March 8, 2021 - 10:49am
It’s been nearly a year since western countries imposed lockdowns on their populations, and the details of its effects are beginning to emerge. A report in El Pais, a Spanish newspaper, has revealed that there was a 23% decline in childbirths in Spain for those born in December or January compared to the year before. This decline maps onto the period in which Spaniards were put under lockdown in March and April, resulting in an astonishing 13,141 babies fewer babies being born:
Equally concerning is that the lockdown appears to have accelerated an existing downward trend in Spanish births:
Nor is this decline in birthrates confined to just Spain:
And contrary to a report in today’s Times, a post-pandemic baby boom is not expected:
First-time Spanish mothers, who at the age of 32 are already delaying pregnancy due to difficult economic conditions, are now trying to delay it for another two years because of the pandemic, which makes fertility “more complicated” and limits the opportunity to have a second child.
Given that the world is suffering from a global fertility shortage, it seems like the effects of the pandemic — and specifically lockdown — are going to make the situation far worse.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeFunnily enough, if you make it illegal for sexual partners who don’t live together to have sex, fewer babies are born.
You might like my poem from earlier in the year:
http://www.readmypoems.co.uk/search?q=sex+covid+19
Nice. LOL
it’s better-than-good odds that the pandemic is going to make a lot of things worse, not just fertility. It’s almost as if that was the plan.
Hm! I guess that’s just a hunch?
the longer that the elected class clings to mandates that harm people, the more intentional the results appear to be. In the normal world, when we’re doing something that ends badly, we stop doing it.
Which people are we talking about? I speak to ‘people’ and they are happy to be saved from Covid 19. If you say there is nothing to be worried about, you become a Covid denier. It is fine to have such an opinion but could a government form that opinion for everybody?
If you look at this thing ten years from now you will see rights and wrongs highlighted as ‘history’. Here, in the middle of it you can’t be sure.
(Just to get things straight I have always been anti-lockdown but I am surrounded by people who don’t agree with me – I am in a minority of one until I log onto UnHerd.)
It is really interesting in the USA. The Red State/Blue State divide is very real. I honestly don’t know how democrats can look at the South and not tell they are overreacting. I’ve never been a supporter of either party until now. I am now supporting Republicans. Considering the totalitarian embrace of big pharma and the tech oligarchs, I just can’t stomach Democratic leadership. For the first time in my life the “lesser evil” choice isn’t exactly lesser anymore. The phone call between Fauci, Biden, and DeSantis is pretty shocking if true. I believe it was reported to the public by DeSantis… so of course it depends on your political beliefs if you think it is true or not. His CPAC speech was something too…if you haven’t watched it keep in mind it came after the phone conversation with Fauci and Biden. I am in a red country in a blue state. Washington State. We are ignoring both Biden and Inslee (Our governor) dictates. Open restaurants and bars. No mask requirements but some people do wear them. I was at a place with live music this weekend. I’ve routinely been in places with near 100 percent precovid capacity. We are not following the rules here. It has been this way since they started rolling out the vaccines. I think what put people over the edge was the doubling down on masking, the fear mongering over variants, and the Pharma oligarchs insisting we still had to social distance, etc. That did not go over well at all here.
Thanks for that answer. A few years ago I worked in Europe for a company in Louisville, KY. I last saw my ex-colleagues in the spring of 2016 and we talked about the forthcoming election. To a man they were Trump fans.
I had heard of Trump but never thought of him in politics. They were fans because he wasn’t in politics. After that I followed the election and I saw the point. Trump seemed to be actually talking to real people through his tweets and his gaffes. The others were just boring, grey, faceless people – which is what I think of Biden.
We can only follow things in the USA through news channels like Al Jazeera but Trump performed well. If he had communicated better about Covid 19 he would still be President.
But now, after focussing on the situation in the USA, as an impartial observer, you really need to change your systems. There are too many grey men and the voters do not want them. Now, I think, it is time for real people .
Haha. Yeah. Just do a google search on Prince Andrew population control, Prince Philip population control, Prince Charles population control. Listen to Bill Gates’s innovation to zero TED talk. Read all about Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset agenda. It is nothing to them. It isn’t a secret. It is a well thought out plan. Of course we are called conspiracy theorists. This crap is going down. This is WW3 which will be even worse than WW1 and WW2. Private intelligence firm Deagal’s forecast for the population is frightening. I have to only wonder what they know about it. Putin on the other hand wants population growth for his country. He seemed to indicate that the US needed to work with China and Russia on developing Fusion technology to address energy and pollution concerns. He seemed to indicate that the west was more focused on depopulation as the goal. Do not resuscitate orders, Denying medical care for dementia patients, shutting down cancer and heart screenings, etc… with the average age of death near 80 did we really have a pandemic? Or did we just kill off our elderly? How would we know? That would let us visit them in nursing homes and they wouldn’t let us into hospitals to monitor care and advocate for care. We don’t know what happened. We’ll see what happens in the US. States are splitting into covid fascists states and old normal states. Hell… even in Blue states the red counties are ignoring covid fascism. I am in that category. I’ve been going into bars and restaurants mask free. I watched live music this weekend and it was glorious! We better fight back. This crap isn’t going to get any better if we don’t.
Over the past year it has been very difficult for singles to form new relationships given that meeting up indoors has been banned for most of the year.
For many women in their thirties this may in effect mean they will have lost their chance to have babies, at least naturally.
So the impact on fertility may live on for several years.
In 18 & 9 BC, The Roman Emperor Augustus passed legislation that produced the “ ius trium liberorum”- the right of three children.
Those citizens who produced three children (four if you were a Freedman/woman) were entitled to certain legal privileges as an incentive to breed. It seems to have worked rather well.
However today, everyone in Europe including the UK have been subjected to a continuous horror attack about he lethality of Corona Virus by their respective Governments for nearly a year.
Is it any wonder that Lockdown has not produced a ‘bonk fest’, but rather the very reverse, as the responsible Demos, terrified of imminent death have correctly decided to desist from copulating?
Today’s leaders could offer the following incentives to breed on a large scale:
Fertility is a measure of the ability to produce babies: surely lockdown has not affected that. What lockdown has affected is the frequency of non-contraceptive sexual intercourse.
AKA, casual sex.
no, all sex, casual or formal.
Does the sperm know if it’s casual or formal?
“Global Fertility Shortage” in a world heading up to 9billion humans and beyond? Odd take on that issue. It may be local, it’s certainly not “Global”.
Men and women who spend twenty four hours a day together don’t have much sex! Who would have guessed? Practically everyone. Absence may not make the heart grow fonder but it works for other organs.
Gates, Schwab, Prince Andrew, Prince Charles, and Prince Philip will be thrilled! It is working!!! Killing off old people, lockdowns and anti socializing reducing babies. Next steps? Just need the vaccine to sterilize or kill people. The eugenicists agenda is looking great. Welcome to WW3.
Are we still blaming the Catholic church for overpopulation?
A global fertility shortage? Really? More like massive over-population, which the pandemic is helping to cure. At least it’s had one positive effect.