School Places and staying off due to Covid

[soapboxqueen]

Hi all, I've seen a number of people saying they are going to keep their children away from school until at least September. I've read that schools won't fine parents if they keep their children away from school between the 1st of June start back date and the summer. However, keeping in mind that it's 6 weeks of school roughly, could schools start removing places from children because they aren't in attendance and aren't sick?

That doesn't really allow for the clinically vulnerable, though. DC in that category, and DC from a household with one or more clinically vulnerable person shouid perhaps not be in the first wave of returners.

Schools are meant to be attempting some distancing (and guidance says the very vulnerable do not have to attend if they cannot be distanced). Perhaps some schools won't be able to have all pupils in at the same time, so having some volunteer to stay off might even be useful

The lack of excess deaths in the under 45s includes all the millions of people identified as having asthma or other co-morbidites. Even if you have another condition and are under 45 the risk is low. Think of all the many millions who must be in that group and then consider that despite this, the death rate for the under 45s is what would be expected for this time of year.

It is high for the over 70s but for younger people - with manageable health conditions - the statistics are actually really good.

Ive got lots of empathy thank you, but there is so much hysteria on MN.
Life is a risk! For the majority of people, Covid increases that risk by an amount that is easily over weighed by the risks to the economy ( you know.. mass unemployment, crippling taxation, food riots, interruptions to drug pipelines.) There are large numbers of people who seem happy to just sit and wait for someone else to take the steps required to get things going again. I dont believe all of those people are going to be struck down the minute they stick their heads out of the bloody door!

Ah, that must be why I've been told to stay indoors and told I may crack open a window - because the risk is so vanishingly small.

We do know the risk to children as the estimates are that a couple of million people in the UK have already have it and some claim that schools are a hotbed for diseases spreading. If that were so, we should already have seen mass outbreaks in schools and there just hasn’t been.

Of all the deaths recorded from Covid in the UK, 1% are in the under 45s and next to none in children. Even though millions of under 45s and children have asthma etc.

Again, “hysteria”.

Do you think people advised by the NHS that they/ their DC should “shield”, for example, are “hysterical”?

It is because the government consider it socially divisive to tell under 45s to live normal lives and for older people to stay at home.

Please look at the link to the ONS stats O provided and then tell me that the risk to under 45s is high. We would not be locked down if it were not for the impact on older people. The risk is simply not equal for everyone.

It’s not just older people at higher risk! Some parents of school aged DC and some under 18s are too.

I don’t think anyone is saying that those in the shielding or vulnerable groups are hysterical.

My child is 5, I’m 32, my DH is 35, we have no health problems, we are healthy, we have followed the guidelines and stayed at home for 7 weeks, I’m struggling to understand why my 5 year old going back to school means we are risking vulnerable lives.

The guidelines advise that those in the shielding category should not return to school. Others who might have a vulnerable member in the family need to make their own decisions about if their child returns to school.

Where are these healthy children dying from covid19 hiding? There are a few with serious underlying conditions that have died but no 'healthy' children. If they go back to school they are far far more likely to die from any of the hundreds of other illness out there.

Their lives will be much more negatively impacted by keeping them at home for 6 months.

Is 34 really so outrageously old to be having babies?

Or did I imagine that y6s are on the list for going back?

Because why the assumption that primary school parents must be under 45?

I am not sure how they can take away spots or penalize anyone. Even if the government hadn't said it, you could just call in and say that one of the family members has a cough you would be asked to self isolate for 14 days, next the kid has fever again self isolate for 14 days...

Yep, hide in your bunker! Someone else will sort it and then you can come out!

What are you doing to 'sort it' Billy ? And how is it that you seem particularly aggrieved about whether my children attend a handful of fragmented and chaotic sessions between June and the end of term?

1 if you hadnr realised Vulnerable have been told to stringently SD... So
2 fewer of them will have died.
3 i took dc out of school 2w before lockdown...
4 also noteworthy is that now the numberbof younger cases is exceeding older people as they are not goi g out.
5 to get to herd immunity you need to x a number of deaths by a minimum of 12
6 so 3k under 45=36k and that is only to get to 60% we may need 90
7 so if 90 then thats 54k under 54s....
8 you are wilfully ignoring the people hospitalised. The imperial figures were 1% of 20-29yo need to be hospitalized. And got worse going up ages.
9 but people havent been hospitalised they went blue at home and dropped dead.
10 the 3k is during lockdown when supposedly we didnt breach the nhs capacity
11 but your tiny 1% chance of needin g hospitalization is an ideal world - if we breach nhs it will be th at 1% = death.as no o2 ( or icu) = death.
So ultimately your confidence that you will be fin e is rather misplaced
You are dependent on the beds which they cannot predic t aft er all they are not testing or stopping contacts going out.

×under 45s

So of course this is mipuch worse for those old enough or with conditions making hospitalization much more likely. So yoy cannot say ih youll be fine because it's pretty likely at peaks people die who could have been saved

We cant crouch in our houses for the rest of our lives.

My household has adults and children in it who are all working hard at home, exercising, going out for walks, etc., thank you! We're certainly not "crouching in our houses".

I keep seeing this emotive language about hiding. But not going to school is not hiding! It's just not going to school (yet). School buildings are enclosed environments with large numbers of people and limited scope for distancing and hygiene.

I can think of several things I'd be perfectly happy for my kids to do as lockdown eases, before I'd want to send them back into a crowded school building with hundreds of other kids. Not yet anyway.

Courage does nothing against a virus. Better scientific knowledge, testing schemes, proper plans for how school can work socially distanced - those things actually do work against the virus. With time we'll have more of those but we haven't got them yet.

In the meantime the last thing anyone should be doing is accusing people who may keep their children at home of being chicken. Schools will work much better this term with fewer children in - don't look a gift horse in the mouth!

@Eyewhisker Do you include vulnerable children and parents in that?

@Keepdistance I just wanted to say that I agree with you and your stats are impressive!

Interesting assertions about excess deaths and the u45s.

I haven't seen a breakdown by age. But the excess deaths in the peak week were over 100% higher than the 'background' death rate and I gpfund it hard to credit that all of those deaths were in people aged 46 and upwards.

As of course we do not, at present, know what the non-COVID death rate for this year is (and there's a very good chance the restrictions will mean it is atypical) then the utility of using the cruder death rate figures drops somewhat.

Despite that caveat, it is of course a useful way of comparing data between countries though it does rest on the same assumption that the non-COVID death rate will have moved in similar ways in each.

The school will most definitely keep the place available, however the quality and quantity of home learning support may slow down and eventually become non-existent as more teachers are called in. We are planning for this, hopefully other schools are too as we don't want the children of worried parents to suffer educationally.

My children are 13, 5 and 2 and will be going to their settings once I am called back in. DS2 nursery has made plans to open alongside schools. Although I imagine year 8 will be off for the foreseeable.

Seeing as we aren’t getting a vaccine any time soon (or not getting one at all), what are people who are isolating at home planning to do for the longer term? COVID19 could be here to stay with us for a very long time.

Waiting for the community cases to reduce and the track and trace to become established.

Families with vulnerable or extremely vulnerable family member(s) in their household will need to take some v difficult decisions.