I had actually looked at this one myself and highlighted their small comment that the changes might have related to getting Covid - which they then all but dismissed as a cause because there was no indication that boys and girls caught Covid at different rates. If I recall correctly, more men died / were admitted to ICU and more women have ended up with long Covid so perhaps catching it wasn’t the most sensible indicator; the known differences in responses to it between sexes might have been worth mentioning, even in passing.
The issue is that the authors didn't have any information about the children in the study at all. We don't know who caught COVID-19, we don't know who experienced lockdowns, we just know that they were alive in Washington State before the pandemic and in 2021/2. So it's pretty useless to speculate on what potential impacts could in theory explain the association.
I had actually looked at this one myself and highlighted their small comment that the changes might have related to getting Covid - which they then all but dismissed as a cause because there was no indication that boys and girls caught Covid at different rates. If I recall correctly, more men died / were admitted to ICU and more women have ended up with long Covid so perhaps catching it wasn’t the most sensible indicator; the known differences in responses to it between sexes might have been worth mentioning, even in passing.
The issue is that the authors didn't have any information about the children in the study at all. We don't know who caught COVID-19, we don't know who experienced lockdowns, we just know that they were alive in Washington State before the pandemic and in 2021/2. So it's pretty useless to speculate on what potential impacts could in theory explain the association.
*screaming into the void*