To think that high levels of children being sent to school are the beginnings of lockdown resistance from the working age population

[NoIDontWatchLoveIsland]

I keep hearing widespread reports of high levels of children being sent to school under key worker provision. In the first lockdown many people did what they could to keep children at home, and employers tolerated this, but this time almost everyone I know even vaguely connected with a key worker occupation has been given a letter from their employer and told they must get their children to school. In almost all cases the parents are happy about this.

AIBU to think that this is the beginnings of resistance from younger people at continued school closures & lockdowns, when the statistics continue to be clear that few people under 50 who are not CEV are getting severely I'll with Covid?

YABU - no, people are supportive of school closures & wider lockdowns
YANBU - yes, younger people are becoming less tolerant of school closures/wider lockdowns

I don’t think it’s lack of tolerance, it’s that employers are no longer making allowances and employees being left in a position of either work or lose their job.

Also the novelty factor has gone. We all know how difficult supporting remote learning is whilst working. We’re jaded, plus expectations are now higher. Employers aren’t satisfied with ‘do your best’ and schools are no longer focused on well being and mental health.

Completely agree @quicknamechange100 and fear you have said is representative of everyone I know in real life!

I think pp have missed the point of the OP.

Yes, I think the numbers of children in school are an indication of how many, many people are done with the destruction of our lives and our children’s education.

Whether or not you think lockdowns work, I can guarantee they won’t work if compliance is low and I think it is. It’s time for a more targeted shielding approach.

If parents who really do not qualify for their spaces, or who is able to keep their children at home persist in sending them in then we may well end up with a real crisis on our hands. Lockdown can only be effective if we do all we can to reduce mixing households. If the rates continue to rise and schools staff are ill then it may become impossible for schools to offer places for the genuine key workers. If you ant the NHS front line workers and other critical workers to be able to go into work then keep your children at home if you can

who ARE able!

A major difference is lockdown has been politicised in a way that it wasn’t in March, which is indicative of the OP using language like “resistance”.

Also @MotheringShites I think people are fed up with following everything to the letter while many haven't! Agree with the targeted shielding.

Normal sickness levels say 3% so that leaping to 13% would be pretty tricky for many businesses to cope with

But I doubt that the whole world apart from you and your family and mates dying would be enough to make you think

Many would end up being laid off for made redundant if they couldn’t get their kids into school.

Why would anybody plunge themselves into
Poverty, for the greater good, when there are so many who break the rules anyway?

I don’t blame them one bit. I’d be more
Concerned with keeping a roof over my head at any costs.

I think you're seeing what you want to see. Employers are less willing to be flexible and understanding and people are doing what they have to do to keep their jobs.

Iv sent my son in full time even though I work part time as a key worker. He has SEN and goes to a special needs school so he needs to be in school for the benefit of everyone at home.

My daughter goes to another school and there policy is both parents have to be key workers which I think is shit. I’m a key worker but I work part time and my partner earns 80% of our income and he’s still working now.
So I now have to physically work and home school a child which is impossible to do considering she’s 9 and dyslexic so needs extra help.
So I either have to let my work suffer (which I have ) or my partner stops working and we go homeless

It should be targeted shielding and let the rest of us carry on.

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland

But not the lorry drivers bringing your food, the shelf stackers, the staff at your pharmacy or the distribution centre where your medicine arrives, or the thousands of other people who have to go to where their work is and work with other people.

Those people worked throughout and are still working now. Has Covid been sweeping through the supermarkets?

It would if you do what you’re advocating and get rid of the measures in place at the moment and let everyone go back to ‘normal’. 1 in 50 people has it today. 1 in 30 in London. At the rate of increase it’s currently showing, how long before it’s 1 in 10? - and that’s even with social distancing and the other measures. The new variant has made a huge difference to the numbers infected at the same time.

People are selfish, what else is new

Now the day they need help from a critical worker, but said critical worker is not working because their child has been sent in isolation because of parents taking the piss.. then too bad.

People do not see the consequences or don't care

Parents have always sent kids with D&V at school, parents have always been unreasonable and frankly completely oblivious to consequences that will affect them anyway

Well done to the schools who stick to a club and don't offer any education so parents have to get involved weekends and evenings at least.

It's a disgrace to accept the child of a key worker when the other parent is not a key worker, working from home, or not working at all. The single mum who does not qualify on the other hand will be stuck.

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland

but denying the significant impact of covid on all ages is naive.

Provide some statistics then. I've not seen anything suggesting that high percentages of healthy young people are being left with severe long Covid.

In my workplace of c.150 FT and PT staff, 24 have had covid. Two are long term ill, haven't returned yet (1 in their 50s, 1 in their 40s, no previous obvious underlying conditions as neither we're shielding before. A further 2 have returned, but can only do reduced hours (one in 40s, one in 50s).

@NoIDontWatchLoveIsland

10% is a relatively low percentage and isnt going to bring the economy to its knees. I wonder what proportion of that 10% are CEV or vulnerable.

If 10% were permanently debilitated by this virus, is that really acceptable consequences? 10% of all society? That's an enormous figure.

The reality is that many people do very important jobs you have never even considered. The term keyworker is used to describe health professionals, teachers and supermarket staff with admiration by the public but they forget the huge supply chains that produce the items they need not to mention local government functions, benefits, infrastructure - from the sky engineer (not everyone has an aerial, we don't) to the tanker driver all are needed to keep the country running. Dp imports and processes the raw material to make hospital grade filter masks - rather crucial but his employees struggled to get places for their kids (now sorted). We are interdependent on each other basically so unless parents are sahp or furloughed they need places. You can't be in an important meeting and homeschool and break up the inevitable squabbling over the only laptop which is old and not working properly!

I think that anyone sending their child to school if they don't have to is selfish idiot rather than "resistant". If I was a key worker who had to send my child in I would be really annoyed. The claim that it is good for children's mental health is dubious considering that everywhere I know expects children over a certain age to wear masks and do online lessons. They certainly aren't socialising while at school . It doesn't sound like much fun to me.

I think they should be stricter about key worker definitions.

Also - the primary reason for key workers to send kids to school is so they can work - because they have to.

The schools are closed because of risk of transmission. So the more children at school the more risk of transmitting the virus between households. That means someone that isn't really a key worker and only sending their kids to school because their office is inflexible in wfh, or other reasons - is arguably putting key workers at risk of getting the virus which should obviously be avoided as much as possible

In my workplace of c.150 FT and PT staff, 24 have had covid. Two are long term ill, haven't returned yet (1 in their 50s, 1 in their 40s, no previous obvious underlying conditions as neither we're shielding before. A further 2 have returned, but can only do reduced hours (one in 40s, one in 50s).

My experience is similar. I also know one person in their 40s (with no known underlying conditions) who was hospitalised.

Key workers need to work.
It's that simple.
Key workers have every right to send their children into school.

@NowellSingWe

If 10% were permanently debilitated by this virus, is that really acceptable consequences?
10% of all society? That's an enormous figure.

I get the feeling that in @NoIDontWatchLoveIsland case, she would be happy for much more than 10%, as long as it didn't impact her or her family and friends.

Utterly selfish and reckless behaviour is what has caused this third spike.

There's a huge change from employers' attitude. I am a keyworker and majority WFH with on call demands. However, in March most employers in the UK were understanding in allowing for childcare flexibility. That large evaporated by the summer term when the government called for partial return of primary school. That was when I sent my kids back and there were about 30-40% back at school from other keyworkers' children. In the autumn term, there were probably only a handful. The tolerance must be much lower now.

Not everyone has a SAHP.

Possibly.

I've said all along that people will absolutely need the care and support of school.

Some people won't but will want to use it (we had a parent who was sahm say in lockdown 1 "my DH works as delivery driver so my kids will be in at they are entitled" they weren't given a place!)

Some people will use it because it's easier but would manage without the provision.

My personal opinion is if you have absolutely no choice then use it. That's for the greater good of the country.

If you can get away with not using it even though it will be difficult you have a public duty not to use it.

The basic facts here are the more people work together now to stay at home and get through the next 6 weeks the quicker we'll come out of this the other side.

Remember, if we want down to tier 3 our numbers need to have dropped to a certain level, not just manageable. We don't want 3-4 months of manageable levels. We want 6 weeks, where 3 will be hell for nhs, and then a sharp drop. A drop that will hopefully remain low but certainly won't overwhelm the poor nhs when groups 1-4 are vaccinated.

If you are a key worker with no other option then send your child in That is what those places are for. If you are sending your child in because it makes your life more difficult to keep them at home then stop pretending you are doing it for the sake of your child. You are not. You are doing it for you. You are increasing the chances of a real KW's child contracting Covid and taking it home to infect a person that we all need to be in work.

No one is 'giving it to the man' or 'standing up to the system' by taking a place in school that they do not need. You are not 'teaching Boris a lesson'. You have no moral high ground - you are just putting in additional risks to everyone, and helping to prolong lockdown.

I had to add that my company was very busy in the initial lockdown. We did a lot of work for setting up the covid hotlines. So we never had a downturn.