To not understand why we have now got rid of isolation for household members?

[AlexaShutUp]

Sorry if there is already a thread on this, but isn't it a bit crazy to be sending children into school when their parents and/or siblings have tested positive for covid?

I totally get that the pinging was getting too much and I am OK with a lot of rules being relaxed as we have to get back to some kind of normality at some stage, but surely it isn't unreasonable for members of the same household to carry on isolating. Isn't it going to spread like wildfire as soon as schools open up?

It just seems crazy...

I think a lot of people are just very keen to keep covid a terrifying, dangerous disease rather than a virus that will remain in circulation and that everybody will eventually catch, just like flu and noro.

[quote Dontforgetyourbrolly]@ButteringMyArse really? Barring children that need care your boss would be OK if you phoned in saying sorry my husband has a virus I can't come in ??? Haha OK then[/quote]
Hmm not sure my employer would be OK with this.

[quote Dontforgetyourbrolly]@ButteringMyArse really? Barring children that need care your boss would be OK if you phoned in saying sorry my husband has a virus I can't come in ??? Haha OK then[/quote]
No. That's the exact opposite of what I posted.

Poster upthread said she'd keep ALL her children off school if one had a sickness bug.

That would be un-autherised absences for those who hadn't been sick at our school.

Wakeywakey86 in answer to your question: I accept that my situation is extreme and that we can't all live our lives in a way that would zero the risk to CEV people like me. But there are midway compromises and mitigating measures to be made that don't incur large social costs. Mandatory masks in public enclosed places/public transport for example - CEV people are having to brave buses and hospitals full of unmasked people currently which is not OK. And the continued isolation of household members if there is an active case of COVID. It makes no sense at all that a family at my children's school could have one child ill with covid and send their as-yet asymptotic sibling in to sit next to my kids all day.

I think its mad as well. If people are double jabbed then fair enough they shouldn't have to isolate. But other children or unvaccinated people from the same household should in my opinion.

I know loads of people who have been double jabbed and had covid and some have still been quite poorly. By not keeping kids home if their siblings have it, its going to spread like wildfire, there are going to be staff shortages in teaching, healthcare, essential services etc as double jabbed adults test positive.

Also the long covid risk in children is still being studied. Even if it's very low frequency (not 1 in 7 like adults, say its 1 in 100 or something) that's potentially a LOT of children that we are exposing to serious long term health consequences.

I agree the pinging was too much but if they are going to stop unvaccinated people from the same household isolating then we may as well just stop testing and isolation all together in my opinion. What's the point in keeping someone with an almost certainty of being positive at home, but letting people who are extremely likely to test positive do what they want?

For better or worse, people are probably more likely to test when symptomatic if a positive isn't going to isolate the entire household.

I think we should at least be doing the easy things, still wearing masks, shops still having hand sanitiser available, not having huge events where thousands of people are going to be cheek to cheek. Although pinging everyone who'd been near someone positive didn't work I also think you should wfh/isolate if you have live with someone who tests positive.

It's bizarre that people think covid has somehow changed and is no longer a dangerous disease that we shouldn't at least be wary of. They also seem to really struggle to understand that unlike a lot of diseases it is air borne. Fortunately OH's work have said they're to work from home if they have a close contact who's positive and my dc will be testing twice before they go and still be wearing a mask in school. I'm hoping they will jab the kids who are 12+ as they are in several other countries or there are likely to be a lot of kids missing their GCSE's as they've tested positive.

It's bizarre that people think covid has somehow changed and is no longer a dangerous disease that we shouldn't at least be wary of. They also seem to really struggle to understand that unlike a lot of diseases it is air borne.

I'd be willing to bet that every poster here knows it is airborne. So, why do you still think that Covid should be treated differently to other airborne viruses? Do you think there should never be any 'huge events' again? I really think you're in the minority there. Covid is going to be around forever and tbh, in time we will probably not have to isolate even when we do have it. We prob won't even know if it's Covid we have or 'just a cold.'

@SuperCaliFragalistic

Do you stay off work if someone in your house has a sickness bug (but you are otherwise well?) Or if your child has chicken pox does everyone stay home?

They are very different, I highly doubt they have the same hospital rates etc as covid.

The ones who are desperately clinging on to the idea of lockdowns and isolating are probably the same ones who were calling people murderers last year. 🙄

blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/08/20/christina-pagel-schools-a-gaping-hole-in-the-english-covid-strategy/?fbclid=IwAR3-d31D_kJ0XTGojUKHQTQU2W6dPLzf6srDHEPGINxnlvxckcAtnkXeOYQ

I'd be willing to bet that every poster here knows it is airborne.

I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist and I don't know it's airborne. What do people even mean by that statement. That Covid spreads as easily as measles? (it doesn't). That with otherwise tight social distancing measures taking place, 3% of all cases were caused by non-surface droplet spread > 2m away from origin? (we don't have data to confidently say that).

That HEPA filters or UV germicidal lights would stop 99% of transmissions? (absolutely no data directly supports such assertion).

That at least 1 transmission in last 2 years was non-contact > 5m away? Who TF knows. The phrase "airborne" is meaningless as used.

For the vast majority of cases in the under 65s, covid symptoms would not be severe enough to miss work.

You are kidding? There is a huge range of illness in between being well enough to work and being on a ventilator in the hospital! A lot of people I know who have had covid, even the "mild" version you get when vaccinated, have ended up sleeping it off in bed for several days and feeling very unwell. When they say vaccinated people have "mild" symptoms it doesn't mean they are well enough to carry on as normal, it just means that they aren't sick enough to be admitted to the hospital in need of extra oxygen.

I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist and I don't know it's airborne. What do people even mean by that statement.

Well, I meant it's effectively breathed in which I assume masks were supposed to prevent?

What were the vaccines for then?

Trouble is, they were developed for and highly successful against Alpha. They are less successful and don’t slow transmission as much with Delta.

I mean, they prevent serious disease in most cases, but they don’t stop people catching it as effectively as Aplha

thanks CirquedeM -- the main transmission pathway for covid is and was droplets that travel very short distances from source before reaching ground. You can breathe in droplets that travelled short distances. "Airborne" is supposed to, in epidemiology, mean much smaller droplets that travel further, and stay viable longer (less likely with enveloped virus like SARS-CoV-2). I'm not aware of any consensus on specific threshold to divide the concepts of droplet vs. airborne, only that if something was usually spread by small droplets within 1 m of source and typically only transmits because of medium-long duration of exposure (15 minutes+), and most typically doesn't transmit beyond 2m from source, we wouldn't usually call that "airborne".

Awalkintime

I have volunteered her for various trials and she's been involved in some of the research things relating to treatment of RSV but they wont allow her on any current vaccine trials or by god would I sign her up. My sister was on the Covid vaccine trial (I wasnt accepted on it but tried to volunteer).

I didnt not suggest your mother was getting a privilege. I made the point that I don't go around being resentful that something poses a bigger risk to my daughter than it might to others, and don't expect society to shut down to protect the few more vulnerable individuals, at huge expense to the rest.

The vaccines allow is to catch it more mildly and start building natural immunity but with fewer hospitalizations and deaths.it may still be a nasty disease, but with repeated exposure it should get weaker and weaker. The most vulnerable may need booster vaccinations, as they do with annual flu jabs for the elderly, for other people, the constant circulation of it as an endemic disease will continuously top up our immune response. Its likely it will join flu as something responsible for deaths among the elderly in winter.

@SuperCaliFragalistic

Do you stay off work if someone in your house has a sickness bug (but you are otherwise well?) Or if your child has chicken pox does everyone stay home?

There were over 800 people admitted to hospital with Covid on 21 August, the last for which data is available.

When sickness bugs or chicken pox are going around, do they lead to a similar level of hospital admissions? And do they leave some people with serious, long-term health problems after the initial illness has passed?

If not, I don't think it's a valid comparison.

I don’t think there is much natural immunity. Doesn’t it tail off after 6 months or so?

@MoreHairyThanScary

""Do you stay off work if someone in your house has a sickness bug (but you are otherwise well?) Or if your child has chicken pox does everyone stay home?""

Most sickness bugs are not airborne ( with the obvious exception) and rarely land unvaccinated people in hospital in the numbers that Covid does.

There is also beginning to be evidence that the effectiveness of the vaccine wanes after time, I had my first dose on the second of Jan and second in March and am sick now

I had my vax (Pfizer) at the same time as you @MoreHairyThanScary.

Have you done a lateral flow test to see if it's Covid? It'll be a bit alarming if the vaccination loses its efficacy after just 6 months.

Hope you feel better soon.

Antibodies reduce over time but we can continue to retain t-cell immunity

Lakielady

My lft was positive and so is my PCR. Hence the risk to my team ( and many vulnerable adults ) if I had been instructed to work with family members with Covid.