When COVID shut down life as usual in the spring of 2020, most physicians in the U.S. focused on the immediate physical dangers from the novel coronavirus. But soon pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris began thinking of COVID’s longer-term emotional damage and those who would be especially vulnerable: children. “The pandemic is a massive stressor,” explains Burke Harris, who is California’s surgeon general. “Then you have kids at home from school, economic hardship, and folks not being able to socialize.” These stresses could be particularly toxic for children, she and another state health official wrote to health providers in April 2020. Last week U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a similar warning about children for the entire country.
