To wonder how schools can realistically reopen when there is still a killer virus about with no vaccine?

[JustCantShakeIt]

I’m not talking about them reopening now, in May or June or even September.

Who is prepared to send their DC into a school with hundreds of other DC, where social distancing and keeping a germ free environment is literally impossible, even with the best wills in the world, when there is a life threatening disease floating about which is highly transmittable and you have no guarantee it won’t make your DC severely ill or die.

Social distancing just between parents will be impossible at my DC’s school of over 500 where we all have to wait outside the main gates at pick up time.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m desperate for schools to reopen before my DC turn completely feral, but I don’t see how that can happen until we have a vaccine. We’re being told to stay home and keep our distance now due to the risk, the risk will be the same next month or in 5 months won’t it?

If lockdown goes on much beyond July, I think it will game over for me anyway. From MH issues. I know no one cares about those now and we have to just get a grip. I'm struggling now. I have a child with SEND with violent meltdowns, I'm living with stbxh who is abusive. I was about to leave before the lockdown. But MN frothers don't care about women like me either.

I can't leave, because letting agents aren't renting houses at the moment. So I have to stay. I have to try and teach my children while working and living with stbxh.

None of you wafting about killer viruses gives a shit about the consequences of lockdown. Only the sexier, more dramatic "deadly virus".

It's amazing how indifferent some are to almost 1000 people a day losing their lives.

No one is indifferent, it’s an incredibly complex and difficult situation.

But the economy tanking is a very serious issue. Not least because it will eventually effect how much we can spend on healthcare.

People need to eat, they need homes. We need to pay for essential services, public sector workers need paid (including teachers).

Wanting him to go back to school, doesn't mean I don't want to look after him, I just know that he copes better with the structure. Also schools open means we are not stuck in a small flat with no open spaces.

Nor do I think that I can simultaneously teach my child and do my full time job for a sustained period of time.

I wonder how far these perceived morals would stretch if they were being forced into unpaid leave

Abs-fucking-lutly!

None of you wafting about killer viruses gives a shit about the consequences of lockdown. Only the sexier, more dramatic "deadly virus".

I care about people like you and I want to protect people like you.

@LetTheCabbagesDie I suspect you see me as one of the cabbages. Only the well off can afford to be on unpaid leave with no benefits. We do need to eat.

.Breathless are you ok?

Just strangely we want the risk of school staff, teenagers and their parents dying of corona to be low risk.

But they are low risk statisically speaking still of Coronavirus - look at the rather awful death statistics and it mirrors what China have told us.

The risk with school is the spreading of it to those who are vulnerable or elderly. And we really do need research now from the figures we have as to exactly in the under 75s what is considered to make you vulnerable

But the economy tanking is a very serious issue. Not least because it will eventually effect how much we can spend on healthcare.

It's also funding those on furlough etc. It's funding our ability to isolate as much as we are at the moment, but there isn't an infinite amount of money to access.

@alloutoffucks not at all. I'm saying that this situation is not sustainable from an economic point of view. My username is a pisstake from another thread where someone was being hysterical about someone tending to the cabbages in their garden.

People saying "oh well I'm keeping my children off until there's a vaccine" - fine. You do you. And deal with whatever the government decides to make compulsory or non-compulsory. But I want my kids back in school, being educated and mixing with their friends again and will send them off with a cheery wave on the first day schools are back, whenever that may me.

^this. I am reasonably confident that we have all had Covid-19, but whether or no, the first day my DC's school reopens, we will be there. In my household none of us are vulnerable, we do not have to have contact with any vulnerable people, and I have assessed the risk of having complications with CV (assuming I haven't had it already) and find it acceptable.

I can't and won't live in fear and hiding. Lockdown is a short-term tactic only. As a healthy and reasonably young person, if anything I think it's my duty to resume normal life as and when the government loosens the restrictions to keep the economy going and the more vulnerable longer protected.

And can everyone stop with the 'we care more than you as we don't want to KILL people ' it is insane and illogical

Quite. There have been some very sobering threads on cancelled medical appointments. The OBR is predicting that lockdown could shrink GDP by 35% which is not a percentage I thought I'd see in the same sentence as GDP in my lifetime, quite frankly. The lockdown is ruinous on many levels and can only every be a temporary measure while a plan is put in place.

I sincerely hope that the powers that be are not squandering this incredibly expensively purchased time.

@Quartz2208 No the point is that there are teenagers, school staff and parents who are at a high risk if they catch this. Look at the proportion who die who have diabetes, it is high. They are not even in the shielded group. But at least one and a half million people are in the shielded group. Some are parents.

@BreathlessCommotion I actually do care about women like you. Please ring Women's Aid and see if they can help you find emergency accommodation. You are allowed to move and you are allowed to leave an abusive partner during lock down. You just need their help finding somewhere to move to.

How were schools open during the days before smallpox vaccine, rubella vaccine, polio vaccine? They just were.

I guess we'll need to see the actual evidence on whether schools being open actually affects the R factor of the virus that much.

I though the R factor was inherent in the biology of a virus, not specifically related to environment in which it finds itself - have I misunderstood that? I guess it can't spread in a vacuum, so perhaps it's impossible to separate those two factors.

I wonder how far these perceived morals would stretch if they were being forced into unpaid leave

To right and the feeling you get when you are working and then suddenly a section meeting at work is called titled "coronavirus restructure" and for the next 2 hours your butt is flexing and you are thinking the worst.

Some medical appointments are still going ahead. I know some have been cancelled because delaying treatment is less dangerous than risking the person catching this virus by attending their treatment,

Only the well off can afford to be on unpaid leave with no benefits. We do need to eat.

EXACTLY

Yet the rest of us can’t operate our businesses normally under these conditions. We can’t make any money for ourselves, or generate tax.

Furlough payments last til the end of May. After that, many will have no income, tax paid will plummet further. Public services will be hit soon.

And that not change til we get back to some sort of normality.

We can’t survive with no money any more than you can. Do you get it now?

I dont think anyone realistically thinks they should open this side of half term do they? But at the same time no one can realistically think we can keep everything shut until a vaccine is made do they?

A balance has to be made - and it wont be now when we are at the peak but when this curve starts to go down things do have to start movement otherwise the lockdown cure becomes potentially more dangerous and deadlier than the cure.

So we will all have to figure out what are risks are and what we are willing to do - and with schools the figures show that for most it will be a low risk once transmission has been suppressed.

We need testing and contact tracing to contain it and proper research on exactly what makes you vulnerable because at the moment I think they have thrown everything in to be covered

@Moomin12345 many schools closed down during Polio epidemic. I know because my grandparents have talked about it.

@Quartz2208 The vulnerable group was much wider. The shielded group are much narrower and the criteria is strict. People with cancer undergoing chemo is hardly throwing everything at it. But I also know lots of people who meet the criteria to be in the shielded group have still not had texts or letters and the GP just tells them the government are sending them out. So I suspect it is more people than the government thinks.

breathless

I do care actually, more than you know. But I think you and a lot of others are reasoning from a place of blind hope and, more significantly, to desperation. You can't cope with what's happening now and you desperately want to believe there's a better alternative. That's not logical and you can see it playing out in all kinds of critical scenarios as a a very dangerous way to think. But as for the doctor who is thought to be cruel because she won't prescribe an addictive amount of morphine to a patient who can only think of what he's going through right now, the assumption is that anyone imposing lockdown doesn't get how much pain is causing. I get it. I am terrified for children who are not getting their daily relief from traumatic home environments and that's just the start. I simply do not think we have an alternative at this point that will lead to less suffering or indeed more money.

We're having a glimpse now of the death rate without a lockdown. And we're comforted by the knowledge that the effects of lockdown are starting to filter through. Perhaps that's allowing some of you to ignore just how expensive, chaotic and sad it is for so many people to be ill, dying, bereaved at once. Please understand, the virus was only getting started. The crab was just beginning to clamber out of the box. Our government has been horrendously inept with testing, tracking,tracing etc. That means the only thing left we have to sit on the box with is lockdown.

In six months, it's possible and quite likely we will have better understanding and treatments. That is one big reason to wait. We'll also have a better idea of when and if a vaccine is coming through, allowing us to make a better decision about whether we really have no option but to let vast numbers of people die (which is what will happen if lockdown were abandoned).

Another big reason to sit on the virus as much as we can for as long as we can. It's the kind of virus that may combine with other existing viruses to potentially create something much more serious. Impossible to know if this will happen but scientists are quite happy to acknowledge that this is always a possibility and never more so than during a pandemic with this type of virus.

It will kill me to do so but Dd6 is home until the risk is slim to none returning to the real world.

The risk is very low for children.

I guess to hell with the teachers and school staff then. That's me told that my health and safety isn't important, as long as parents get to pack their children off to school. And I have a DH who I would be seriously concerned about it he got sick and our own school aged children.