IQ drop of 22 points caused by our pandemic response

The original study was published on a pre-print server in August, but many people may have missed it since it wasn't mentioned in the mainstream press at all.

On August 16, 2021, the BMJ published an article “Covid-19: Children born during the pandemic score lower on cognitive tests, study finds.” The original study, which is awaiting peer review, was funded by the National Institutes of Health, and conducted by a team of researchers at Brown and other U.S. universities.

The BMJ article pointed out:

In a longitudinal study of 672 children from Rhode Island that has run since 2011, those born after the pandemic began showed results on the Mullen scales of early learning that corresponded to an average IQ score of 78, a drop of 22 points from the average of previous cohorts.

So it was a normal IQ of 100 before. It’s dropped 22% from there. That’s huge.

One of the commenters (Pasco Fearon) wrote: “Fascinating paper, but the scores are so low I worry something might not be right.” The lead author immediately responded.

While causation was not definitively established, researchers cite concerns about the impact of pandemic policies—stay-at-home orders, masking and social distancing—on early neurodevelopment given the “missed educational opportunities and reduced interaction, stimulation and creative play with other children.” It’s basically hard to piece apart the contribution of each element without a randomized controlled trial.

The health authorities never warned us that following their advice would lead to this outcome. Perhaps they are waiting for the paper to be officially published before they admit that?

In the meantime, I thought it was important for you all to know this in case you missed it. I don’t think the mainstream media did a good job of covering it (for some reason).