Surprised at healthy people saying they won’t send dc to school until there’s a vaccination

[sunshineanddaffodils]

I absolutely understand that if your dc has a health condition there’s no way you would put in any situation where they could catch covid. Likewise if you or your partner have a health condition or other vulnerable dc. However I am baffled as to why you would not want your healthy dc getting back to school and their friends ASAP but want to wait for a vaccination. That could be years! As long as the vulnerable population remains safe self isolating I cannot understand why there is such horror at the thought of schools reopening.

One son has asthma. He's not in the shielding category but, neverthless, it's unknown territory and I'm not prepared to take that gamble without some protections in place.

@middleager I understand why you'd want to protect your son - I'd be the same. I'm just wondering why parents with dc with no health complications are so reluctant.

The chance of my children catching botulism from honey was absolutely tiny, I still didn't give them any until they were over 1. Same as avoiding certain foods when pregnant - tiny chance of harming the baby, but you still wouldn't take the chance. I also had people ask me whether I should be drinking coffee while pregnant. You can't win really - you're judged when you make a decision which might carry a tiny risk, and then we're now being judged for potentially making decisions to avoid tiny risks.

Funnily enough, not all families are the same or have the same factors to consider.

I home educate my ds due to SEN, my dd goes to school. Obviously I'm in the fortunate position that since I don't 'work' the school closures have minimal impact on me.

Obviously we've had to stay away from family because of the lockdown but this causes my ds serious distress. He knows why he can't go but it's affecting his mental health.

Now if the schools go back and the lock down is eased, we still won't be able to visit those relatives for maybe a year because we'll still need to protect the older relatives but my dd, by being in school, will be the biggest infection factor. Keeping in mind that there will likely be a phased return so maybe a few days a week. Not exactly a full education. So far increased infection potential for minimal educational gain.

I'm also worried that one relative in particular who is probably the most at risk in our family but who has a very strong relationship with my ds, is going to say sod it and take the risk if the separation goes on for much longer.

So, I'm in a real quandary in that ideally I'd want to keep dd home for longer so that when restrictions are eased ds can visit his relatives but if they go back soon she may be in danger of losing her school place if I did that.

But life is about taking tiny risks, no one doesn't put their kids in a car just in case they die in a car accident, plane crash on the way to their holiday in Malaga, don't go to a park just in case the kids trips and hits their head. Life is mitigating risk and getting on with it.

YANBU. The stats on the news 2 days ago said that 90% of all deaths were people with a pre-existing condition and over 50% of deaths were people over 80 years old. I'm not denying the tragedy for the families who've lost people, but but the risk is still relatively tiny for younger healthy people.

Even if there is a vaccine it’s likely it will only be given to high risk people at first until enough can be produced and distributed for everyone. That could take years, people are going to have to go about normal life in the meantime.

Are you going to send your children back to school asap OP?

The fact that this could mutate once again and even again after that could mean any vaccine is pointless .
We are a low risk family so I would consider sending dd in without a vaccine if it’s deemed safe to do so .

You can’t keep a whole nation off school indefinitely just so you can visit your elderly relatives.

You do know relatively young, perfectly healthy people are dying in statistically significant numbers don’t you?

This happens daily from other things too. Suicide, RTAs, sudden adult death, heart attacks etc. Life is all about risk and managing risk. Statistically very very few people under 60 with a healthy bmi and no underlying health issues have died.

but are healthy young people dying at a statistically significant rate.

8 under 19 have died over the course of this (in England). All sad and horrible but I think only the 13 year old did not have underlying conditions.

We do really have to face up to the horrible and unpalatable truth that we are going to have to learn to live with this - like we have had to learn (and how many alive still are) many diseases in the past. I agree @TobyeBella life is about risk and this is one I fear we are going to have to get on with.

Because come July time the dangers of not are worse

I suspect as well that we have had it (untested but spoke to 111 and GP re symptoms) as did my DD

@Speedqueen2 don’t forget over 3 quarters of those who have died were over weight or obese .

www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/

This is interesting its US data comparing deaths from COVID with Flu etc this year.

Yes @sunshine that's my intention. To force all families in the uk to follow the same plan as me because of my specific situation

Ideally I would like some leeway so that head teachers could make individual judgements for children for a variety of reasons as to why they can keep their school places and yet stay at home.

Honestly if there is no vaccine I doubt people genuinely will keep their kids off indefinitely. It would be crazy to just reopen schools tomorrow not because children would be particularly at risk but because it would put teachers, parents and the healthcare service in danger. I imagine what we'll see is a phased reintroduction of schools along with other economic activity when we have a sufficiently low infection rate and an improved testing capacity with a prolonged lockdown for those most at risk.

Remember also that it's massively silly to just look at "death rates" with covid. We need to look at hospitalisation rates and understand what the system can cope with. The very old and frail actually cause less of an issue as they tend to die within a week (those who don't are probably sufficiently weakened by the disease they'll die fairly soon after). The young and healthy who need intensive help can linger on for a long time slowly improving and consuming a huge amount of resources.

I have told my work that I intend to continue working from home with my 1 and 2 year old sons until this virus is under control. My youngest has an inhaler due to coughing so hard he vomits with every cold and my husband is nearly 50 despite me being in my early 30's. I am not waiting for a vaccine but I will not send my sons into nursery until we have widespread testing capabilities in place at the very least and the death rate reduces dramatically. My families welfare is more important than the 1% making some more money.

Families, and people who work in schools, will need to make difficult choices.

For those of us in paid work, employers will revise their policies on location of work and caring for DC if working at home. Employers are unlikely to endorse the latter once most DC are back in school.

vampyress That may well not be acceptable to your employer: if so you would need to choose between staying in your current job or being AH.

OP, people have answered your question directly by saying 'because healthy people die of this illness' in significant numbers. You've ignored that response which suggests that you don't want to understand and you've started a thread to criticise others and tell everyone what to do (you've already used the word hysteria-bingo) under the guise of trying to 'understand'.

If you want to get on your soap box, stop being so disingenuous and start a more honest thread.

I have found this virus an eye opener on how other people perceive risk. I wonder if the people who are saying they won’t send their kids to school allow them to travel by car or cross roads? The risk are almost non existent for children with no underlining conditions. People die every day from all sort that no one seems to mention or get worried about.

@0v9c99f9g9d939d9f9g9h8h but do they in comparison to everything else

And given that we are talking about schools this is about healthy people under 60 who will be in the school environment. Where is the data to actually support the fact that healthy people are dying of this in high numbers

I look at data and I am not saying there arent deaths in this area because there are. But enough to actually say we need to stop everything until there is a vaccine?

Now there should be leeway and it should be planned (and nothing should happen this half term) but at some point we are doing to have to face this

I intend to continue working from home with my 1 and 2 year old sons until this virus is under control.
How will you know it's under control? What's your definition of under control? Will you accept the government saying it is, or do you have a separate definition?

I'd love to see the stats on deaths for healthy children from CV and from RTAs, and ditto for women in a relationship from DV and from CV.

Because we’ve been scared into complying with the lockdown and people are very very bad at assessing specific risk related to them and their situation. Evidence above by some of the “going to school is potential suicide”. Many people just aren’t very smart.