There’s now a strong chance schools will NOT go back full time in September

[Redolent]

Schools have been set up to fail by the careless summer relaxation of lockdown.

• No mandatory face masks in shops and indoors. The UK is an international outlier here.
• Reduction of 2m rule to 1m which is basically the normal distance people talk to each other. Factor in alcohol and social distancing is now non-existent in pubs and restaurants. Oh, and nobody cares about the 1m ‘plus’ bit. They just hear 1m.
• Reopening of too many indoor venues at once, including things like places of worship which are high-risk for transmission anyway.
• Bypassing the idea of social bubbles straight to unlimited two household meet-ups indoors. You can visit different pubs/restaurants over the weekend and go inside multiple households throughout the week. Zero attempt to break chain of transmission.
• No functioning app and poor test/trace system (see SAGE’s Stephen Reicher on the latter)
• ‘Pausing’ of shielding in August

All of the above will led to a rise in cases.

Meanwhile:

• Shit is absolutely hitting the fan in the United States, India, Pakistan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, other parts of the Middle East. Our quarantine policy is so terrible it may well be scrapped anyway. Will see more imported cases.
• The weather will turn cooler and allow perfect conditions for the virus to thrive

So by end of August/early September, our cases and hospitalizations will be rising significantly. Flu season will kick in. The NHS is already groaning under the weight of its huge 10million waiting list - another shut down cannot happen. A full time return to school under those circumstances will be untenable. Blended learning will see a turn as will part-time schooling.

YABU: we need to get the economy going in all its forms as quickly as possible, and schools will also go back with no issues.
YANBU: you cannot have things both ways. This summer relaxation is setting us up for an autumn/winter spike and more part-time schooling.

That is the standard government line though isn't it. Too early to compare numbers etc, especially after dropping comparison graphs themselves. Some of us can still decide that the management of this crisis has been much worse than most countries in Europe. I remember being incredulous when that American study predicted 60 odd thousand deaths by August. Not looking so far off now though😩

Supermarket workers have no PPE, in close contact with hundreds of adults

In my supermarket, they have visors and massive mastic screens between them and the customer at the till.

Didn’t Texas lock down and then lift the lockdown. I think their first wave might be as a result of releasing a lockdown that had cases under control.

Florida on the other hand seems to be showing signs of a second wave after releasing it’s restrictions when it’s cases were falling.

I think much more is know about the virus now and it appears the best defence is handwashing often and avoid touching the face. Our local school has had keyworker children in throughout and now has Yr 6 and another year group recently - they try social distancing but when children leave they are all outside together and despite this no cases of the virus. The infection levels are still falling.
Mass rallies and no spikes either.

We cannot lock away forever, people also die from many other causes and are doing so in numbers now higher than from covid other diseases/conditions need treatment.

We now have a couple of steroid treatment options. Oxygen rather than ventilators for most. Most people under 65 are not going to die. The very vulnerable can keep being really careful and safeguard themselves.
If small regional spikes then test and isolate quickly (although people moan about T&T the same people then moan that oh dear there is a Covid app on my phone... yep it's there for T&T.)

People need to work to live. Suicide deaths and mental health of people cannot be overlook and only covid matters.

Vaccine trials are ongoing.

Some positives are ongoing. The risk will not completely go and we cannot lockdown forever and ever.

PS The data on deaths also shows where the deaths are occurring. A lot of our unnecessary and unfortunate deaths were from sending people from hospital into care homes without PPE etc. Surely that won't happen again.

Much as I'd love you to be wrong, I can't see any other outcome either.

It's crazy.

I am planning on the assumption that schools will be back PT, anything else seems unrealistic. FT or not at all is just unrealistic.

The very vulnerable can keep being really careful and safeguard themselves.

How? Particularly in a school, with no SD, how?

My brothers medication production factory has 300+ workers all working closer than 2m - throughout the pandemic and throughout lock down since drugs are always necessary.

He hasn't had it and they have never needed to shut. They have strict hand washing and hat and mask procedures anyway and continue with that and it has worked. Obviously some unsanitary factories with large numbers will be different.

@Piggywaspushed

The very vulnerable don't return to school .... the vast majority of children and most teachers are not in the 'extremely vulnerable' with a government letter category anyway.

Perhaps rather than schools don't return fully the answer is that extremely vulnerable teachers don't teach - use supply or new teachers for close teaching - extremely vulnerable children also don't return. Many extremely vulnerable children have health related conditions that mean they often miss school and so home or separate provision needs to be sorted for them - remote teaching by the extremely vulnerable teachers perhaps?

Solutions can be found for this so that the vast majority of children and the vast majority of teachers can return to the classroom

Ah, I see : by very careful; I thought you meant while at work. There are 17m people in the vulnerable category. Apparently, many many of these are children and younger adults.

2.2 million are shielded. Quite a lot are children.

@Aesopfable

Understandably some teachers will be nervous about being the only? occupation indoor in close contact with over a 100 people during a day with no sd and no ppe either.

Supermarket workers have no PPE, in close contact with hundreds of adults and many Ignoring social distancing. And have been through the peak of the outbreak when infection rates were high.

They do in our local supermarkets. All wear masks and some also wear visors. Plus there are screens around the tills.

Where do you live that they don't have this?

The very vulnerable don't return to school .... the vast majority of children and most teachers are not in the 'extremely vulnerable' with a government letter category anyway

The extremely vulnerable received new letters today, and children in this category can return to school any time after 1 August as long as they are diligent in handwashing etc.

Currently shielded aduits can also follow the sort of advice as was in place for the general population during lockdown from the same date.

What is not clear is what happens when a previously shielded adult's workplace cannot be made adequately protected. Sick pay has been ruled out. I suppose it has to be a medical severance?

Supermarket workers have no PPE, in close contact with hundreds of adults

Fleeting contact with some form of PPE. Teachers are not to use PPE and will be in a room with 30 children - possibly adult sized ones - for up to 6 hours a day.

@scaevola

I saw a paper which said that spread is slower in warmer conditions.

So the rate here now is the slow one, because it's summer

If the study which showed that the rate of people having antibodies was about 17% in London and lower elsewhere (substantially lower outside cities) is correct, plus the ones which show that >60% of people lose their antibodies (more if a mild ie non-hospitalised case); then we could be in quite a difficult situation in the autumn and winter.

The NHS is certainly doing loads of contingency planning for autumn/winter, but I don't know how if that is prudent 'in case' planning or 'oh fuck tsunami 2 is inbound' planning.

Also, I'm trying to work out what they mean by the possibility of adding extra cohorts to the flu jab programme

From what friends and family who work for the NHS in hospitals (nurse practitioner, research nurse, covid ward nurse general nurse etc), many trusts are warning their staff as a huge second wave so I would go with "oh fuck tsunami 2 is inbound" planning from that information.

Many also feel the government is currently complicit in abandoning the most vulnerable in society (disabled, elderly, diabetic, immune compromised, heart condition, respiratory condition) as the NHS are preparing for second wave which will coincide with when shielding supposedly ends.
Before people say its fear mongering.. hopefully it's a over exaggeration and hopefully the second wave will just be a few small spikes and the NHS just end up over prepared.. but scientific and medical research suggests a second wave is very possible.

And not only are the government abandoning those above, theyve also abandoned mental health services at least in my county. They had already been stripped bare with a 2+ year waiting list for secondary (NHS) therapy. Due to lockdown it had been frozen with the intention to continue once lockdown was over. On monday I had a call from one of the therapists who work for community mental health who had been told that they were to DISCHARGE all patients regardless of how many sessions they had left/increased need due to lockdown. This suggests that in the past few weeks the government have slid in some form of legislation which means secondary care community mental health wont be able to provide adult therapy indefinitely. As this is a new rule which has only come into place in the past week or so. To compound the issue they have also been told once the services do reopen they will only be able to provide a maximum of 6 sessions and will no longer be able to extend the number of provided sessions on individual basis to meet need (nearly all therapists that I have been in contact with over the last 4 years, through work/research/or personal service use have ever been able to provide adequate therapy in under 6 sessions).

So the government are also abandoning those with mental health to. Suicides will increase exponentially if they havent already.

So although pubs are different to schools, they have been prioritised over most public services. As you could spend all afternoon sat in the pub 1 meter away from constantly changing strangers, but you cant sit 2 meters away from a therapist for 45 minutes.

Teachers could always buy their own masks at £2.99 from aldi? If they’re that concerned

We have been told we don’t need PPE.

We have been told we cannot wear PPE.

Offices, pubs, supermarkets, medical staff, other shops, even Amazon if their adverts are to be believed, have all done or are doing something to keep both staff and customers as safe as possible. Teachers on the other hand, in close contact with small and not so small insanitary human beings who will struggle to follow instructions in small spaces for hours and hours a day don’t need protecting. Why does a packer at Amazon working in a huge spacious building need protection but teachers don’t?

That does rather chime with the mood I've been picking up on.

Especially that we 'saved' the NHS by closing so much of it down.

People are getting it the wrong way around. Prior to Covid the economy was already suffering due to brexit and economists had predicted that it was going to suffer considerably more once we left at the end of 2020. Covid is equally a continent excuse as to why the economy is suffering so badly to hide the fact that it was going to be hugely hit by brexit and will also exacerbate the issue. But the economy was already going to spiral downwards (and had already started to and that's ignoring the huge levels of austerity and poverty which were already rife) without Covid being thrown into the mix.

The best defence against coronavirus isn’t hand washing and avoiding touching the face...as evidenced by outbreaks in abbatoirs where the air cooling systems keep aerosols in motion. Hand washing will do nothing here. Face masks are key, as well as things like natural ventilation.

FerventFox

I think you're on to something with that thought. There are two major hits to the economy on the brink of materialising. May as well get it all over in one miserable lump

nether, that's terrifying.

Who becomes responsible if the child doesn't wash its hands enough?

The Financial Times ran a piece on Mexico last week saying that its death rate isn’t expected to peak until August... (reopening while cases are still very high)

That we are expected to peak in August is because the curve was flattened. If the curve hadn't been successfully flattened, Mexico City would have had its peak in April, but with way more sick people than the health system could have attended. So far nobody has been refused medical treatment.

And yes the economy is starting to open up, but with social distancing, etc. etc. Interestingly enough, here social distancing is 1.50 metres and school are not going to open until we are in the clear and, even then, with social distancing.

Every country has its own particular circumstances and its own strategy for juggling a series of complex problems arising from this relatively unknown danger.

But be careful when reading about other countries in the media, please. Mexico has a relatively new government that inherited the country in ruins after at least eighteen years of rampant corruption.

Huge companies, such as Walmart and Cocacola, that hadn't paid their taxes in years, have been made to pay up.

So there are a lot of significant financial players wanting to get rid of our government so that they can go back to their old ways.

This covid is shit, but being ex-UK, I've been following the handling of the pandemic in the UK and, frankly, the UK government seem to have been improvising all along the way and not giving good leadership.

That would have been us, only much worse with no enough medical facilities, money being stolen left, right and centre and a huge national debt at the end of it, if we hadn't managed to finally vote a decent president in.

Shop assistants and cashiers have died at a higher than average rate, so I'm not sure using them as an example of getting teachers back is a good one.

Hopefully Starmer will appoint a new Shadow Education Secretary who is up to the job of extracting proper answers and policies from Government

My DDs primary headteacher has said our school will not be going back fulltime in September even if the government scrap SDing, she'll be 3 members of staff down (one ML, one retiring, one leaving teaching) and been unable to recruit due to the situation so they'll be short staffed until that's resolved they cannot open fulltime. We have 15 classes, so 17 teachers atm down to 14 and so we just can't cover the classes fulltime, some of those teachers are part time as well.

She said it's likely the younger years won't return fulltime until she's recruited, she's focusing on current Y5 (so Y6 from September) to get them in fulltime and the other years will have to manage parttime.

Not bashing the headteacher she's doing her best but it's a disgrace that my DDs education is going to suffer for at least the next term.