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.

I posted this in another thread, as to why teachers had concerns. Remember we can’t wear PPE....and nobody came up with a similar working environment. They tried and tried. Classrooms and corridors are small, classes are big. They practically sit on each other’s knees. It’s this close contact in small areas that spreads the virus.

Name me one other work place where you will be closeted with 30 odd different people five times a day. Who cram the corridors to bursting at changeover. Who don’t really care about hygeine?

Being stuck in a room with a lot of other people in close contact is what spreads the virus. And in a school that can mean 25 sets of different students in a week for one teacher.

That’s 750 close contacts in an enclosed area in one week. And then there’s the corridors...

@loulouljh the risk of transmission is increased when you are indoors for an extended period of time with an infected person. Typically supermarket workers have transitory interactions (often less than 15mins) with many people. School staff have prolonged interaction in close proximity (we are being asked to sit next to the child to hear them read so not distanced at all then) with no PPE and studies have shown children are more likely to be asymptomatic so we won’t necessarily know if they’ve got the virus. The jury is still out on how children transmit the virus to adults particularly for age 10+ I think that’s been a big factor in secondary schools not opening more widely yet.

Stop scaremongering OP

myohmywhatawonderfulday
In my opinion, there will never be a second national lockdown again partly because the Union's have made the return to school so difficult.

Wow you have really been sucked in.

The unions have not said they won’t go back to school - they want it to be done safely for their members (the teaching staff), other adults and children. The government needs to engage with all unions. They have already started to say that cleaning and extra protections will have to come out of existing school budgets.

Aside from that, it will be relatively safe for the pupils to go back to school, but they will be coming home and affecting the adults they then come into contact with.

Let’s get children back into school ASAP, but ensure that there is dialogue between all stakeholders and less political game playing (and by that, I mean Cummings and Co!). Unfortunately, years of underfunding has contributed to this perfect storm.

Venustiger, that graph is for last weeks cases.

Why are teachers at any more risk than any other worker? the supermarket workers for example? They are not!!!! Everyone has some risk. We have to live with that

Nobody has said they are more at risk. It’s about what is being put in place to protect workers and mitigate risk.

My supermarket has workers wearing gloves and visors and working behind plastic screens, as well as vast restrictions on numbers in the store at once.

If employees need protection like that, then all employees do, not just some of them.

FINALLY SOME SENSIBLE POSTS. WILL EVERYONE STOP THINKING EUROPE IS BACK TO NORMAL ESPECIALLY WITH SCHOOLING THEY AREN'T NOR WILL THEY BE IN SEPTEMBER, THEY HAVE FAR LESS TRANSMISSION, ESTABLISHED TRACK AND TRACE AND MOSTS SCHOOLS AREN'T BACK AND PLANS FOR SEPTEMBER ARE WITH LOTS OF MITIGATION STRATEGIES! LIFE IS NOT NORMAL IN A PANDEMIC!!!

When Texas reopened end of April/start of May, they were making many of the same points here about the importance of getting the economy going. Which is valid, but they didn’t do it sensibly. Barely any masks for a start, and bars/restaurants were packed out. Indoors, which is the highest risk.

Now their covid hospitalisations are so high that their Children’s Hospital has started admitting adults. The latest message from the governor is ‘stay at home’. They’ve started to mandate masks, about two months too late (I can see that happening here). That would have been unthinkable only two weeks ago. But I guess when there’s a risk that your child’s leukaemia treatment will have to wait because there are 50 year olds in the hospital who contracted the virus in a pub, all bets are off.

The only thing that would alleviate the situation for the UK is efficient local lockdown, but this headline today isn’t exactly inspiring:

‘’Whitehall not sharing Covid-19 data on local outbreaks, say councils”.

@TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince what graph?

Name me one other work place where you will be closeted with 30 odd different people five times a day. Who cram the corridors to bursting at changeover. Who don’t really care about hygeine?

A factory.

Define Safe

Compare risk of COVID to crossing the road for a primary aged child

I think that perceptions have become very badly distorted

• due to shit messaging from the UK government
• due to social media bubbles during lockdown

In my opinion, there will never be a second national lockdown again partly because the Union's have made the return to school so difficult.

Wow, some people really do believe everything they read in the Daily Mail, don’t they?

The number of key worker children was small in my school during lockdown. Our intake is 630 but at the height of the pandemic we only had 10-15 children in. We could then distance these children using the 2m rule. Pupil numbers have increased as measures are lifted and now the head has actively encouraged parents to send children in for key workers and the returning year groups. This means that the data from lockdown isn’t comparable to the situation we will have in September (30 in a class) even if parents don’t all send their children back.

A factory will have social distancing in place, and facilities for handwashing.

Schools don’t.

A factory

Like where all the very recent outbreaks of Covid are being found?

@TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince

Could you please disclose anything at all about what they may be thinking re-GCSE and A-level assessments for next year? Anything at all? I have a Year 10 and 12 and it would be good to have some idea.

I completely agree with @seenbeensbean. Obviously, education for all children is important and as a former early years teacher, I could never have imagined saying this, but the priority has to be next year's GCSE and A-Level students.

@TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince you haven't been in a factory then.

YABVU
You are scaremongering there are no facts in your post and you give no sources for your statements. This serves no purpose other than to worry people and there is enough of that at the moment.

Reopening of too many indoor venues at once, including things like places of worship which are high-risk for transmission anyway.

Hopefully, when it gets to the "Let us offer each other a sign of peace" people will do the right thing and do a Corona elbow bump. If they go back to handshaking that's the autumn 2nd spike almost guaranteed.

Oaktree CAPS DOESN'T MAKE IT TRUE

@Letseatgrandma no, they've been found in slaughterhouses where environment is cold and wet.

COVID is here to stay

we have to learn to live with it

• hand washing
• more hand washing
• not sharing food
• more hand washing

Measles has only been a human disease for 800 years
the vaccine is great
but parents still choose to risk it

COVID is just another disease
the next one may be worse
we need to learn to operate in an infectious world

It’s the fact that barely any one in these places - Arizona, Texas, Florida, in the US - is spending any time outdoors. It’s boiling hot, so they’re all indoors, in air conditioned environments. Which is optimal for transmission

Then when didn't Australia's cases skyrocket given that it was their summertime.

I never thought they would be back full in Sept tbh. I don't think most schools have the space to distance the kids.

I'm worried sick about my teen who is dutifully plodding through schoolwork but in tears every day when he gets stuck. My 11yr old has refused to do any work at all. They're bored and isolated.