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Covid 6 Years Later
What Should We Remember
The COVID Post-Mortem: What We Missed (and What We Still Can Fix)
We ran the largest public health experiment of our lifetime.
We failed.
Not everywhere.
Not always.
But in the places that mattered most, children, truth, and upstream health, we got it wrong.
And if we don’t name it clearly, we’ll do it again.
The First Mistake: Forgetting the Child
When the world shut down, we told ourselves it was temporary.
Two weeks.
Flatten the curve.
Regroup.
Then two months became a season.
A season became a year.
For some kids, it became a disappearance.
Over 230,000 children vanished from the school system across 21 states.
Not lost like keys.
Lost like opportunity.
Lost like trajectory.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth:
The kids who disappeared were not the kids with options.
The well-resourced adapted:
Private schools
Learning pods
Reliable internet
Parental support
They bent. Some even thrived.
The vulnerable?
They absorbed the shock.
Education lost → structure lost → nutrition lost → safety net lost.
and more….
Dr. M