Reading these results from a Pennsylvania report, it would be fair to say that government overreach during COVID has been child abuse:

A recently released annual child abuse report from the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services showed that in 2020, the state registered a 43 percent increase in child abuse deaths compared to 2019.

That is, 73 children died from child abuse in 2020 compared to 51 deaths in 2019. The increase is new and significant; reports going back to 2010 average 37 deaths a year. And it is notably higher than the 17 COVID-19 deaths in children aged 0-19 recorded in Pennsylvania not only in 2020, but also counting all COVID-19 deaths in Pennsylvania children up to Oct. 7 this year, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.

For some sense of what to expect in RI, look at Figure 1 of this report, which shows that the number of reports of child abuse were down every month, by as much as 40%.  That doesn’t mean abuse wasn’t happening, but rather that it wasn’t being spotted.  Since typically around 35% of reports indicate abuse, that’s over 1,100 missed abuses of Rhode Island children over seven months.

Will anybody in politics or government ever face consequences for these decisions?  Probably not.