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.

Healthy people are not routinely dying from this illness. SOME healthy people are sadly dying, as they do from any illness. When I was a teenager I had a classmate whose younger sister died from chicken pox.

This virus is not indiscriminately killing people of all ages, and it certainly isn't indiscriminately killing children. The data tells you as much.

FGS quartz that is classic unreliable data. Those deaths happened While children were in lockdown!!

YANBU
And what w message it gives to the kids! That they need to wrapped in cotton wool.
There is no 'safe' and never has been.
I do worry about the effect all this paranoia will have on children.

We know quite a lot about it. We don't, in the UK, know for sure what our numbers are because our testing strategy is woeful. But we know who is more likely to get it, who is more likely to die from it and who is more likely to transmit it (probably not children). We know that certain environmental conditions (pollution) seem to coexist with high mortality rates. We know enough about how it behaves to be developing a vaccine. It's not a total mystery. It's not a different virus in Germany or China or Austria. Welcome to globalisation.

Policymaking is a balance. To go back to a previous example, if I was at department for transport and I didn't want 27000 people (probably healthy) to be killed or seriously injured a year, I'd ban private cars altogether. But they don't, because they have other 'benefits'.

You can't put education in stasis forever without having a bloody awful impact in other areas. And I'm not just talking about ability to work, I mean safeguarding and life chances for a raft of kids.

@piggywaspushed

Really you are saying that you cant read anything into the statistics from different countries (all of whom had different lockdowns) at all as an overall understanding of how it affects the under 19s.

Firstly many infections would have occured before the lockdown took place.

Also the dataset as a whole (barring keyworkers) for each country is under the same conditions. So arguably yes there could be more deaths from children if lockdown wasnt operational but the ratio would remain in range

England has 0.05% of deaths under 19
New York has 0.04% of deaths under 17

Why are you so desperate to say that children die from this - can you show me data then that proves mine wrong. Because arguing its unreliable due to lockdown doesn't actually change underlying percentages.

So am I , but there's been a lot of coverage of the fear factor. People are now irrationally scared because of individual tragic cases. I'm certainly putting my kids back in school.

I'm not quartz it's just bad data, as is the much touted UCL report which again was done while countries were in lockdowns (and not during Covid) and schools closed and didn't say what people said it said.

I certainly do not want to say children die from this in large numbers and never did say that. I just want to be clear that there is not reliable data and sending them back to school en masse feels a little bit too much like a field experiment to me.

Happily, no sensible country has done that.

@piggywaspushed

How is the number of deaths of under 19s in England bad data? It is raw factual data that hasnt been interpreted or modelled

I agree data can be interpreted incorrectly (and indeed my 0.05% is likely to be wrong once care home data etc is in) and the modelling can be questionable but I really dont see how you can see this as bad data

Unless you are saying that are numbers that are hidden?

www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/

I will be sending mine back as soon as they open.

Interested to know how many parents who would happily send their kids back to a germ pit are also cautiously keeping 2m apart in the supermarket, avoiding touching public handrails and pelican crossing buttons and so on
I am keeping 2 metres away from people because I know that some people are really scared of this virus and I don't want to upset/worry them but if someone brushed past me in a supermarket or on my walk then it wouldn't worry me in the slightest. As for handrails and pelican crossing buttons I have been touching them as usual, in fact I have been doing everything as usual (as far as the rules allow) whilst trying to be mindful of those at risk, so washing my hands a lot more and keeping 2 metres apart for their benefit.

We have 2 healthy adults under 40 who both exercise regularly, have no underlying health conditions and are not overweight and 2 healthy young children living in our house. We are at more risk of breaking our necks falling down the stairs than we are from dying of covid 19. Of course lots of people are at risk or have those that are at risk living in their house and I completely understand the worry and precautions taken by them but for everyone else it's just a case of risk assessment, and the risk is low.

No, just that they don't reflect a non lockdown scenario.

Bad data might be an overstatement.

Read Caroline Criado Perez on why medical 'data' about women's health is flawed. it's rather frightening... and prescient...

Piggy, there is no data from a 'non-lockdown', because as far as I am aware there is no country that has not had some modifications to behaviour as a result of C19, either mandated or not. I'm not clear what you're saying? All we have is modelling.

The data is sex disaggregated. So also not clear where your link to CCP's book is. When the care home data is in we are likely to see an increase in female deaths (as is mostly women in care homes). So far data seems to be showing more women infected but more men dying, which makes sense from what we know about co-morbidity.

but surely you can see that the ratio is not likely to get worse with schools @piggywaspushed data from a lot of countries regarding this is consistent with ours. Each with varying lockdown conditions

That and the fact that lockdown stopped the growth the infections we see now occured before lockdown occurred.

The risks opening schools are more due to the concept of spread and the teachers who work there not the children themselves

I agree with OP I have to say. Do people realise it could be years?! You may as well remove your children from the school environment completely then...
A school near me has confirmed they will not be opening until there is a vaccine I was very

(It will be essential any vaccine is also tested on women though)

A question to those who are saying the vaccine may never come or will take a long, long time - what are the shielding group actually meant to do???

The countries you named all have tight lockdown .

Nonethless I tend to agree the higher risk is to adults.

mitsy I find that extraordinarily hard to believe. Are you SURE that's exactly what was said?

The problem is that there are a significant number of usually healthy people who fall into the vulnerable group for covid19.

I think this is a problem -and it being unclear, for some conditions for asthma which is very common, how much of a risk there is.

Many teachers and pupils will also be living with people with underlying health conditions and working out how much of a risk bringing it back to house and thus risk to relatives is hard.

I don't think there necessailly has to be a vaccine -a drug regimen from existing drugs or other treatment options that impoved survial rates or a decent testing, tracing and isolation program keeping infection rates low would also be possibilities that allow more normal mixing levels with lower risk.

Just to add too. What happens to the mum who's child is asymptomatic and brings it home from school. She makes her mum moderately ill. Her mum doesn't need to go to hospital but she's absolutely exhausted and can't get out of bed. She's struggling to catch her breath and could no way feed, bath or dress her child and entertain them. The baby needs a bottle and a nappy change etc?

This is another factor. It's ok the kids being ok but we don't want tons of parents at home for three weeks trying to feel well enough to move.

Also the keyworker kids. Their parents are amazing selfless beings. But they could also infect teachers and parents if their mum's or dads bring it home and they go to school asymptomatic.

It will be too costly economically and educationally for the government to impose long term restrictions, or for many organisations to maintain closure / operations from home / social distancing. We will have to “re open” long before prospect of vaccine or “cure”.

So individuals and families will need to make our own decisions about risks, eg loss of job/income/education vs risk of exposure to the virus.

Read Caroline Criado Perez on why medical 'data' about women's health is flawed. it's rather frightening... and prescient...

Criado-Perez's book is excellent, and also totally irrelevant here, demonstrating clearly that you're throwing in all kinds of bullshit and rather undermining any claim to a solid argument.

A question to those who are saying the vaccine may never come or will take a long, long time - what are the shielding group actually meant to do???
Well, the original 12 week shielding was, I'm assuming, designed to allow the NHS to get up to full capacity - as we were never going to have a vaccine or herd immunity by that stage.
So they can either, if they are able, continue shielding till the risk of catching it is lower (either because more people have had it, or because there's a vaccine) OR they can go out/continue social distancing/act as previously, with the slight reassurance that, although they are likely to get very sick, the NHS will be better able to care for them.

enjoying sun

I don't think there necessailly has to be a vaccine -a drug regimen from existing drugs or other treatment options that impoved survial rates or a decent testing, tracing and isolation program keeping infection rates low would also be possibilities that allow more normal mixing levels with lower risk.

I agree.

I also think they need to properly analyse the data to see what underlying conditions caused issues and what underlying conditions people simply died with. My Grandad died of pneumonia with both prostate cancer and diabetes - neither played a part in his death

There must be enough European data in to make some decent assessments as to actual risk going forward

Criado-Perez's book is excellent, and also totally irrelevant here

Not totally irrelevant.
If we had already collected sex disaggregated data on immune responses we'd have a better idea why men and women respond differently.
If we extrapolated and collected ethnicity disaggregated data we'd learn more about who's more vulnerable and why, and not throw BAME adults under the bus as usual.