This was the story that I was trying to source weeks ago, but teen suicide is understandably incredibly sensitive and I did not want to offer specific figures without confirmation. But given the district's push to reopen, I don't think keeping quiet at this point makes sense...
Fairfax has had suicide clusters before, notably at the elite W.T. Woodson High School in 2013; it is a high-pressure district (suburban DC) with large schools. The size of the district (<>60,000 high school students) means it's hard to know how much of an outlier this year is.
But in the last few days I have heard from family friends of two 13 (!) year olds who killed themselves this month (not in Fairfax, to be clear). Suicide in anyone under 15 is very rare - about 600 cases in 2018, per @nimhgov. How frequently is it happening now? We don't know...
Because although @CNN et al obsessively publicize every #Covid death - especially those outlier cases of healthy people under 50 - they don't have the same interest in suicides.

Or homicides.

Or overdoses.

Or...
In any case, if you know of children or teens who have killed themselves this year, you can find me at alexberensonauthor at gmail. I know this topic is very tough, but only by talking about the toll of school closures can we get out the truth.
You can follow @AlexBerenson.
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