Parents! Please don’t send your kid to school with a cough or temperature

[noblegiraffe]

We’ll have to send them home again, and that’s a whole lot of hassle that could have easily been avoided by parents following the government advice.

No, you don’t get to decide whether the cough or a fever is ‘simply a cold’. Neither do we. Just follow the guidelines please.

Apart from anything, it’s freaking their classmates out and we can really do without stressing out the kids even more about this.

Thank you.

Ds (6) was off it Thursday teatime. Coughing friday morning. Phoned school to say he be off 7 days as per advice. Told bring him Monday if he's fine. Another child in his class brought in with temp and cokd symptoms because school said they would rather have her in and monitor.

So if the schools respond that way I can see why people do.

Ds won't be in monday or probably until after Easter at this rate.

Repeatedly - was it one cough? Or repeatedly throughout the day?

Obviously they can't specify 10 times a day/hour/minute as it will be different for different people and depending on severity. But really, we all know what "repeated" means!

Indeed, we all know what "having a cough" means...

It differentiates between someone coughing once because they’ve breathed something dusty in or a drink has gone the wrong way etc.

If mine and dh’s coughs had started in the last 7 days we’d be isolating.

I'm almost thinking that they want us to be lost and confused.

I have a cough which started weds/thurs . Not a bad one, and I too was unsure about whether it would be classed as continuous.
I did the 111 online check which asked if I had a "repeated" cough ie more than once.
The result told me to self isolate for 7 days.

A continuous cough is not open to interpretation - it means any cough that isn't just a one off due to inhaling a bug etc.

Today I have a slight temperature too.
I'm almost sure that I just have a cold, picked up from one of the many kids in my class who have been in school this week coughing and with temperatures.

I will still self isolate for 7 days because that is what the guidelines say.

My daughter had a coughing issue on friday, in the car on the way to school. She hasn't coughed since but she will be off all week (an extra day as I am now on isolation). I'm lucky that i can stay home (full time carer for my eldest who has health issues). I will be honest, I was torn and asked the schools advice as she was eating dry cereal in the car and was a little upset so wasn't sure if that had triggered it. She does now have a snotty nose and sore throat.

“A cough without a fever isn't indicative of Coronavirus though is it? I haven't heard that anywhere.”

You have not heard that a new persistent cough regardless of fever is one out of the two symptoms that means you have to self-isolate for 7 days, is that what you’re saying...really....REALLY???

Surely everyone should just operate on a 'better safe than sorry' policy at the moment? Yes, @Bedsheets4knickers it's probably not Coronavirus but the fact is it might be, and therefore you need to follow guidance and keep your daughter home from school. If you don't, and she does have it, your family could be responsible for killing someone - don't be that person

A cough without a fever isn't indicative of Coronavirus though is it? I haven't heard that anywhere.”

But there are reports from sufferers that the cough started first and the onset of fever was a day or days afterwards. So it’s being on the safe side to isolate)

Crikey school attendance figures are going to plummet. My 4yo is going in tomorrow with a cough but she's had it for weeks so not new. This time of year half the school have some form of cold bug going on. Don't what the right answer is we're all dependent on those around us demonstrating some common sense.

Ds’s school are prepared. He’s in his GCSE year and because I kept him off Friday anyway as his throat felt rotten even though corona had been discounted, his teachers emailed him work to do.

Every child has been issued with a study pack and links etc.

It's pretty amazing that for almost our whole lives up until Thursday we would all have been able to confidently state whether we/our children "had a cough".

Now that it's important to isolate even if you have very mild symptoms everyone is completely baffled about what a cough is

Indeed @IsolationMum

You are right, of course, Barracker. And at this point, any autonomy concerning isolation and prevention becomes a class issue.
In my inner city primary school, children regularly come in really quite unwell, as parents in the gig economy and on zero hours conracts can't just decide to keep them home. We phone to ask them to collect, nobody picks up the phone. We advise at pick-up time not to bring in the following day, see the terror in the parent's eyes, and know that their child will appear unaccompanied in the playground the following morning, still ill, and "Mummy had to go to work." Since January I have had children tucked under a blanket, sleeping in the book corner, while we try to contact parents whose phones are switched off, every single day. Staff are on their knees, catching every bug going. None of these parents are in a position to follow government guidance without massive implications for their ability to keep a roof over their heads and feed their families.
Meanwhile, at my DC's school, where many families have a SAHP or parents who work in well remunerated roles where home working is possible are delighted that they will be able to keep their children home from Monday, under the guise of fictitious coughs and fevers, just as Barracker says. Who is going to check?
And Doggy, I find your comment about teachers really mean spirited and uncalled for. Teachers are frontline workers in this scenario, enabling the economy to keep chugging along, at considersble risk to themselves, many of whom would love to run for the hills, much like so many others who are opting to work from home, or to take leave or otherwise try to put some distance between themselves and the possibility of infection. Yes, for the sake of their families -who doesn't wish for their family to be kept out of harm's way? But we can't, and, to my knowledge, we don't. I wipe so many tears, get squeezed and pawed so much, lead so many by their snotty little hands, all very young children on whom "Happy Birthday twice" is totally fucking lost. And, for the record, teachers are also tax payers.

It will be hard to police by the school, most of Dd year have had a cough since half term.

Slightly off topic, but I feel more disturbed by the way this is affecting people’s behaviour towards one another than I do about the illness itself.

It doesn’t take much to reduce us to terrified, aggressive animals. Which is what we are,,essentially I suppose, biologically speaking.

Like witnessing fear steadily undoing civilisation, or the pretence of it anyway.

But yeh, it’s depressing.

I fear people will soon become unsettled enough to assault one another.

I don't think anyone is delighted about what is going on.

Crikey school attendance figures are going to plummet

They shouldn't. We've been advised on the codes to use if pupils are self isolating, which will be the same codes as for snow days.

I'm a teacher with a damaged lung and compromised immune system. I have already had pneumonia this winter. I also have colleagues who have: recently had a transplant, recently returned from heart surgery, are over 60, and have cancer. That's not to mention the pupils (and I can think of half a dozen off the top of my head with compromised immune systems).
Your child's mild cough might be coronavirus and could kill any one of us. Equally, it might be a cold that could knock our immune systems giving us less chance of fighting off coronavirus when it comes. We don't want it, and if you want us here still to teach your kids when this is over, please suck it up and follow the guidelines. My Sixth Form were in tears that their teachers might die (they know who has just come back from a transplant and heart surgery, who is over 65, and they read the news). So yes, that includes 7 days for 'just a cough'. Thankyou.

Self isolating for 7 days is not just about you or your child, it is also about taking other viruses (which may also make people quite poorly) out of circulation so as to avoid unnecessary pressure on the health service. It may only be a cold, but a cold for an elderly person or a child having cancer treatment is not only a cold.

It's not fucking difficult. Keep your kids off school. These are extraordinary times and we all need to do our bit. Geez!

No one has asked any of you to diagnose whether your child had Covid-19. You have, however, been asked to stay at home if you have a new cough.

It's really not difficult to understand.

New CONTINUOUS cough.

And it IS difficult to interpret, because the NHS guidance is unclear.

Beebityboo, I think that might be in response to my comment about parents at my DC's school taking their DC our as of Monday? Don't get me wrong, I am not judging their decision at all. Perhaps delighted isn't the right word, I should probably have said 'deeply relieved' or similar. If I didn't take my work very seriously, I would take my DC out of school in a heartbeat.