When those charged with nurturing and saving lives end up harming and ending lives, do good intentions count?
Some of the women on “The View” seem to think so. Even though it became clear early in the pandemic that children were the least vulnerable group from the COVID-19 virus and that keeping them out of school was harming them socially and academically, schools remained shuttered.
Distance learning became the norm. Computers replaced the classroom. Social media sunk its talons even deeper into young lives, making them more mentally unhealthy than ever.
But that’s still excusable to some of “The View” panel because, hey, everyone meant well.
The issue with this kind of thinking came when Dr. Phil McGraw — usually referred to simply as Dr. Phil by most, even though the TV show of the same name ended last year — came on Monday as he was doing the rounds to promote his new book, “We’ve Got Issues: How You Can Stand Strong for America’s Soul and Sanity.”
Sara Haines, one of the co-hosts of the ABC show, asked Dr. Phil during part of the segment to talk about the effects of social media and ask him to explain his statement that “you’re not the only voice in your kids’ ears, so you have to be the best voice.”
“Well, think about it — in, like, ’08, ’09, smartphones came on, and kids … they stopped living their lives and started watching other people live their lives,” he said.
“So we saw the biggest spike and the highest levels of depression, anxiety, loneliness and suicidiality since records have ever been kept,” McGraw continued. “And it’s just continued on and on and on.
“And then COVID hits 10 years later, and the same agencies that knew that are the agencies that shut down the schools for two years. Who does that? Who takes away the support system for these children? Who takes it away and shuts it down?
Do you agree with Dr. Phil?
“And by the way, when they shut it down, they stopped the mandated reporters from being able to see children that were being abused and sexually molested — and in fact, sent them home and abandoned them to their abusers with no way to watch. And referrals dropped 50 to 60 percent.”
But, no. Good intentions, even if they were politically loaded and contradicted by evidence, can still save the day for some of the panel on “The View.”
“There was also a pandemic going on and they were trying to save their lives,” Sunny Hostin chimed in.
“They were trying to save kids’ lives,” Whoopi Goldberg added. “Remember, we know a lot of folks who died during this. People weren’t laying around –”
“Not schoolchildren,” Dr. Phil responded.
“Well, you know what? We’re lucky. Maybe we’re lucky they didn’t, because we kept them out of the places that they could be safe because no one wanted to believe we had an issue,” Goldberg said, whatever that meant.
And now it was Ana Navarro’s time to chime in: “Are you saying no schoolchildren died of COVID?”
“I’m saying it was the safest group,” McGraw said. “They were the less-vulnerable group, and they suffered — and will suffer — more from the mismanagement of COVID than they will from the exposure to COVID. And that’s not an opinion, that’s a fact.”
Whoopi closed out the interview by saying, “Well, Phil, we don’t even have time to talk it out now, man. But thanks for coming.” I bet.
It’s probably for the best that they didn’t have the time to talk it out, because this is objectively the truth. Children under the age of 18 were far and away the least likely to die of the illness. Data in 2021 found that a child was more likely to die of drowning, a traffic accident or (tellingly) suicide than from COVID.
But teachers unions and mask scolds made sure the schools remained shuttered for as long as possible, pushing distance learning as an alternative. It was a horrible alternative, one that has wreaked havoc on academic accomplishment in this country and further isolated individuals who were among the most likely to fall prey to mental health worries based on isolation and social media consumption.
That’s not an opinion. That’s a fact, as Dr. Phil pointed out.
Good intentions have nothing to do with it, and all the good intentions in the world can’t wallpaper over the reality of what “The View” hosts and their ilk wreaked through school shutdowns.
