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.

artichokehearts - thank you. It's a start.

Though the point of my OP was to point out that to be most effective, schools etc should close before an outbreak to be maximally effective.

I do not understand why people get on here to be rude to the OP. What does it matter whether it’s another thread about corona? Why the need to report and get the thread moved? I genuinely do not know why you wouldn’t scroll past if you’re not interested rather than get involved just to have a little spiteful dig at the OP.
I think this is really interesting and I do hope that schools close until we know more about the progression. Children are not at the same risk as adults but they are spreaders.
Of course there would be an impact on businesses and the economy of the country but there will be a massive impact on everyone if people get seriously ill.

I’m looking for a thread posted recently saying much the same as the OP. A working doctor with three children and wife who worked in the NHS was arguing it was necessary to close schools in order to stop transmission. Can't find it. Anyone help please?

The people who make the decisions aren’t basing them on the impact on individuals but on the bigger picture.

In 1918 govts chose not to take prompt quarantine measures because of the potential impact on the war effort.

In 2020 they are considering the impact on the economy. The loss of a sizeable proportion of non-contributing elderly people, and the loss of immune compromised people who potentially drain the health resources have to be considered against the economic effects of a workplace crippled by childcare problems. I’m not sure that they have factored in the contribution grandparents make in unpaid childcare.

Yes it was headed ‘Time to close schools’

The selfishness or trivialising of this is very concerning.

As is the level of hysteria by those determined to whip themselves and others up into a frenzy.

Schools are closing in a couple of weeks for the Easter break anyway, so maybe some will close a week earlier, and then I suppose we will see what happens.

I doubt it would be very effective to close schools, as people will take their children out and about in public anyway, so the spread of the disease is likely to be greater, as people will be out of routine, and in crowded public areas.

From the point of view of a member of school staff, there’s no way I want my school to close this close to exam season with Year 11 and Year 13.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/3842236-Time-to-close-the-schools

@SachaStark ours close in 4 weeks.

Spanish flu was different because it disproportionately affected 20 - 40 year olds. This one affects the elderly, the sick. Shutting off the working part of the economy to protect the non-working part makes no sense to me. Protect/shut off the vulnerable and let the rest of us keep working.

Hoik - so do you think that the various professors in biology, medicine etc I quoted are all "hysterically" "determined to whip themselves and others up into a frenzy"?

Or do you think that maybe they are aware of the evidence and have no particular axe to grind politically, unlike our politicians, so can speak freely?

YANBU. And thank you for sharing this information.

A close relative is a doctor now working in public health and she is extremely concerned by the government's apparent reluctance to close schools. As others have said, it's not that children are particularly in danger from coronavirus themselves, but it's been proven that they can pass it on to others. That's the real danger.

Why is parliament talking about closing Westminster, but not schools? Why are they promoting 'social distancing' and working from home, but not closing schools?

There is a petition (the most popular on the government petition site right now!) asking the government to consider closing schools quickly: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/300403

“ 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.”

And you shouldn’t be. That’s the problem Italy had when they closed schools. So that stupidity lead to the next step, which was Saturday’s quarantine.

I do understand what you are saying but who will look after the children? Many NHS workers may have no childcare. What happens when they have to stay at home to look after their children?

The impact on the economy isn't just about money, it's infrastructure. We also need to compare the potential for mortality if we destroy the economy to the potential mortality of corona virus.

I also wish hysterical people would stop trivialising the risk to life if we shut the country down.

Put it this way op. Which is the biggest personal risk for you, being unable to get any inhaler/ medication or corona virus?

Guineapigbridge (good name) - good idea in theory, but no evidence this is feasible or effective in practice?

Hundreds of thousands of deaths?

Well Italy may have closed schools but parents are not staying home with them. The BBC were reporting from a playground where children were playing with friends. Parents were still working and had made arrangements for babysitting with each other - so someone please tell me the point of that? Children interacting and parents in and out of their workplaces. Pointless. So if we’re closing schools parents should be home and no ones going anywhere. If the parents happen to be healthcare workers or any of the dozens and dozens of essential workers them so be it. Suck it up.

Hoik iirc the most recent report I read said more than two people had tested positive, negative, positive. When it was just two, it was insignificant because it could have been a false negative or positive. Or, as you say, they could have been reinfected.

Comparisons to Spanish flu are interesting, because they are two pandemics where the pattern of the disease is not the usual bell curve, tending to kill the very old and the very young, with a good smattering of those with other conditions and quite often the pregnant.

Istead, COVID-19 is worse in those age over 60. Spanish flu was the opposite - it tended to kill the young.

And like flu generally does, the strain spontaneously ebbed, and new variants replaced it. We do not know if COVID-19 will ebb, or over how long.

The globe is not on a wartime footing, as it was in 1918, with a great deal of stoicism, local food production and ability to cope with significant disruption. The 'just-in-time' supply chain had not been invented. So the societal costs of mass quarantine have changed completely. As has global interconnectedness and travel. Spanish flu travelled rapidly because of the movement of demob troops and returns displaced people. But that wasn't a patch on what happens now.

Quarantine will only work if it cuts off enough people for long enough for the threat to end. We do not know when this one will end, nor are we really able to quarantine internationally in a way that we can be sure wouid actually stop the disease.

Also, the genie is already out of the bottle. No-one wants to sign up to be Eyam

"Shutting off the working part of the economy to protect the non-working part makes no sense to me."

Yep, I am sure the government agrees with you and that this is ideological.

TrainspottingWelsh - on account of being a person who thinks in advance about things, I have made sure I have got my inhalers. There are NO protective measures at all that I as an individual can take for coronavirus though, as there is no vaccine and no cure.

And frankly that is an idiotic question - what do you think is a greater risk to me, a condition I live with that I know the risks of, and that even without inhalers I would be highly unlikely to die of, or a condition that kills what seems to be around 2% of those who get it, and that no medications are effective against?

Ignore my post above, I've found it!

@DuchessDumbarton I agree it is VERY interesting to see how different countries are reacting. Singapore had one of the first hotspots after China, and yet now has only 150 cases, lower than the UK.

Why? Because they carefully tracked cases and pinpointed quarantines quickly, and acted decisively.

We all need to understand about why it is important to delay the transmission of the virus. For me the major factor is how 1 in 10 of those with the virus probably will be some weeks in an ICU bed. Think about it people, we can’t just let the numbers infected go up too quickly. We simply won’t have enough beds.