Nurseries back before schools?

[Russell19]

A friend of mine keeps saying nurseries and early years will be the first to go back.

AIBU in thinking this can't be right?!

Why would the smallest people who have no idea about social distancing and share saliva, toys etc. all the time be the first to go back? I get childcare problems but if we are looking at it from a health perspective surely older children would be best to go back first?

Nursery workers may feel like they’re being thrown to the wolves but what is the alternative? Nurseries closing until a vaccine happens (if it happens) - you’ll be out if a job then.

Ethelfleda agreed. Everyone is obsessed with COV19 at the moment and no thought to other issues..

For those who are very interested you can find all the latest stats here
www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/

To be fair, there is a lot of conflicting ‘expert’ advice out there and different opinions, as well as different agendas.

No one can say with any certainty whether it is safe to open nurseries and schools or not. Some expert advice suggests that it is probably safe, and for the sake of the economy, it looks like everyone will have to risk it.

I have more to gain by opening, of course. But it does feel a bit like an experiment.

@edgeware i think you are right. For nursery workers (and many others), it is return to work or quit. The alternative - stay at home on full or 80% pay - just isn’t feasible.
Either business reopen, or they make people redundant. There is no other choice, even if it sucks.

EYProvider but what do we consider 'safe'? Granted if you have some underlying health concern you might want to think twice about going back to work with children but if you are outwardly fit and healthy it shoudn't be a massive 'safety' issue.
If you check out the stats of those who have died so far more than 50% were over 80. 39% were aged 60-79. So that's 11% of the deaths are of people under 60.
So 78% of the UK's population is aged under 60- that's about 51 million people.
So of the 51 million people aged under 60 in the UK 1,800 have died of COVD19. That's 0.0035% of the population under 60 has died of COVID19.
I don't see that as being 'thrown to the wolves' or a safety issue.

@MotherofDinosaurs I love our 17mo to the ends of the earth; we fought for years to conceive her and will need treatment again to give her a sibling.

However, I’m a full time teacher trying to work from home and aside from the guilt I feel at putting her in front of CBeebies for hours a day, she keeps gatecrashing my teaching videos! Even when DP doesn’t have any work so is at home, our house is open plan apart from the bedrooms and bathroom, so she keeps making an appearance just when I’m explaining equivalent fractions or similar 😂

I think the concept of social distancing has taken on a life of its own and everyone now thinks we will all have to stay 6ft away from everyone else forever or risk certain death.

My understanding is that the purpose of social distancing was to reduce the number of contacts people had at a population level and drive down the R value of the virus.

The idea that nurseries can’t social distance and therefore can not reopen is flawed. No one is expecting small children to socially distance, it would be completely unworkable.

If those that can socially distance do so then they will continue to lower the overall number of contacts that are occurring at a population level which will assist in keeping the R level down. This will help to compensate for those areas where social
Distancing is not possible.

Other mechanisms for keeping the R level will be introduced such as the testing and tracing programme and the app.

If we keep R below 1 we should have very few cases of the virus circulating in the community and therefore no-one will be “thrown to the wolves” because the risk of coming into contact with the virus even if you cannot socially distance will be low.

Obviously there will be some individuals with a high individual risk profile for whom it would not be appropriate return to an environment where they could not socially distance and those will have to be dealt with on a case by case basis.

@EYProvider I agree. I work in a nursery and as much as I want to get back to work it doesn't feel safe yet especially as the daily death toll is still high.Think ppl are being to blase now, just see the figures as a number and not someones loved one.
How can they even say we are out of the peak with our continued death toll rate?

happyandsingle
Have you read this?
Granted if you have some underlying health concern you might want to think twice about going back to work with children but if you are outwardly fit and healthy it shoudn't be a massive 'safety' issue.
If you check out the stats of those who have died so far more than 50% were over 80. 39% were aged 60-79. So that's 11% of the deaths are of people under 60.
So 78% of the UK's population is aged under 60- that's about 51 million people.
So of the 51 million people aged under 60 in the UK 1,800 have died of COVD19. That's 0.0035% of the population under 60 has died of COVID19.
I don't see that as being 'thrown to the wolves' or a safety issue

Also, it isn’t safe yet because the numbers of new infections are too high. They will continue to come down and the testing and tracing will therefore (hopefully) be more effective in keeping the R value low.

@MrPickles73 - Yes, those statistics would suggest that it is probably safe. Other experts cite different statistics to reach a different conclusion.

My point is, it’s too early and the statistics are too unproven, for anyone to state with any certainty that it is safe.

The UK is in a very different position to Denmark or Germany, because the whole thing has been handled very badly by the government and there are far more deaths as a result.

I think the government wants to open up nurseries and schools, and that they have a long line of angry financiers screaming at them to do so.

But whoever makes that call will need to have the type of steely resolve that no one in this government seems to have. Thatcher would have done it - I doubt whether Boris has the guts to actually make the decision. That’s why they’re all so dithering - they’re all too frightened to make a decision and stick to it.

In the news this morning that primaries will be the first back....don't know how true it is.

They are theorising that evidence is emerging that children under 5 both contract it less and spread it less, new theories on the broadcast yesterday from Jenny Harries

But what about the hundreds of staff that work in schools/nurseries?

The low R level should operate to protect staff to an extent because there will not be large amounts of the virus circulating in the community.

I think the idea of social distancing has become one of personal protection for many but really (as I understand it) it’s about lowering the number of contacts at population level to get the R value down.

The R value is now below 1 which is what lockdown set out to achieve. Ongoing social distancing will be about keeping the R value below 1 as things move forward.