To be very concerned that the UK is not yet closing schools or introducing other quarantining measures, despite clear evidence that in 1918, it reduced total deaths by as much as 50% in cities that

[effingterrified]

The 1918-19 Spanish flu pandemic infected a third of the planet’s population and killed an estimated 50 million people. The number of Americans who died of the Spanish flu was greater than the number of Americans killed in both World Wars. However, not all US cities suffered as badly as others. Research published in 2007 (at a time of heightened interest due to the avian flu outbreak) explored how cities across the US had responded in 1918, and the impacts this had had on mortality rates.

St Louis and Philadelphia provide good examples of how different approaches to public health led to radically differing outcomes. In Philadelphia, where the disease struck in September, authorities were slow to realise the threat posed by the virus, and allowed large public gatherings, including a citywide parade, involving 200,000 people in support of a World War I loan drive, to take place as planned. In four months, more than 12,000 Philadelphians died, an excess death rate of 719 people for every 100,000 inhabitants
.
In St Louis, on the other hand, two weeks before Philadelphia officials began to react, the highly-experienced Health Commissioner, Dr. Max Starkloff, insisted that the city cancel all public gatherings, from football games to Halloween parties, close all schools for ten weeks, and even station police officers in department stores to keep people from lingering. St Louis made the mistake of reacting to an initial fall in cases by lifting controls, leading to a second wave of the illness; however controls were immediately reinstituted.

Excess deaths in St. Louis were 347 per 100,000 people, LESS THAN HALF the rate in Philadelphia. Early action appeared to have saved thousands of lives.

The 2007 studies used mathematical models to show that such large differences in death rates could be explained by the ways the cities carried out prevention measures, especially in their timing. Cities that instituted quarantine, closing schools and banning public gatherings and other such procedures early in the epidemic, had peak death rates 30 percent to 50 percent lower than those that did not.

A study examining the course of the epidemic in 23 cities across the US found that San Francisco, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Kansas City, Mo., had the most effective prevention programs, and time was of the essence. If restrictions were introduced too late or lifted too early, success rates declined substantially.

China has managed to get some control of the virus - part of their approach has been to shut all school. And have the kids learning online at home.

China now has far fewer new cases each day than Italy.

I thought closing schools was a ridiculous idea - particularly here in the north-east where we have one person who has tested positive. It would cause economic and social chaos. Children are low risk for being ill from the virus.
However, I now understand about them carrying the virus without being ill necessarily and shedding it and passing it on to more vulnerable people. I am now not sure what the right thing to do is.
DH's grandma lives with his parents and is almost 90. Our 3 DC (all 5 or under) go there lots. Should I stop that for a while? FIL has a chronic disease too although is very well at the moment and has been for the last 3 years.
DH is a Head in a secondary school- all the Headteachers in his local authority are being called to a briefing on Tuesday about Coronavirus. His school has GCSE students and A level students.

You can't compare the quarantine measures because the Spanish flu played out entirely differently. For starters, the Spanish flu was kept quiet so it didn't interfere with the war effort, and allowed to mutate which is why it became so deadly. Even the name came from the attempts to keep it from the public. Not to mention we have modern medicine.

And yes, I do have people close to me that are extremely vulnerable, which is why I dearly hope the services they already depend on to live aren't reduced or made inaccessible because the people providing them are needlessly quarantined or unable to work because they don't have childcare.

Are you Dr John Campbell?🙂
Because if you are I'm a real fan-girl of yours.
I think what you're saying is making perfect sense. But I'm highly amused by everyone's response . This guy knows what he's talking about. Why are you all so snippy?

OP, why are you continuing to bang on with this hysterical crap when you've been told MULTIPLE TIMES that there is a special topic for you to panic in.

Just leave it until this thread is cleared away. You're constantly bumping it in the active topics list and the rest of us don't want to know - the special topic was created so we could hide it.

brendansbuddy, I don't know more than the Chief Medical Officer.

But maybe the people I linked to, like the Professor of Biology at the University of Washington, the Sterling Professor of Social & Natural Science at Yale and the Professor at the Department of Microbiology
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai do know just a little bit?

Maybe you'd like to explain why they are all know-nothing idiots, in your opinion?

I'm amazed by the people who think they are prioritising the economy by arguing against closing schools, etc.
Closing schools, cancelling large gatherings etc will mitigate the impact on the economy. Waiting means there will be no way to control the figures, or the rate and timings of infections. That's much more negative for the economy.
This isn't a cold or flu. We don't have immunity and there are no signs yet that people develop immunity. In fact, people are testing positive then negative then positive again.
Ironically this is Boris' Churchill moment and instead of being decisive and following international advice, he's washing his hands (literally and figuratively).

Children are indeed at relatively low risk. Closing schools and other quarantine measures are not primarily intended to protect the children - they are intended to stop the spreading of the disease.

But all the children suddenly not in school aren't going to be sitting at home with the adult(s) who are looking after them, be that parent(s), grandparent(s), or babysitter. I don't know about everyone but certainly most of the people I know reach a point where the children are going a bit stir crazy at home, are bored, and are irritating one another so the solution is to take them out somewhere. This is why everywhere is usually rammed during school holidays. Bowling, softplay, swimming, McDonalds, the museum, the park, even the shops. Wherever. So long as it gets them out of the house and keeps them quiet for a while. Unless everything else is going to be closed as well as the schools then only closing schools will result in more people mingling not less.

Wow - I know this is AIBU, but OP, you are being hammered.

For what it's worth, I agree with you.

The modelling from Singapore is very interesting- strict measures to reduce public gatherings, intensive tracing of contacts, isolation of people who are high risk...so they've reduced the speed of the disease.
And reducing the speed of transmission is probably all that authorities can do.

It's going to affect us all.
The only thing we can control is how quickly it spreads, and thus, the impact on demand for hospital beds.

Think of it as being a reservoir about to overflow....you can reduce the levels by opening floodgates quickly and swamping downstream.
Or reduce the level slowly over time, allowing downstream to adapt, and cope.

At some point, we will probably experience what people in Lombardy are dealing with right now.

Economic impact would be horrendous

So money is more important than lives? I do despair of all the people that are fine with the higher death rate just because it affects old and sick people. If it were the young and healthy or the children dying, would you still feel that the economy is the reason to not do anything about it?

Sorry, posted too soon. The school is n a deprived area and less than 50% of children have access to a PC at home and anyway most would not work online- they struggle to do homework or revise at the best of times and parental support is really poor.

If schools close many nurses, hospital staff and emergencies staff will need to be off too.

DowntownAbby - you do know you don't HAVE to click on a thread, right?

If you're not interested, just ignore it.

@DowntownAbby

This is the coronavirus topic...

Deary me
You need to calm down

Cases are doubling about every 2.5 days. We are following the same curve as every other European country including Italy. We are about 2 weeks behind Italy and we are doing fuck all to delay the spread.

Some of the responses here are far more frightening than anything I have read on the 'panic topic'.

Why do people bother posting on threads they have no interest in, just to be dicks? Just scroll past...

1. There is a whole bloody topic for it, which OP claims to have been completely unaware of. I call bullshit on that, given her obsession with the subject, and the number of posts in active clearly showing the topic name.

1. Even when told of this, she barrels on with her self-proclaimed expert opinions and gets really pissy with anyone who disagrees with them and asks patronising loaded questions.

Oh, I see this has been swiftly moved to the 'panic topic' so the AIBU poll has disappeared. I voted YANBU.

This is a petition saying that if schools have confirmed cases they should close. I've signed! petition.parliament.uk/petitions/300426

itsahardkn0cklife1 "This is the coronavirus topic..."

Until a few minutes ago it was started and active in AIBU. Hence the annoyance.

Hoik - yes, to be effective quarantine would have to involve more than just closing the schools, as I explained in my OP. It would be necessary to shut down most things, as has happened in quarantines in Italy, China, etc.

And yes, it would be boring, quarantines aren't imposed for fun, but frankly there are worse things that your kids being a bit bored. Like you or your elderly parents dying.

The selfishness or trivialising of this is very concerning.

Yanbu. But the bury their heads in the sand brigade know best.

To the people going on about how children experience it much more mildly..

Yes that is correct, but it dosent make them any less infectious, and traditionally children are huge spreaders of illness, due to a multitude of factors, even down to simply not having the same awareness and knowledge of the importance of good hygiene and more susceptible immune systems,
Therefore by closing schools you limit the risk of the illness spreading by making the children less likely to catch it a thus spread it on to more vulnerable members of the community such as elderly adults.

Because ultimately regardless of how ill or infectious a child is, if they hurt themselves or are upset your going to cuddle your child regardless of the consequences to yourself and potentially elderly or vulnerable relatives. Whereas it's much easier to manage the spread of infection among adult populations.

Why are people complaining about a thread that they don’t want but have clicked on and read???? Honestly, swipe past.

We don't have immunity and there are no signs yet that people develop immunity. In fact, people are testing positive then negative then positive again.

Of 107,000 worldwide infections only two people, so far, have tested negative and then tested positive again. If it was possible to be reinfected again so quickly then we would have seen more than two cases.

There are two possible explanations for these two people:

1. They were never actually fully recovered from the virus, their viral load dropped below the level that current testing can detect and so a false negative was produced. They were discharged, viral load increased, they became symptomatic again and a positive was detected.

1. They did actually become reinfected. This is not unusual for any virus, most people will be immune after one dose but there will always be outliers who do not. For example, chickenpox is usually a one-time infection and then you're immune however some people - such as my DD - don't develop that immunity and will catch it more than once.