Violet Affleck is clearly warning parents about the affect of Covid on children, so when will our children get finally get air filters in their schools/nurseries?

[Annemcc32]

I genuinely can't believe that the government/department for education are able to continue to ignore the now overwhelming, crystal clear evidence that Covid harms children's health. Violet Affleck gave a powerful, well documented, speech at the UN this week laying it all out and the media response? Accuse her of 'health anxiety'!
Other countries are taking action on indoor air quality to protect children in learning environments (e.g. France, Belgium, Germany, Thailand, Australia).
Bridget Philipson herself was shouting about ventilation and air filters before the election.
But still, nothing!
The department for education also had THEIR buildings upgraded so they have great indoor air quality, as did the Houses of Parliament, as do many private schools, as do DAVOS when the world leaders meet.
ALL of our children deserve clean air and to be safe in the classrooms/nurseries.
Why are we so bad at protecting our kids? Repeated Covid infections are ruining their health. ONS said in 2024 that we had over 111,000 children with long covid in Scotland and England alone.
It is SO simple to achieve this. The fact that we are doing nothing is shameful. Open the windows, get air filters, use a CO2 monitor to monitor the air. THAT IS IT. Why is that hard?

Cleaning the air not only helps reduce exposure to viruses, but also pm2.5 which there is no "safe" level of exposure to, and in children is also shown to harm exam performance.

In London they've been rolling out HEPA filters in schools for pollution. There's a large research project called SAMHE monitoring UK school air quality. So for all the nay-sayers claiming it's impossible, it's happening already and more likely to scale up the more we demand it.

Honestly it's depressing all the people on here who would rather their children get sick than try a measure (air cleaning) that offers multiple tangible benefits.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-68344050

https://www.samhe.org.uk/

And for everyone confusing dirt with viruses: Children's immune system can benefit from exposure to dirt, animals, etc, but no epidemiologist with their head screwed on would encourage children to be exposed to viruses, except through vaccination.

THIS!

she's advocating for proactive health care (filtered air to reduce risk of all airborne pathogens) in government buildings to protect the most vulnerable. some estimates put long covid at 10% of all teen infections. thats huge! and she's calling out short term thinking and complacency. i dont get the hate...

How many children are affected life long by covid and how many children are affected life long by obesity, neglect and school refusal due to MH issues?

People like this are focusing on the wrong thing. Putting energies into things that actually make a difference are important instead of naval gazing on quite a small area of need. Schools need a lot of change about them, their structure, their buildings and the way children are expected to learn. Hepa filters dont come into that.

“Am I being unreasonable to expect governments to base policy on something the daughter of a film star said?”

Yes.

Agree completely.

Maybe we should start by giving money to schools whose classroom windows don’t even open first.

Nobody is picking on VA , she doesn't "work" at Yale, she's a freshman student..I was nursing over 40 years, have done Barrier, Reverse Barrier and Isolation nursing. My ex H came into contact with Green Monkey Fever at an airport when I was pregnant,he was quarantined, and I had to do daily vital signs on him and ring up Port of Health Authority daily with the results they refused at first to tell me what he'd been in contact with.

How have you deduced that?

I'd guess that a large percentage of the children/young adults affected by Covid have got parents with health anxiety who have projected their fears and panic onto their kids. Hence so many who now have MH issues post pandemic.

I don’t think I have had it either I was teaching key worker children in school during the first part of the pandemic and I can’t remember how often we were testing but it was often and I didn’t get it then and I’ve never had symptoms when I wasn’t testing. When testing stopped. Of course, I could have had it when testing had ended and not realised.

This isn’t about anybody wanting to go back to lockdown. Just understanding the impact Covid will and is having on many.

Agree. And it's a bit tiresome the way it gets twisted.

What tests? I worked in a role for two years where I had daily LFTs and twice weekly PCR lab test swabs. Never came up positive on an LFT. Came up twice on a PCR. Wasn’t ill either of those times but I had had the jab.

Do you have any medical training or education?

What’s the point in spending money on HEPA filters and forcing children to wear masks when there is a safe, effective and comparatively inexpensive vaccine against Covid?

They don’t need to wear masks and that isn’t being suggested at all. The vaccine is effective against severe disease but it does not stop you getting it or long covid.

What rubbish, that’s not true at all. Vaccines significantly reduce the chances of developing long covid. By about 70%.

No that’s rubbish - 70% - source?

Unfortunately the vaccines wear off…so you get say 6 months of ‘protection’. I don’t know about you but I’m not prepared to pay for a Covid vaccine every 6 months. And my 3 vaccines most certainly didn’t stop me getting long Covid and I’m guessing most of the 2 million in the country with it….

Vaccines also don’t stop you catching and spreading it. They are effective against severe disease but the answer to long Covid is not vaccination. Though I wish it was…

www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2403211

Most studies put it at much less. We can cherry pick as much as you like. But like I said the vaccines wear off so unless we all get vaccinated every 6 months then more and more people will get long Covid. Or are we denying its existence?

I stand by my post - vaccines do not stop you getting long covid. If they did then only mainly unvaccinated people would get long Covid. Funnily enough, this is not the case.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/why-protective-antibodies-fade-after-covid-19-vaccines

Don’t reduce mine

Yeah that’s why it’s not 100%? Just because it didn’t prevent yours doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot of robust statistical evidence over several studies of hundreds of thousands of covid cases to show that vaccination is a powerful tool to reduce long covid incidence. And it’s a hell of a lot more accessible than installing HEPA filters into every building a person might ever go into.

The vaccines wear off. I love it how people think they have life long protection from these vaccines.

So unless you get vaccinated every 6 months it won’t have any impact on your chance of getting Long Covid. Vaccinations have been shown to reduce Long Covid by 27% not 70%. So for the 6 months after having your vaccine you have just less than a third of a reduction in the chance of LC… then that protection wears off. I had my last vaccination around 4 years ago.. as did most people.

I would have voted YANBU if I'd seen this earlier. Another wave of COVID is building up, the cold and flu season will soon be here and children are again crammed into stuffy classrooms. It makes sense to try and keep the number of infections to a minimum.

Contrary to what a few people think catching viruses repeatedly doesn't result in immunity, just very sick children.

Better ventilation and hepa filters don't result in a sterile environment just a somewhat cleaner one, which also helps children with asthma and other allergies. I can't understand why anyone would object to this.