CBS’ Jan Crawford Slams Decision to Impose ‘Crushing’ Covid Shutdowns on Students: ‘They Will be Paying’ for ‘the Rest of Their Lives’
CBS News’ Jan Crawford on Sunday said she believed that closing schools for fear of Covid-19 had a “crushing” impact on American students.
“My kids hear me rant about this every day,” Crawford said in a Face the Nation segment about underreported stories. “So I may as well tell you guys. It’s the crushing impact that our Covid policies have had on young kids and children, by far the least serious risk for serious illness.”
Citing Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s assessment that there was an emerging “epidemic” of “mental health challenges” among young people who had lived through Covid-19 lockdowns, Crawford argued that the cost of closing schools had outweighed the benefits.
“Even teenagers, I mean, a healthy teenager has a one-in-a-million chance of getting … and dying from Covid, which is way lower than dying in a car wreck on a road trip,” Crawford said. “But they have suffered and sacrificed the most, especially kids in underrepresented and at-risk communities. And now we have the surgeon general saying there’s a mental health crisis among our kids. The risk of attempts among girls is now up 51 percent this year. Black kids nearly twice as likely as White kids to die by suicide. I mean, school closures. Lockdowns. Cancellation of sports. You couldn’t even go on a playground in the D.C. area without cops shooing the kids off. Tremendous negative impact on kids, and it’s been an afterthought.
“If our policies don’t reflect a more measured and reasonable approach for our children, they will be paying for our generation’s decisions the rest of their lives,” she added.
As of Monday, 21 classrooms in New York had reinstituted full closures due to a surge of infections related to Covid-19’s Omicron variant. The variant to date has resulted in one confirmed death in the United States, suffered by an unvaccinated man in Harris County, Texas described as “in his 50s.”
Watch above via CBS News.
