To send my DC back to school with Covid?

[TheChemicalsAintGotYouBaby]

DS tested positive on Sat, and was still a glaring positive last night.

He's due back at high school tomorrow. V few symptoms apart from a snotty nose, and DH and I seem to have swerved it.

He's desperate not to miss the first day of term, and I'm aware that official guidance means that you no longer have to isolate etc if you test positive, if all reasonable steps (masks, distancing etc) are taken. However, I wouldn't be confident he'd remember to do this (little scatterbrain!)

On the flipside though, I don't want to unleash a new infection that will no doubt spread through the school like wildfire.

WWYD?

YANBU - send him. Covids going nowhere and we need to carry on

YABU - keep him off until he's negative

COVID nearly killed me in March and I'm still considering suicide as the long-terms effects are so bad. Please don't send your child to school, the weirdos like me who are badly affected when most people just get a quick sniffle will be very, very grateful. I hope your child is feeling better soon.

You're not a weirdo. Long Covid is fucking awful. I've never been to the GP/hospital as much as I have this last year. 💐💐💐

Thanks @QuestionableMouse, and I really hope your long COVID fucks off soon. It can be awful, I know. My long-term disease is only partly long COVID with nightmare lung collapse. Mostly it's an ongoing brain injury, so I can't think, can't remember anything, have no idea who I was or what the point of living is. Current life is torture and I just want it to end. But I couldn't do that to my poor family who have been caring for my pointless empty self since March.

Don’t send him in! Who cares what (crap) advice the government have put out about only 3 days? They’ve made a right mess of trying to control Covid right from the start.

Use your common sense and empathy. Your DS has a mild case but he could spread it round the school and cause lots of absence at best and serious illness at worst.

Obviously YABU and fucking selfish.

Please don't. Covid left me unable to walk without a stick for weeks before we broke up. I'll never know if I caught it from a pupil ( cases were in my class) or elsewhere. Wherever I caught it from it was not a cold. Not fair on other pupils and staff.

Something is a bit off with threads like this...

So child gets a runny nose or some minor symptom and parents are concerned enough to actually take a test and confirm covid. To then post a thread on a forum saying if they’re unreasonable to carry on as normal as it’s all a bit inconvenient. Cue lots of angry people.

Doesnt add up to me

I'm so sorry. I'm nowhere near as bad but do struggle with brain fog and it's fucking terrifying. Used to walk miles every day and now struggle with going around the block. Have horrible GI issues so am housebound some days.

It's just utterly relentless, isn't it? I hope you're getting good help. 💐 From what I've been reading, it looks like it can take a year/18m for the recovery to really start so there's still hope. And there's various trials and such going on so there is hope. It just fucking sucks. ☹️❤️

Shouldn’t even be testing.
Send him if he feels well enough

Did you read any of the other posts?

Imagine asking such a stupid question.

You can't send him. The teacher will be off next.

Send him in if he's showing no symptoms. That's what the guidance says!

As a clinically extremely vulnerable person, (and had very bad time with illnesses as a child, and missed a lot of school) please don’t send them in. Covid or no covid, it’s still an illness. I would have preferred kids not going into school with a cold because it usually meant pneumonia for me, but sadly parents insisted on sending their kids as ‘it’s good for the immune system’ 🙄 not for mine it wasn’t!

Shouldn’t even be testing.
Send him if he feels well enough

Bore off

Don't send a sick child to school. It doesn't matter if it is a bad cold, covid or chickenpox. Some things shouldn't be shared.

Are you actually serious using these 2 comparisons

Why bother testing? We aren't testing anymore (unless we visit my husband's gran in a care home). Unless we are unwell we are going into work and school, like back in the old days. A slight cold which is what this sounds like (if you didnt test), I'd send my children in.

YAB totally Unreasonable.

I'm not a Covid Doom mongerer by any means but at one point in the pandemic I was combing working in a school with looking after my elderly Dad who was on end of life care at home.

The impact of catching Covid would have been catastrophic for us at that time if I'd found I'd caught it due to someone's utter selfishness I'd have been beyond livid, not to mention distraught if it have prevented me being there for my dad when he needed me.

Do bear in mind that just because staff and other students ts are in and we'll doesn't mean they don't have lives away from school that can be impacted.

What are the school's guidelines? Our secondary's guidelines are to send them in unless they're too ill to work, primary's are to keep them home until they are non-symptomatic or testing negative, whichever is sooner. It depends what the school wants.

As someone with an immunocompromised child, please don't knowingly send your sick child in with covid. It might be just a mild cold for him, but it could be really, really serious for a kid like mine. I think it's easy to forget if it's not your life, but covid can still be really dangerous for some. It's disappointing to miss the first day of school but not worth putting others at risk for, or setting children at school passing it around to each other and their family members. Please don't send him in.

this☝🏼

IIRC our school days they can go back after 3 days unless they have a temperature.
DD missed one of her GCSEs as she had covid but apparently another school in the town allowed pupils to sit exams if they were covid positive

When DS had covid in 2021 the isolation period was 10 days. He had a stuffy nose for about 3 days. Pre covid I wouldn't have considered keeping him off school at all for that.

Legions of kids will be going back with covid. Send him in unless too unwell.

I can’t believe this post it must be a wind up!!

For goodness sake OP please don’t send him in regardless what he wants to do. If you know full well he has covid and is still obviously displaying symptoms going in is completely selfish and ignorant. Some kids will be in exam years, have health vulnerabilities or have family members at home with known or unknown health vulnerabilities.

I was on the shielded list and I am now expected to be in work this month share a desk and be in close proximity with the service users of our organisation without protection as our management have decided its business as usual now. My husband now has cancer stage 4 and is about to undergo radio and chemo in the next few weeks nil protection for us just relying on people like you, your son and others displaying covid symptoms to do the right things.

I know someone with long covid whose life has been so badly impacted that he contemplated suicide. Nearly two years on he is still really struggling and suffering it has affected his vital organs and he is in and out of hospital and struggling to go into work regularly or participate in any of the daily fitness activities he enjoyed before. He got a viral infection last week and this has absolutely flawed him he was in hospital again and has been signed off work for two weeks and he’s been prescribed complete bed rest and massive doses of antibiotics.

Please give yourself a shake and your head a wobble OP and any like minded half wits or covid deniers out there please also do the same.

I've decided that our boundary for testing is if you're actually "ill" and would be considering needing recovery time off anyway.

I quite enjoyed the week that DS had off in the spring going walking and cycling because he had a Covid positive sniffle, but doing that umpteen times a year plus time lost on any other ailments that crop up is detrimental, and he's still struggling to catch up from the 6 months of lost learning time.

Schools have always been bio-hazards to people susceptible to illness. Besides LFTs don't pick up a lot of cases until later on if at all now there's been a few mutations. It's around in the mix with all the other respiritory illnesses that we don't tend to know the "brand" of. The reality is that most people are resigned to that now after two very disrupted, unstable years.