Childhood milestone pandemic misinformation zombie.
There’s a need to resist tantalizing stories that are not factual and may actually be harmful, no matter how relatable and true the narrative may seem initially.
Some misinformation just keeps circulating because information zombies flourish, especially in a chaotic discourse of a mashed up information landscape. I recommend not following popular anonymous shit-posting accounts on social media. Not just because they may be questionable and you have no idea who they are. But because they’re a common source of the kind of outrage theatre that proves to be, at minimum a diversion, but also traffics in repurposed trendy viral anti-vax content that gets repackaged in a way to appeal to people avoiding covid to get viral mileage.
The truth is that the CDC started the childhood milestone changes based on new research BEFORE the pandemic. But a claim that started out as a right-wing covid contrarian conspiracy theory made the jump to people often on the left who are actually concerned about covid. The rumour being circulated from time to time started out as a claim that the CDC changed the childhood milestones in order to “hide” or “compensate” for childhood development wrongly asserted as being stymied by children wearing masks in schools and daycares, “lockdowns”, closures, remote schooling, and of course blaming vaccination.
SALON - No, the CDC didn't "lower standards" for childhood development because of the pandemic Right-wing figures seize on the false claim that the pandemic has widely stunted normal childhood development By Nicole Karlis Senior Writer Published February 23, 2022 "The CDC has lowered the standards for childhood speech (they set that too?). Now children have until 30 months instead of 24 months to know 50 words," Swank wrote. "So, lower the standard and everything will be 'normal', and never admit masks damaged our children. #KeeptheRepublicSafe," he continued. Indeed, misinformation propagated widely on Twitter that connected the changes to mask mandates in schools, suggesting that masks are causing developmental delays and the CDC now is responding by lowering their developmental standards for young children. In an email to Salon, Dr. Jennifer Zubler, pediatrician and consultant with CDC's "Learn the Signs. Act Early" program, told Salon the work to revise the milestones had been underway for a couple of years, and had long predated the coronavirus pandemic.
This claim is of course just the sort of intriguing narrative that appeals to people rightly frustrated with the agency so obviously corrupted and co-opted by corporate interests. Leadership in the CDC has routinely catered to business interests at least for decades, even while rank and file scientists and workers at public agencies often put out good solid trustworthy scientific work when given the chance - it’s often directors and executives stuck in “the revolving door” saying things that actually contradict their own agency’s materials.
This rumour can be dated to early 2022 shortly after the CDC changed the milestone guidance right during that big omicron wave in the winter of 2021-2022. There was no way, chronologically and temporally, that the research being used then would have included pandemic era research of childhood development, and it didn’t. Science is a slow gradual thing. It took decades for surgeons to accept hand washing and using surgical gloves and whatnot. Look at the continued resistance to masks in healthcare. A study has to be done, and then it has to be peer reviewed, lots of times the data is collected and by the time anyone can use that research a couple years have passed. And by the time a huge government agency reacts, there’s been a whole lot of water under the bridge by that point. Things were sped up when it came to covid, but as a result, there's been a huge amount of retractions of covid research, years later.
Disability Scoop - Changes To CDC’s Developmental Milestone Checklists Met With Skepticism by Blythe Bernhard | April 22, 2022 Other critics of the revised checklists voiced concern that the changes may have been made in response to the pandemic, to lower standards for development because of the potential impact of masking or isolation among children and caregivers. But the changes were initiated and reviewed before the start of the pandemic in response to concerns of parents and pediatricians, Lipkin said, “to provide a clearer, up to date, and more accurate set of milestones rooted in good research.”
You would have to assume it's a truly vast and complex conspiracy... that the CDC was actually predicting childhood development problems from the pandemic (or pandemic mitigations) and then nefariously decided to update these milestones ahead of time. And not only is this way out there (because it seems to require a time machine) – it also doesn't have any logical motivation. This wouldn’t change anything as far as covid anyhow. There's no more mitigations to lift. So why cover up any more ill effects, when they’re not covering up all the other ones. They report dire consequences. Society’s leadership, bought by big money and fossil fuel, have made it clear to everyone that we just have to put up with the terrible consequences. There are no “lockdowns”, there are no broad mask mandates for public spaces, there are no travel restrictions. Even the CDC and municipal safety guidelines that still exist are not enforced, not even by Democratic Party leadership, after all. People go to work sick, test positive for covid, and continue to work in public facing jobs maskless these days - many of us hear stories about this all the time from friends and family.
A conspiracy theory, at least based on more internal logic regarding these guidelines, is to suspect they’re trying to save money in shirking early intervention for developmental disabilities. I'm not saying that's actually what they're doing, just that it might make more sense than trying to get rid of the reason for… non-existent pandemic mitigations. But there is actually a danger that this misinformation can detract from the real criticism about these arbitrary "milestone checklists" in terms of early intervention. Some people criticize the guidelines because they are concerned that it could lead to people not seeking evaluation based on concerns they're having. And also there’s concern that parents might be needlessly overly worried about normal variations in development.
Conspiracy theories with unsubstantiated and proven false claims will of course only undermine the already long known serious risks with covid, and the scientific research on outcomes currently ongoing. It’s still rather early days with a novel pandemic virus, and there is already plenty of evidence of the potential harms of covid known from early on.
There’s no need to make anything up. What we already know is bad news!
There are ongoing concerns and research looking to quantify the additional risks people suspect there may be, and as it should be, scientists and journalists are reporting on it, and at least the responsible ones, are stipulating when things are still unsettled.
Bloomberg - Covid Pregnancies May Have Boosted Autism Risk, Study Shows Exposure to the virus in utero may have affected children’s development, according to a UCLA study, adding to a list of health problems emerging in the wake of the global pandemic. By Jason Gale December 26, 2024 The connection between the virus and autism remains inconclusive: some studies align with Nielsen’s findings, while others report little to no increased risk of developmental or behavioral issues. A limitation of Nielsen’s study is its relatively small sample size, with fewer than 250 mother-baby pairs. A robust understanding of the virus’ impact would likely require research involving more than 10,000 children, says Andrea Edlow, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital. Such large-scale research has been difficult, particularly during the most deadly waves of the pandemic when clinic restrictions and medical emergencies obstructed consistent testing.
People who got covid complications from getting sick during the big Omicron wave during winter 2021-2022 have probably only been starting to apply for and getting approved for disability within the past year and going forward, because they’ve been hoping to recover, waiting on medical determinations, and or otherwise navigating medical and legal bureaucracies.
Many of us have been cautioning people since 2020 that it could take many years before we know the full extent of risk from covid infections. Some diseases come with serious long-term risks, such as polio or measles. We already know about Long Covid, which effects, yes, children too, even while the media all over the place still focuses on lockdown fear mongering instead. The knowns and the unknowns are why the precautionary principle still makes sense.
But what doesn’t make sense is spreading easily proven false rumours that can be used by people to claim there’s little risk - that it’s all just conspiracy theory, even though there is substantial risk already proven. Beware the anti-vax to covid-cautious pipeline, and vice versa.
My shorthand rule for avoiding resharing something questionable is to pause, consider, and check before resharing anything that pokes a strong emotion. We’ve all been there, but it’s possible to develop better online habits.