To feel in despair for the kids

[JudesBiggestFan]

My son was one of 400 children sent home from two bubbles in his high school today to isolate for 14 days. He's in Year 7 and it was his fourth day in his new school.
He'd been catching the bus, made a new friend, had settled in so much better than I hoped after the past few chaotic disrupted months. And now he's home again.
Not only that, he is now going to miss his cricket presentation and first two football matches of the season, not be able to see friends and family, all for the pleasure of three days of schooling.
And I can see this happening over and over and over again. Luckily childcare isnt an issue as I work from home, but I'm just so sad for kids missing out. Six months off and it seems we're back where we started with no end in sight

Scroll down to point 5 www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsinvolvingcovid19englandandwales/deathsoccurringinapril2020

You can see the death rate is extremely concentrated in the very elderly. There are not masses of school parents dying from this.

as a society, we have a duty to protect each other, reign ourselves in, try our upmost to protect the vulnerable with social distancing, masks, and hand washing

Well said.

If people were better at observing strict hygiene and distancing the risk to everyone would be far lower. And schools would be less likely to have to send kids home for a fortnight.

Beijing Interesting you stop the quote there. Like your namesake do you propose to ignore Taiwan, and for that matter Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam who all limited infections and deaths with effective testing, contact tracing and quarantine and more limited lockdowns than the UK. Japan may have kept its economy more open but it had more infections and deaths than their neighbours and that was mitigated by effective testing tracing and quarantine and by a population that absorbed infection control into their culture after the Spanish Flu. Mask wearing and other forms of infection control are the norm for anyone with any symptoms of illness. And that spread through the region after SARs.

Sweden also had a culture of communal responsibility and formal lockdown may not have happened but people stopped travelling and spending anyway and yet they still did far worse in terms of infections and deaths than their neighbours www.newscientist.com/article/2251615-is-swedens-coronavirus-strategy-a-cautionary-tale-or-a-success-story/

We tried an experiment with abandoning effective testing tracking and quarantine using local labs and public health resources that has worked in Asia in favour of an experiment in an unproven quack theory of herd immunity and indulgent libertarianism combined with favouring inexperienced cronies with huge contracts for testing and PPE and the result was an epidemic that was escalating out of control and was not bought under control without a profound lockdown, one of the highest death rates in the world and much greater economic damage. Bizarre that people are still trying to argue for more of the same. The causal factor in that was not lockdown, it was abandoning proven best practise in public health in the first place and then opening up the economy, pubs before schools, without fully rectifying that failing.

If mine are sent home again I am genuinely more concerned about mental health than covid. I say that as someone with vulnerable people in our family.

"Just imagine if the government had spent £500 million and the past six months on online learning, sourcing more premises, more staffing for schools. Instead they spent it on giving us half price burgers"

^It's about money.
The govt get vat from burgers.
Central london visitors (lack of) - many people are scared to take public transport and extension of congestion charge (at same time as telling you to avoid public transport if possible) made driving untenable.

This was always going to happen when the schools went back, is anyone really surprised?!

That's not what "unlikely" means. If only elderly had died, instead of unlikely it would be impossible. Unlikely means the chance is relatively small. The vast majority of deaths are in older people, so in younger people it is very unlikely. For people under 40 you basically have more chance of dying in a RTC or being struck by lightning. Look at the statistics, they don't lie.

When you said "elderly" I didn't realise you meant everyone over 40. I'm sure all the teachers and parents over 40 will appreciate the fact that their deaths don't count because they are are over 40 and therefore elderly.

Give it 10 years and that will probably be the case, though you won't be able to directly prove that all the lives lost from ill health/stress/suicide were from this, so that's why our government now don't care. By the time the economic effects on population-level health/life-expectancy rear their head, the government will be retired in the Bahamas. Covid is not the only thing out there.

Interesting that when you look at the chance of death from Covid you're only interested in the chances of dying UK at this moment in time. However, when you look at deaths due to lockdown you extrapolate into what you think might happen in 10 years time even though there is no evidence that will happen in the UK. Minimise the effects of Covid while complete hyperbole about schools shutting for couple of weeks.

@WingingWonder

If mine are sent home again I am genuinely more concerned about mental health than covid. I say that as someone with vulnerable people in our family.

I'm sure your children will survive a couple of weeks of school.

of off

@LakieLady

as a society, we have a duty to protect each other, reign ourselves in, try our upmost to protect the vulnerable with social distancing, masks, and hand washing

Well said.

If people were better at observing strict hygiene and distancing the risk to everyone would be far lower. And schools would be less likely to have to send kids home for a fortnight.

There are 55 million people in England alone. Considering the sheer volume of people there are still only small pockets of cases. The massive majority ARE sticking to the rules. Don’t believe everything you see in the media is a true representation.

This virus is extremely contagious. We are still handling money with is a huge virus transmitter. Masks do not give 100% protection. They don’t work!!! People still have to use the pin code to use their bank card.

Still again hospital admissions are still dropping and at the lowest it’s ever been. Below 300 out of 55 MILLION people. You can’t argue against the figures. Absolute shit show of panicking chicken heads

Ridiculous to close schools.

Well I think teachers who are at risk should shield and young people with no underlying conditions should live their lives.

If you are woeied about covid stay home o tale precautions...if , like te mjority, you need to earn a living...live your life whilst taking nevessary precautions. Out of how any testing for covid, how many die? I would be interested to know.
Shitshow the whole thing.

And take precautions!

@malificent7

Well I think teachers who are at risk should shield and young people with no underlying conditions should live their lives.

They may not be able to have an education if some of their teachers are shielding. Many teachers will have an underlying condition that puts them at higher risk of they may live with someone at higher risk.

I have a couple of questions.
Would it not be better to limit the number of pupils in school/classrooms at any one time? For example set A do not start school until after lunch on Tuesdays and finish school at lunchtime on Friday. Set B do not go in until 11am on Mondays but stay until 4.30 on a Wednesday. Set C do 9 until 4 on a Monday and Tuesday and finish at lunch time on a Thursday. I know the teachers will be teaching longer but this could be countered by then not having to do any marking on say 3 days a week. Basically ensuring they work the same hours but differently. DDs university are doing this. I am doing this at work. I have done a mixture of weeks with time off during the day, then back on late afternoon /early evening. Then starting early/finishing early.
Also I think all pupils should be told to bring in their own bottle of hand sanitizer and equipment and made t use it.
Yes I know there are issues with this but it seems to be better than closing the entire school. I also work with my window open, whatever the weather. My experience of schools is that they do not practice this. It's basic fresh air principles.
I am also expected to clean down my entire office. I also do the work's kitchen. I'm not paid to do it but I want to ensure it is as safe as possible.
Children should be given anti bac spray or wipes and told to clean their desk and chair before they sit down and leave.I
I have worked longer hours and I'm out of pocket having to travel to a different office but it is for the greater good. I also tell all the customers I see to disinfect their hands and wear masks. If they don't then I'm not wasting my time with them. Like I said I've been accommodating and worked throughout lock down, if they can't be respectful then I'm not wasting my time with them.
Anyway, back to the thread title, yes I is awful for children and young people. That is why we have to be flexible and adaptable. The same goes for uniform.

Open the classroom Windows wide but then allow students to wear jumpers/ boots etc or write with whatever colour own they have so long as they bring their own and disinfect it.

Interesting that when you look at the chance of death from Covid you're only interested in the chances of dying UK at this moment in time. However, when you look at deaths due to lockdown you extrapolate into what you think might happen in 10 years time even though there is no evidence that will happen in the UK. Minimise the effects of Covid while complete hyperbole about schools shutting for couple of weeks

Because there are studies and past evidence showing what recessions/depressions/unemployment do to health and life expectancy, and we are in a MASSIVE recession now, whereas we don't know what the effects of covid will be in 10 years time.

Obviously I didn't say everyone over 40 is elderly. Look at the graph. Under 40 the chances of dying are virtually nil, a bit higher in 40-80, and much higher in 80+. The curve goes exponentially up by age group, it's all on the ONS page. Arguing that masses of school age parents will die is simply not true, unless they are over 85.

And it's not "schools shutting for a couple of weeks", it's the economy being shut for months/years - schools are just a small part of that big picture. Although I'm sure parents being asked to stay off with their kids for weeks at a time won't be great for their job prospects.

@BeijingBikini

And it's not "schools shutting for a couple of weeks", it's the economy being shut for months/years - schools are just a small part of that big picture. Although I'm sure parents being asked to stay off with their kids for weeks at a time won't be great for their job prospects.

We are talking about schools shutting for a couple of weeks at the moment. The economy isn't shut down at the moment let alone for months or years.

It won't just be a couple of weeks though, it'll be a couple of weeks every few weeks throughout the year. What happened to OP isn't an isolated event. In terms of economy, more things have opened up but he travel, events, hospitality, retail industries are suffering immensely and making people redundant left, right and centre. That also has a knock-on effect on all industries.

Because there are studies and past evidence showing what recessions/depressions/unemployment do to health and life expectancy, and we are in a MASSIVE recession now, whereas we don't know what the effects of covid will be in 10 years time.

We don't know that the lockdown vs letting covid rip through the population will lead to a worse 10 year recession/depression/unemployment. We do know that letting everyone get infected with Covid will lead to a lot of deaths.

Obviously I didn't say everyone over 40 is elderly. Look at the graph. Under 40 the chances of dying are virtually nil, a bit higher in 40-80, and much higher in 80+. The curve goes exponentially up by age group, it's all on the ONS page. Arguing that masses of school age parents will die is simply not true, unless they are over 85.

I haven't argued that masses of school parents will die. A lot of parents will die though if we let COVID cases rise exponentially and some of those will have school-age children as many school-age parents are over 40.

@BeijingBikini

It won't just be a couple of weeks though, it'll be a couple of weeks every few weeks throughout the year. What happened to OP isn't an isolated event. In terms of economy, more things have opened up but he travel, events, hospitality, retail industries are suffering immensely and making people redundant left, right and centre. That also has a knock-on effect on all industries.

It may be a couple of weeks every few weeks or it may not be. It depends on how cases rise and what else is done to mitigate the rise. The answer is not to let it rip through the population as will have a knock-on effect on all industry as well. There has to be a careful balance.

DownstairsMixUp didn’t you know the consensus on MN is that school isnt childcare and that you should have multiple family queuing up to have them OR work from home OR take holidays Or unpaid leave

I wonder how many women are going to have to give work up this year?

Bloody ridiculous now.

Hugs OP its fucking crap. DH's collegue in retail has had to take a test and we're waiting for the results. DS 3 went back yesterday and is so happy and after six months of change, moving out during lockdown so daddy whos immuno suppressed could be at the flat and not catch the bug. Que a month of acting up as he didnt understand. Moved back just when he was adjusting to be away and que two months of night terrors. Worked with him so this final past month hes been his old happy self. Going to nursery again has brought a smile to his face I havent seen in a while. Now it looks like well have to pull him out again to quarentine for 2 weeks after being there 2 sodding days. And it sticks because DH hasnt worked with her in over two weeks and the shifts they have both done are two days apart with regular cleaning inbetween. Its more likely that other parents have been in when shes been infectious and much more likely they have caught it rather than DH. Its no ones fault but it really sticks in my throat.

It may be a couple of weeks every few weeks or it may not be. It depends on how cases rise and what else is done to mitigate the rise. The answer is not to let it rip through the population as will have a knock-on effect on all industry as well. There has to be a careful balance

But the evidence is showing that the virus isn’t hospitalising people or killing people the way that it did.

The evidence tells us that hospital admissions are at an all time low and deaths too.

Cases are rising ( in small pockets) but hospital admissions are not intact they are still dropping

A new approach needs to be made rather than the ‘every body hide!’ panic mode we are seeing now.