Is this scaremongering: schools not open until December

[JuneTreeTop]

Heard off a few people today (different times) that schools wont open until December.
Surely not????

Moonin the opposite could be true. The faster it is over with. Bigger explosion of cases though.

The more people act like idiots and keep going to the beach, going to get their nails done etc. The longer this will go on

I'm sorry, but this isn't true.

The longer people keep doing these things, the quicker it will be over, but the more people will die.

@DCOkeford but it is true because we aren't going to let loads of people die.

DCoke your immunity posts make sense to me

My guess is schools will try to reopen a little before the end of the summer term. So we might get a fortnight in July. It would be wonderful if it could be done, especially for all those due to leave their schools at the end of this year, to say goodbye and round things off properly. A couple of weeks of sports days, prize-givings, picnics and proms. A blast of hot weather should help make this possible.

@Moomin8 Unless the government steps in to enforce martial law, people will do as they please, and many more people will die.

It will all be over faster though.

@DCOkeford it is a bit more complex than that.

They probably will enforce martial law. Thousands of people dying is not something any government wants on their watch.

Perhaps, but what you are saying is factually incorrect - you are muddling up different concepts and it is giving you an inaccurate picture.

@TeddyIsaHe, spot on. People need to get their head around the fact that we are in this for the long haul.

There is a very distinct possibility schools will not reopen in September. Loads of people all together in an enclosed space again, it's obvious exponential transmission will start again.

I was freaking out last week, having panic attacks, crying, praying (i don't believe in God). I completely avoided all news for about 4-5 days then gradually dipped a toe back into the media.

I've now accepted it. My DCs education is going to hugely disrupted and I'm actively planning how to home school them using online resources.

@Undecided91 we categorically won't be.

@Moomin8 I think you may be right.

I expect Boris is caught between

a) Mass deaths of the elderly neatly solves his ticking time bomb of how to provide care for the elderly population

and

b) Mass deaths of the elderly taking out a lot of his reliably conservative voting electorate

Oh fgs. You're being pedantic. This isn't about whether the situation evolves organically. The government decided against that approach.

It doesn't seem infeasible that it will be late June before things are calm enough to consider reopening the schools. However, that late in the year it would be open them to allow the children to mix for two weeks, then have another surge. Surely staying shut until September is more likely?

So if everyone gets it thousands of people will die and those left might be immune. But they will only be immune if the virus does not mutate. This is why you are not immune to colds. The corona virus has already mutated once. What is more likely is an annual vaccination programme like the flu where some people still die.
It may also be that people who catch it still have the virus in them dormant and it reemerges when your immune system is poor. This is what happens with herpes. It may not, but no one knows.

That is why herd immunity is an unproven theory. No one knows enough about the virus to know.

I did wonder if they would ask schools to back in July and August to prevent people going on their holidays

I wondered the same. My retired headmistress aunt laughed hollowly and said “Spoke, you’ve obviously never dealt with the NUT.”

Depends on whether we can get rid of it - at the minute it feels like morons are making more of an effort to get together than usual. Depends on whether we can get a vaccine, depends on whether it mutates. The variables are endless. I would be very surprised is schools were back before September.

the reality is no one knows - and the biggest thing that no one knows and that we quite quickly need to is how many people have had mild or asymptomatic cases that we dont know about: how huge is that iceberg underneath.

That should be really the priority because if you dont know that how can you work out any modelling as to how long it is going to last.

How many people have had a virus in this time that hasnt been awful enough to definitely be CV but could be?

We cant lockdown forever, indeed I suspect at some point the negatives of staying on lockdown outweigh the positives in terms of the longer term future - something I suspect Governments are well aware of and dont say.

www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf

Actually reading this is interesting because it actually says this about September

*Once interventions are relaxed (in the example in Figure 3, from September onwards), infections begin
to rise, resulting in a predicted peak epidemic later in the year. The more successful a strategy is at
temporary suppression, the larger the later epidemic is predicted to be in the absence of vaccination,
due to lesser build-up of herd immunity. *

Instead it recommends this:
Once interventions are relaxed (in the example in Figure 3, from SGiven suppression policies may need to be maintained for many months, we examined the impact of
an adaptive policy in which social distancing (plus school and university closure, if used) is only
initiated after weekly confirmed case incidence in ICU patients (a group of patients highly likely to be
tested) exceeds a certain “on” threshold, and is relaxed when ICU case incidence falls below a certain
“off” threshold

They seem to think this initial period will be 3-4 months hence the Gvt saying 12 weeks

December wont happen though because that would create a pressure cooker - the impact of letting it go would be immense. This has to be a slow simmer of on and of

Well, it doesn't seem to have mutated in either China or South Korea.

That's probably quite persuasive evidence.

@DCOkeford And a lot of the population would object if they thought their grandparents were just being left to die. These are real people after all.

We need the antibody testing kits to be distributed to everyone. They are already manufacturing them. If children’s and teachers can take a quick test to show they have antibodies to Covid then they should be fine to reopen and get on with schooling again.

OBVIOUSLY the disclaimer is that the antibody test needs to be tested so we know it’s accurate and we need to be sure that once you’ve had it, you’re immune.

If it is liable to mutate, that is a very scary prospect.

We will never get on top of it if that is the case, it will be a new part of our reality.

@DCOkeford It has mutated. There are two versions.

It would be amazing if DD could say goodbye to her class and teachers before the end of the school year in whatever minimalist form that took that was also safe. Not only has DD left belongings at school (we went into self-isolation due to a cough quite early) but she's in Y6 so won't be heading back in September.

Of course, everyone's safety is paramount though and certainly doesn't trump a desire to say goodbye.

I hope DD can start secondary in September though.