AIBU to think that schools can't return to normal while social distancing remains?

[LockdownLoppy]

So many people want schools back to normal in September but how can they be? Even if social distancing was reduced to 1 meter it's still going to be a logistic nightmare for schools to manage and a long way from normal.
I have a child in year 10 and a child in year 7 who attends a special school due to autism and severe learning difficulties. They will both have a few check-in sessions in the last few weeks of term but it's going to be a world away from normal.
People are demanding the full reopening of schools but I just can't see how it can be done - do they just want to end all social distancing in schools and return to normal?
AIBU to think we can't have social distancing and schools open and working at full capacity?

Hear hear, Chessie. Many people are talking as though no risks other than Covid exist.

@Aragog

When was the last time you went to a zoo confused

Granted not yet since they opened under new measures on Monday.
But normally, fairly regularly and due to go a week on Sunday actually.

There are no enclosed buildings full of 32 people. All indoor buildings in zoos are not allowed to be open at the moment.

They are outdoor. At present only outdoor parts of zoos are open and no playgrounds in them can be used.

The zoos have had to put measures in place to ensure social distancing to 2 metres. I have seen videos and photographs of the one I am heading to and it is clear they have made several changes to the route around the park and footpaths, and they have closed some of the shows, etc where people normally sit close together. They appear to be doing a good job of ensuring SD between groups from what we can see online.

The zoo staff have masks and some have gloves in all the photographs being posted.

So yes, I have been in both schools and zoos before social distancing and even then they were not comparable. Since SD they will be totally different.

I’ll await the horror on MN the day after at pictures in the press of people gathered closely around the monkey enclosure...

But as someone who is clinically vulnerable but not shielded I can minimise a lot of those risks. I can be vaccinated against the most common forms of flu. I can be vaccinated against chicken pox if I had no immunity to it, which I can check.

If I return back to school now I have some options:

1. Go in taking my medication as normal and risk becoming serious ill if I contract Covid.

1. Go in and stop taking my medication which could lead to a flare up of my health condition, and could make it so that my joints become damaged longer term resulting in disability in the future.

At present, because we still need to provide home learning, and we have enough staff to cover the full capacity school bubbles, I can work from home. Infact even if I wasn't vulnerable it would make sense for me, due to my role and specialisms, to wfh and not be in a class.

Come September I need to have another serious talk to my consultant, if we do go back as normal as school (including myself) is hoping.

Lots of key worker children are at school. They are the riskier ones. They are not distancing in our local school for key worker children as they are still catching nits from each other . No sign that children of doctors are infecting their teachers or nannies and those people are dying or becoming seriously ill. We just need to scrap SD in schools. I am pregnant and totally happy about the idea that I will put my daughter in pre school in September - the risks are so low.

@Fedup21

Many people seem to want social distancing in their own workplaces (or long term working from home) and when out and about to keep themselves safe.

They want schools to go back as normal, however, with no social distancing at all-including wraparound care and clubs, mixing with huge numbers of children and staff!

Safety is obviously very important for their workplace, but not for those working in a school...

But I think the point that so many people keep missing is that it isnt all or nothing. By social distancing in other workplaces (or out and about) where it's possible, we will massively reduce the risks of corona virus infections in places where it's not possible. It shouldn't keep being a conversation of "if you can do x here, you should be able to do x here." We have to make separate risk assessments which when put together keep the national spread very low.

When we are talking about the NHS not being overwhelmed, we need to think more widely than just ICU. We also need to think about the effects of having a significant number of people who need longterm rehabilitation and disability support.

When we are thinking about children we need to consider not just the risk to them of illness and potential lifelong effects but also the effect to their lives if they have a mild illness but a parent ends up with permanent health issues.

Thinking of a colleague of mine who still has breathing difficulties, cardiovascular issuesand malfunctioning kidneys after 11 weeks of illness. The doctors seem to suggest the scarring to lungs and heart problems may be permanent.

Thankfully, her youngest is 20 years old. Imagine he'd been 6. Are we seriously saying having his mum that ill, and possibly for the rest of his childhood, would not have impacted him? Do young children live in a vacuum?

Another colleague suffering all of the above and also recurring fever after 11 weeks of illness is much younger, about the age of many mums of school-age children.

I can see the rationale for opening schools: I can not see one for doing it without stringent precautions. If anything happens to the grown-ups, the children will suffer.

@Aragog it’s quite clear No one here cares about the staff at all.

Exactly. Schools can only be normal in September if SD is scrapped. The govt don't know yet whether they can as they won't know what the infection rates are like in the UK by then. Even with low infection rates, track and trace will need to work properly for SD to go.

Therefore, poor schools are preparing for worst case scenario of 2 metre SD in September (while praying for a miracle where COVID goes away) which in a practical sense can only mean minimal attendance and online lessons.

[quote LegallyBlue]@TrustTheGeneGenie Imagine if you understood how numbers work. On average, about 2000 children per year die in car accidents in the UK. If we open schools without social distancing, imagine that just one child dies from coronavirus - just one. That wouldn't prevent anyone dying in a car accident. So, the total deaths of children would go from 2000 to 2001. Do you see how 2001 is the higher number? That means a child died because of the lack of social distancing in schools - the number who die in car accidents is irrelevant.[/quote]
So we do NOTHING ever again in case a child dies? Because any one child dying is one more than zero so is too many?

Scrap it because it's not happening already. The bubbles thing is all fine and well but I look after two kids who are in two different bubbles at school and then lots of kids all walk home together who aren't in the same bubbles so honestly what is the point ??

We don't vaccinate against chickenpox in this country because the low number of deaths in childhood due it is seen as acceptable trade off to guard against the elderly getting shingles which is more dangerous for them.

That apparently is OK, but one death from corona is not.

It's been quite obvious how little regard a lot of people have for children. Children are viewed as dirty and germ ridden and aren't allowed in shops for fear they might infect people.

Not at all. Children (not yours necessarily, but children and teenagers in general) often don’t have the best hygiene practices or self-control. Not because they’re disgusting: because they’re children and they’re still learning.

@Mummabeary I agree this is all about keeping transmission down and it not in the community.

Somethings like Supermarkets have been open all the way through because they are necessary.

The next stage is getting all children as much as possible back to full time education in school. And that means no social distancing. In order to make this as safe as possible offices etc should be sticking to as few people as possible to reduce transmission where you can.

And at the moment the biggest risk to the health of children is education still not continuing in September

The comparison with chicken pox is quite instructive. Every year a handful of people die of chicken pox, including children. If you get it as an adult it's nasty; a colleague of mine did a few years ago and had to have three weeks off work, and wasn't really right for months.

But we don't close schools if there's an outbreak, even though it's very contagious. What's more, there is a vaccine and it isn't routinely given in this country (essentially to protect older people from shingles). We seem to have no problem with the cost-benefit analysis there, no-one wrings their hands and says we can't possibly even risk one person dying. I don't know why we've abandoned all risk analysis for Covid.

(Full disclosure, I had DD vaccinated against chicken pox privately, because I remember being miserable with it for a week as a child. But if there were no vaccine, l would not be refusing to send her to school in case she caught it.)

Yup. When my youngest had chickenpox, it was at the same time as 6 of her friends in preschool. No one even batted an eyelid. Some were very poorly, others less so. It is seem as an acceptable risk that some children will die in order to strengthen community immunity to protect elderly people from shingles.

Get rid of social distancing get schools open, get the NHS functioning properly let's just get back to normal. Enough now
The virus is not going to stop being a threat just because people are fed up of it! There are still over 4000 new infections every day in the UK with hundreds being admitted to hospital every day. Over 50 thousand people have died. And many that have survived have been left with serious complications.
Unchecked covid has a reproduction rate of over 3. Which means 4000 people will. Infect 12000, those 12,000 will infect 36k, they will go onto infect 108, 000 and so on.
At the moment the rate is almost. 1. It needs to go well below 1 for it to no longer be a threat. I cant see that happening while people are saying they don't need to bother anymore.

I don't think you can compare it to chickenpox. Most adults have immunity to chickenpox. That's not the case with covid because it's a new virus. I don't think children are at risk at school but the staff are and the families of the children. Children can still carry the virus even if they are unlikely to get it. So can pass it bereren themslwves.to staff and to their families without anyone knowing.

And at the moment the biggest risk to the health of children is education still not continuing in September

At the moment the biggest risk is social isolation and lack of fitness, as that is current and harmful and of course those things can be addressed with difficulty for privileged kids today. Come September though, as you say the bigger risk is lack of education.

DD has a friend who has permanent brain damage and learning difficulties from chicken pox complications. 2 others ended up in hospital.

And as an adult it awful (I had it at 21 from my mother!) and I am sure where it not for the fact we get childhood immunity it could be very nasty for the elderly population

@Nonnymum

But there is no evidence that those teachers who are looking after key workers' kids are getting Covid at a high rate. Don't you think that there would be evidence if Covid was massively spreading in schools?

Do you think that the french government (who are about 3 weeks ahead of us) are playing fast and loose with teachers' lives as they return to a relatively normal school environment?!

I agree with you op, and I dont understand people moaning "Children are at the bottom of the pile, and have been treated appallingly"! I'd love to know how they thought this pandemic was going to go. How their children were going to bd prioritised and sent back to school. It's just idiotic. People are also saying how awful it is their school has told their year 12s that they have now left. What did they want schools to do. They have left. They must have expected that when exams were cancelled. I'm glad this thread has come up

I want socially distancing scalped. I want my 2 year 7 children back at school, I want them seeing their friends and I want them learning again. They have suffered significantly over the last 3 months. Sepeyember is another 3 months away.
I want my year 6 son back full time. I want him to be able to have a proper transition to secondary school. He had ADHD and ASD and we have had no prep and he is just expected to turn up in September.
I want my baby back in nursery. She has forgotten who everybody is. The ones who were closest to her, she now cries at.
I want to return to work properly. I'm calling the majority of my service users over the phone. They need face to face. I have had ot deal with suicides and overdoeses over the last few months.
I think everything needs to get back to normal because we are now going to face a mental health epidemic from the fallout from lockdown nd job losses. We need to get services up and running properly so people can get the sippprt they need. The NHS back to normal so people can have the ops they have been waiting for to improve their quality of life.
The longer we carry on like this the more the above risks increase.

@quartz2208 Yes I totally agree. I keep feeling annoyed when I see people say we would have to scrap social distancing/2m rule to get schools back. Why can't we keep those rules where we can but scrap it in schools where we cant as by doing the former will help the latter! @

Nonnymum, the vast majority of serious cases and deaths are older adults. For my age group (mid-forties) and younger it looks no more serious than chicken pox, and the total number of deaths in the under-60s has been 253 so far (that figure may be slightly out of date). Schools vary, but at DD's school most of the teachers are significantly younger than I am and the TAs are mostly around my age. I think we need a more nuanced consideration of actual risks and not headline death figures. There aren't many teachers over 70, which is when the risks really start to increase.

Greggers....theres a lot of "I want" in your post. Have you considered how you getting want you want would affect others? Every kind of your "wants" affects other people and increases the risk of covid. Do you think covid has gone away somehow?