School was 100 percent virtual and did not typically provide the requisite number of hours of instruction. Teachers were zoom-fatigued and often ended classes early or allowed students to work when they felt like it. This left more hours in the day for recreational online activities since after school sports and activities were not happening.
Since kids couldn’t see their friends in person, they were forced to connect online. Some played video games together, others joined private chat rooms, and many kids immersed themselves in social media and/or binge watching television programs or youtube videos.
Feeling isolated and alone, going through puberty locked in their bedrooms, adolescents sought companionship and belonging from online sources. Prior to the school closures, institutions such as Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia recommended no more than two hours of screen time per day. Yet they are one of the many groups who prevented schools from fully reopening with their doom and gloom predictions of death and despair.
Most parents that I know tried to adhere to those guidelines prior to the lockdowns; but once it was clear that “two weeks to flatten the curve” was an indefinite situation, everything went off the rails. Parents, myself included, loosened up on the restrictions. Kids started spending more and more time online and isolated.
Today, we see one of the most narcissistic generations of our country’s history. Phones are attached to kids like an appendage. They walk down the street, ignoring traffic and other people, while looking at their phones. Teenagers and even younger children spend countless hours on their phones, taking selfies, and posting online.
Kids don’t actually talk on the phone — they text, snap, and post. And then they constantly look at their selfies posted online and critique them. They compare themselves to others and generally do not measure up to what they see on social media. Their world has become smaller because they don’t want to actually go places. They can see the world or some version of it from their phones via social media.
During the school closures, not every parent could afford to be hypervigilant. Not every parent had the luxury of working from home. Therefore, many parents had no idea what their kids were doing online. And predators took advantage of this situation.
The phenomenon of transgender contagion flourished in this environment. It was the perfect storm. Kids locked in their bedrooms spending countless hours watching videos intended to create gender confusion, also known as dysphoria. When kids finally started returning to school, self-identification of transgenderism skyrocketed. One local school psychologist shared privately with me that there was a 25 percent increase in the number of children who identified differently than their biological gender.
When students returned to school, they were confused and afraid after a year or more of hearing that they were going to kill their grandparents if they went outside or didn’t wear a mask. They had not seen their friends or extended family. This confusion and fear coupled with the social media influence led to attention seeking behavior. Hence, the transgender contagion movement was born.
Thankfully, schools are starting to see this behavior moderate, but the rest of society has latched onto this movement as it is big business. Look at the CHOP Gender and Sexuality Development Clinic that provides “psychosocial and medical support for gender variant, gender expansive, and transgender children and youth up to age 21 and their families.”
As a professional who worked in the human services field for over thirty years, I understand that there are kids who truly experience gender dysphoria. I worked with these kids before most people knew what the LGBTQ acronym stood for.
The issue that arose during lockdowns is that social media intentionally conflated transgender acceptance with recruitment. It is one thing to accept people, including children, for who they are or want to be. It is a completely different scenario to actively recruit and confuse children who are in a highly vulnerable state.
And that is what happened during school closures and lockdowns. Misguided professionals told children that their confusion during adolescence was really gender dysphoria and not just normal teenage angst. They told children and their parents that drugs and surgery could help them and would alleviate the mental health problems and prevent suicide.
All of this exploded during school closures and lockdowns, and the consequences will be felt for decades, if not longer.
“Two weeks to flatten the curve” may be the most effective marketing campaign in history. So many people still believe that it was necessary to save lives, regardless of what the evidence has shown.
And that is why we must never forget. We owe it to our children to never allow something like this to happen again. For those of us who stood up against this tyranny, we knew there would be dire consequences. To those who did not speak out and to those who continue to perpetuate this narrative, I implore you to look at what has happened to our children.
I will never forget, and no one else should either.
Beth Ann Rosica resides in West Chester, has a Ph.D. in Education, and has dedicated her career to advocating on behalf of at-risk children and families. She covers education issues for Broad + Liberty. Contact her at barosica@broadandliberty.com.
Thank you Dr. Rozica for this reminder…no, this call, for every parent to be aware of the external influences that seek to harm our kids. todays political battles come down to 2 groups: well-meaning people who believe everything they hear and take up beliefs for one group without realizing that they are harming another and people who question things that don’t make sense and speak out.
Transgenderism is only the tip of a much larger iceberg. The transgender contagion movement is being intentionally pushed by globalists and billionaires: Billionaire James Pritzker came out as transgender in his 60s and now goes by the name Jennifer. The Pritzker family has been on the Forbes magazine Top 10 list of “America’s Richest Families” since the list began in 1982. Fellow trans-identifying billionaire Martin Rothblatt (who now goes by Martine), used to work for NASA, and is the founder of Sirius Satellite Radio (worth $26 billion). Rothblatt also founded the pharmaceutical company United Therapeutics ($4.5 billion). United Therapeutics is the world’s largest cloner of pigs. In fact, Rothblatt’s doctoral dissertation on xenotransplantation which is the transplantation of living cells, organs, or tissues from one species to another. (Can you see where this is going yet?) Rothblatt began throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at both cultural and educational organizations around the globe on the condition that those groups would, in turn, indoctrinate people on gender identity. Rothblatt says there is a direct correlation between the acceptance of a person’s right to alter their gender and the acceptance of a person’s right to become transhuman (or transbeman). Rothblatt says what we need is a total reimagining of what it means to be human. These billionaires have their own religion. They don’t call it that – but that is what it is. They, and others, foisted Dr. Levine on us.
Dr. Levine was given, and still has, too much power. As a society we are doomed if we are prevented from pointing out the utter madness in being forced to pretend that someone is something they are not. Being forced to accept lies and worse than that, being forced to repeat the lies.
When children hear about teen suicides then the number of suicides in those media markets increase; Malcom Gladwell has written about that extensively. Dr. Levine seems unhinged from reality. I will never understand why our leaders listened to Dr. Levine’s novel and tyrannical Covid ideas – I suppose they did it because of money.
“So many people still believe that it was necessary to save lives, regardless of what the evidence has shown.” Completely correct – so many people cling to that belief that all the illogical policies were necessary because it is too difficult to admit what the alternative means.
Add to the list the six feet of social distancing that screwed up schools as well as everything else. Throughout the pandemic the World Health Organization’s recommendation was one meter for social distancing. It never changed that recommendation. For those in power in American society who may not have the capability to translate what a meter means in feet it comes to just over three feet. Then when Dr. Fauxchie (misspelling intended) testified he could not give a scientific reason why the six foot distance every was decided upon.
Frank, you are correct! Under oath Fauci admitted the 6′ distance “sort of just appeared” and “likely not based on data.” MSM barely covered that specific revelation from his congressional testimony. During Covid in the Philadelphia region, private schools started to ignore that policy and reopened. But public schools clung to the social distancing requirements and remained closed. To this day there are scores and scores of underutilized office buildings in the region that still have those stupid 6′ stickers in their lobbies.
Beth Ann, this article, as well as so many others you have written, is on point. The reminder of practices forced on society during the beginning of the pandemic are needed to ensure the same mistakes are not made again. Thank you for this, as well as all of your other articles, so thoughtfully & brilliantly written.
Thank you for writing this, and for being one of the few people who actually stood up, put her name on the line and did something while the lawlessness was happening.
One thread you and your colleagues at B+L might want to pull, especially in an election year, is the absolute failure of elected Republicans to take any meaningful action to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again.
Todd Shepherd at B+L wrote about my story last year. I uncovered (with documents and other evidence), that John Sanville, the superintendent of the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District, and every member of the school board at the time, intentionally violated the law, caused documented harm to children, and then covered it up and submitted a false affidavit in an official proceeding before the PA Office of Open Records. I also uncovered that lawyers at a very large, politically connected Philadelphia law firm that represents Unionville (and many other public schools in the Commonwealth) facilitated that misconduct, were paid tens of thousands in taxpayer dollars to cover it up, and then threatened me when I blew the whistle on them.
I reported their misconduct to the PA Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court, and I was directed to first pursue a criminal complaint for the perjury offense, which I did. An assistant DA in Chester County acknowledged that the complaint stated a prima facie offense of perjury and referred the matter to the PA State Police for investigation. After that investigation, which confirmed every element of the perjury offense, DA Deborah Ryan (who is now a Pennsylvania judge) refused to prosecute the felony. I took this matter to state lawmakers, including Republican “leaders,” and they looked the other way. A few very prominent members of the “GOP” caucus didn’t even have the courtesy to respond.
Every single word of what I wrote above is supported by documents and other evidence. Those interested can read more about my case here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/chrisbray/p/resisting-the-lets-move-on-pivot?r=8m9hq&utm_medium=ios
https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/25/why-domestic-terrorists-like-me-cant-forget-public-school-covid-tyranny/
While it is absolutely important to continue to write and talk about what happened, I respectfully think conservative and liberty-minded individuals are looking to the wrong place for answers. The leftwing politicians and uniparty bureaucrats who pushed the harmful policies will never apologize. They’re proud of what they did, and you can be sure they will do the same thing the next time around (only harder).
In my opinion, the real scrutiny should be placed on elected Republicans in the Commonwealth. What have they done to make sure this never happens again? When are they going to demand comprehensive school choice, not only for select families, but for everyone? In my opinion, those are the important questions, and we shouldn’t stop asking them until the people who claim to represent our interests actually do something.
Oh how quickly the radical right and its media machine “forget” that states were dealing with criminally incompetent republican “leadership” from our president at the time. Or that, despite all the hysterical Biden Derangement Syndrome rhetoric they try to shove down our throats, he came in and immediately implemented policies to reopen schools open.
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https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2021-03-12/how-the-trump-administrations-data-failure-has-kept-schools-closed
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https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/feb/08/lauren-boebert/lauren-boebert-said-joe-biden-closed-schools-heres/
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https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/02/12/statement-of-president-joe-biden-on-safely-reopening-schools/
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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/donald-trump-covid
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And of course the media never mentions the inconvenient fact that abundant statewide school closures were ordered in red states as well. This kind of article isn’t really about helping kids, it’s about partisan politics.
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https://www.edweek.org/leadership/map-coronavirus-and-school-closures-in-2019-2020/2020/03