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00:01:54.940Dr. Phil, part two, nice to have you with us today as well as we're talking about America, American families, and everything that's going on in this country.
00:02:03.300Plus, we're going to get into a very important issue, and that is the issue of COVID and what impact it had on the families in this country.
00:02:10.620Well, and I've got to say, this has been fascinating.
00:02:13.140We've covered a lot of topics that VERDICT typically doesn't get into.
00:02:17.720We've covered being a parent, being a spouse.
00:02:21.180We've covered the mental health challenges facing our kids.
00:02:25.240And we've talked about the desperate need for truth.
00:02:28.340And I will say, if you didn't listen to part one, go back and listen to part one because you're not going to want to miss the discussion from Dr. Phil unplugged in a way you may not have seen him before, but saying things that need to be said and demonstrating an enormous amount of courage.
00:04:09.620If people spend month after month after month not full-time working, they're off work, like during the pandemic, the chance of them coming back.
00:04:22.020Everybody thought when the pandemic was over, it was going to look like that scene in the movie Grease at the end of the school year where those doors flung open.
00:04:32.260And it was a carnival, and everybody comes running out, and it wasn't that way at all.
00:04:38.780Things they used to take for granted were now intimidating.
00:04:42.300And when you don't hold people to a standard, then I've spent a lot of time in rehab, and I'm not talking about drug rehab.
00:04:54.720I'm talking about rehabilitating people with brain injuries and spinal cord injuries.
00:04:59.940And if it takes someone that has had that kind of injury, and they need to turn the light on, and it takes them three minutes to get over there to do it, or you could walk over and do it for them,
00:05:15.340you need to require them to do 100% of what they're able to do, or they'll never get to the next level.
00:05:24.360And so you asked me, how do we get them to do that?
00:05:28.320By requiring them to do everything they can do every chance we get to do it.
00:05:36.980And right now, almost a third of fifth and eighth graders can't read at the most fundamental level.
00:06:39.160You know, one of the things you mentioned in that answer is you talked about coming out of COVID.
00:06:44.320And I'd be interested in your judgment on what was the damage that was done from a mental health perspective, from the shutdowns we had across the country, and what was the damage in particular to kids from tens of millions of kids across this country had their schools shut down for a year or more?
00:07:06.440And what do you see as the consequences of those policies?
00:07:11.120When they shut down this country in the schools at the beginning of COVID and said this is going to be for a couple of weeks, I said, I get it.
00:07:18.760When it turned into a month or two months, I went public and said, what you're doing is going to create more damage and more loss of life than the virus itself.
00:07:36.580So you saw it before a lot of people didn't?
00:07:39.520Well, I actually said it and got called a complete idiot.
00:08:01.840And I said it, I think I've got 15 clips of different times that I said, shutting this country down and taking our kids out of school for a prolonged period of time.
00:08:16.620And the epidemiological pediatricians estimate that it will cost somewhere around 15 million years of life lost.
00:09:49.920And that doesn't even take into account that mandated reporters are in these schools who report child abuse and molestation and referrals to the Department of Child and Family Services dropped in some areas 50 to 60 percent.
00:10:10.400And trust me, abuse and molestation did not drop 50 to 60 percent.
00:10:16.260We simply rendered those children alone with their abusers for two years without eyes on them to report it to people that could help them.
00:10:27.500We simply abandoned them to their abusers.
00:10:33.060And so many of these children relied on those schools for at least one, if not two meals per day.
00:10:41.380We took that away and some say, well, but they delivered those meals.