Risk to under 20’s

[Alex50]

So five people have died from Covid who are under 20 so far in the UK, 3 of those had under lying health issues, so only 2 with unknown health issue have died. There are over 4 million school age children in the UK. Do you think children are at risk if they return to school? Children are the least at risk category, surely a strategy should be put in place so they can return to school?

If families are really struggling having their children at home, they should be able to formally apply to the school to allow their child to be classed as vulnerable or EDHC so they can join the small numbers of key worker children

On what basis would parents get to decide they were vulnerable?!

By EDHC, do you mean an Education, Health and Care plan (EHCP)? You can’t just can get one of those by ringing the school and just asking for one!

All of us see this pandemic through our own particular yes - and that depends on our own particular situation. It is the nature of lockdown that we aren't exposed to as wide a variety of experiences and viewpoints as normal, as we are so closely confined with a small number of people that we necessarily focus on them, and the impact on them - and with the fact that being confined under such circumstances raises the emotional temperature, it is no wonder that views on all sides are expressed with such strength.

OP, if schools were absolutely closed systems, in which children / young people and young teachers and other workers remained in a single bubble, with no contact with others at any point and with no vulnerable adults or children in the mix, then the risk to the under 20s would be, I agree, the key variable to look at.

However, this obviously isn't the case. Some children are vulnerable - they have conditions like cystic fibrosis, or take immunosuppressant drugs for a variety of conditions. Many teachers / support staff / other adults in schools (from secretaries to dinner staff) are not young, and many of them are in vulnerable groups.

However, the main issue, it seems to me, are the implications for the wider school community. Teachers live with and care for vulnerable and shielded elderly or vulnerable young relatives. Pupils live with vulnerable or shielded parents. Children travel to school on crowded buses, driven by further adults, and, in many areas, also populated by standard commuters or key workers, on their way to or from nursing homes, hospitals etc. Grandparents, often elderly, are key to before and after school childcare.

The key implication of re-opening schools is a MASSIVE reduction in social distancing across the community of adults linked to that school. Adults walking their children to the school where the children will mix freely are highly unlikely to remain 2m from every other adult on the same errand, or to believe that they can see a friend on the school run but not go round for a coffee (before then perhaps going on to their workplace).

Essentially, in one step, we go from small socially-distanced households to, essentially, the entire community linked to a single school becoming, as far as virus transmission is concerned, a single household, linked by a route the virus is entirely capable of travelling. As many people have children in more than 1 school, each school-linked community then becomes linked, to an even larger network.

It is that, not the simple fact of children being in school, that worries me. Yes, (quite a few) teachers and (a few) children will die when schools re-open, through direct in-school transmission. However, many in the school linked community will ALSO die, and it is the latter numbers that should concern us all.

OP, I agree it is frustrating not to be able to plan ahead. But in real life, most parents at my school are definitely not ready to send back their children. Neither are most people ready to release from lockdown, in the most recent study. It seems like the voices wanting otherwise are a small but vocal minority.

Agree with @noblegiraffe and @cantkeepawayforever that school opening means social distancing will be relaxed all over. People are unlikely to obey strict restrictions once the schools are back. I think this is part of the plan, as they will count on the mixing to create more immunity and a controlled rise in cases. We're all the guinea pigs here.

Agree with you op. I am parent to an only child and it’s inhumane to keep them away from social contact for months at a time as well as potentially deeply damaging long term. And I have a comfortable house and garden/ home life. There are obviously lots more vulnerable children suffering even more.

I live in London where it was circulating before lockdown. If it was particularly being spread via children we’d have heard awful stories of teachers dying but they didn’t happen. A handful of teachers have died - which is awful of course - but the likelihood from evidence collated so far is that this was not spread via schools.

A teacher in a school local to me has died of Corona virus. She was young and has left behind two young children. That's one too many. Agreed it’s dreadfully sad but there is a balance of risks. A friend of mine died in his 30s from flu, it’s awful but it happens. We don’t all lockdown in case it does.

We have to protect our future whilst minimising the risks as best we can as this isn’t going to go away any time soon and we can’t have a lost generation.

Also, we really have to be mindful of how survivors of this virus are faring. It has not been touched in much in the media but as far as I understand it, it can and it does take weeks to recover to a level where one can be a functioning useful member of the society and, even for those with mild and moderate symptoms

This is not necessarily true. ‘Survivors’ are likely to be over 99% of people who get this (based on several other countries data where they actually test people) and the vast majority have a mild illness. Of course those who get pneumonia will take longer to recover but this is still the minority even though we hear more of these stories in the media. I know several people who have had it (a couple tested, most suspected) and none were seriously ill.

Shield the vulnerable and allow others back to work/school seems to be only long term sensible plan.
Couple this with a ban on large gatherings, lots more testing etc.

But this lockdown is now having a huge impact on people who are very, very low risk. This risk won’t change over the next few months.

I'm a teacher and I was pretty scared towards the end. Parents were assessing how sick THEIR child was before sending them in and telling them they could go home if THEY felt too sick to stay. No thought to the chance of them infecting others. Some kids were sent one after showing symptoms only to be sent back by parents the next day.

I really admire NHS workers. They're a breed apart. You have to be a particular type of person to deal with what they do day in day out and you wouldn't go in to it if you weren't. I think a lot of teachers would be very very anxious indeed going to work. Some would cope, many wouldn't.

The quality of education that would happen would also be seriously compromised by the in and outs of staff and students. Exams have been cancelled so for all those students there's no point. I think it's important kids can mix but there are lots of less risky ways to achieve that than school.

I dont agree the risk of cases linked to a school is low. As i said we had a confirmed parent.
Maximum of 900 parentd but probably 60% of that due to single parents and siblings.
And thats when there were suppsedly very few nationwide and im in the lowest region in England.
I guess the risks are very different depending on area of uk and number of pupils in a school. 100 pupils in rutal area would be less worrying.

They also found things like singing really soread the virus so no singing at school.

I just dont see why uk children/teachers/parents have to accept the risk that not one other country (except maybe sweden?) are forcing on them??
Why do we know better? Weve been wrong every single time so far...

The others are as i said
Masks
Smaller classes 10-15
Certain classes not whole school
Cleaning

Once you agree to do it properly then there can be a discussion but not from lets just send them back it'll be fine. (As frankly that is manslaughter or worse as we know what will happen).

So pay for it to be done properly

Ive said on other threads there are many vulnerable
Asthmatics
Diabetics
High BP
Pregnant
Young baby
Etc.
Let alone many 40-50+ parents.

The uselessness of gov re ppe for hcp also has an effect with 100+ of them dying as a pp said their whole family is obviously unfortunately high risk too so higher risk for that spreading at school too.

@Mistressiggi I wasn’t meant to sound morbid, just trying to access the risks to teachers, we hear number of NHS dying each day. is that morbid?

"Which we don’t know, they actually don’t think children spread it as much as they thought"

That's a lot of thinks, thoughts and don't knows "they" are having

"Keeping our children locked away isn’t going to give us any answers, we have to start children back to school, start testing, then looking at the data."

Because you say so? Have you got an accurate test we can use OP? Armchair scientist

Shield the vulnerable and allow others back to work/school seems to be only long term sensible plan.

The question I have is how many people - children and adults- in an average school have no link at all to a vulnerable person?

50% of the staff where I work fit into the longer 'vulnerable' list or live with someone vulnerable or shielding.

I know approximately how many children are shielding themselves, but have no idea how many of them live with a vulnerable person, or have a vulnerable person they contact daily.

In nyc
'The number of education department staffers who have died as a result of the coronavirus reached 63. '

They likely had more cases there as 20% in nyc might have immunity.

The press in uk need to do this as they do for nhs staff.

The death rates (always terribly sad) for HCPs aren't any higher than for any other employed group or the general population so I can't imagine teachers would be too disimilar and possibly fewer.

Not that death rates of teachers should have ever really been brought into the discussion.

OP I didn't say you sounded morbid, I said you sounded callous.
I don't know the answer. I'm glad it's not my decision to make. I will stick to my own area of expertise, and I can categorically say that schools can not reopen with successful social distancing. They can't even do it just now with only a handful of children in.
So if we no longer need SD then fine, but let's not pretend it can happen in schools.

As most people seem to be going on about kids socialising why not then complain that kids need to be able to meet up in groups of 10 (same kids).
This removes teachers and vulnerable children/parents.

That could be continued until school starts? In sept when we would hopefully have more info on whether kids spead it.
I would also reopen parks and put in hand wash facilities (outside)

Re schools the important year groups are the alevel and gcses but possibly within that ome subjects harder to do at home (maths/science etc?).

I certainly wouldnt be sending back reception and yr 1. With free play and carpet time.

There will need to be continued provision for shielding children and parents

I haven't read the whole thread. This article says that 63 education professionals in New York have died as a result of Covid.
ny.chalkbeat.org/2020/4/20/21230489/coronavirus-death-toll-for-nyc-education-department-climbs-to-63
I can't speak to the authenticity or data. It might be of interest to the OP though.

The bottom line is, we can't go on indefinitely as we are without some major damage (social & educational) to our children.
I think a staggering system to fewer children in school with some social distancing in place should be achievable.
Obviously, there will always remain a certain risk factor of catching the virus. But then, we should always remember, the current measures are in place to slow down the spread, not to prevent people getting it.

Whatever steps taken to relax measures, we must accept some risk

No country can lock down for 2 years, until effective treatmnt and a vaccine are rolled out

• and that 2-yr timing is if there are no unexpected problems

Some increase in deaths is inevitable, unless the virus amount drops significantly over summer, but exponential growth of infection & death must be avoided

Relaxation would be in stages, under scientific advice and would be reversed if exponential growth starts up again,
or maybe tweaked if there are just problems with specific groups

Children have v v tiny risk of harm from COVID

• but considerably higher risk of damaging their socialisation & education if they miss school for much longer

The risks would be to their families and to teachers:

Families with shielded me,bers should be allowd to keep kids home

• they need proper support to home educate

Teachers who are shielded should stay home, on full pay
and be put on to whatever WFH is possible - they would need to be supplied with support & tech for this
e.g. they might be able to support those educating at home, contact them regularly for welfare checks etc, whatever else can be done remotely for school ?

Those who are merely "vulnerable" number about 17 million,
so in practice would mean they have to be treated like any other workers or members of society, with a few small adjustments where possible

So they would have to work & shop etc as normal

If nyc are at 20% immunity say to get to 60% would be a total of 189 education people.

If we are at 5% and there were 3+ teachers already thats

but considerably higher risk of damaging their socialisation & education if they miss school for much longer
Children at most schools have missed three weeks of education so far. Some parents take longer holidays than that.

The death rates (always terribly sad) for HCPs aren't any higher than for any other employed group or the general population so I can't imagine teachers would be too disimilar and possibly fewer.

That's with PPE ... will PPE be provided for teachers?

We have more research now about vulnerable categories don’t we? So maybe we could review that.

I guess it varies by school and area but even if there is a certain percentage vulnerable and need to shield doesn’t mean 50-60% couldn’t go back? Part time? A couple of days a week? Apart from just repeating the same old arguments we need to work this out as it’s unacceptable to keep all these children out of an educational setting for months and months on end.

No they can’t social distance. So keep the numbers smaller. Half the school Monday and Tuesday, other half Thursday and Friday. Don’t have reception children back etc. There must be lots of ideas that we can discuss rather than shutting the discussion straight down.

My children have more chance of being knocked over on the way to school. We’re not vulnerable. Their teachers aren’t vulnerable. Yes we’re lucky not to have anyone in that category but doesn’t mean we have to stay locked away for months.

There must be lots of ideas that we can discuss rather than shutting the discussion straight down.

They are being discussed.

Do you think what we discuss on mumsnet is what will end up happening? I know mumsnet is powerful, but I don't think it will dictate the government schools policy!