Chris Witty "We're at the limits of the contact we can allow"

[confusedandold]

I've been watching the Press conference and I always find Chris Witty the voice of reason. He is saying that we are at the limit of what we can open without the virus spreading further and we may even have to take a step back. So where does this leave the opening of schools in a few weeks time?

In Boris’s words hope for the best, plan for the worst. Working parents, bar the very well off, may have hard times ahead.

Best to look at what benefits you’d be entitled to, how much voluntary redundancy schemes might offer you and how much savings you have.

Just as a precaution and to be prepared

You forgot the lost VAT! I think you’re right and it’s naive to say it’s a choice between schools and “people drinking”. That would be simple. It’s not though. It’s jobs, livelihoods and the whole hospitality industry, which is a huge part of U.K. economy, people are thinking the Government will just throw under a bus in order to open schools full time. I can’t see that happening.

@LangClegsInSpace

Chris Whitty lacks ambition.

We're at the limits of what we can do because we still have constant, widespread, community transmission - albeit at much lower levels than it was. Pretty much everywhere in England has at least a few new cases every week. Obviously the numbers are much higher in many places.

New outbreaks can pop up anywhere because the virus is still everywhere. If we don't know where the virus is we have to keep everyone away from everyone else.

Many countries now are going for elimination rather than low level containment. Lots of people are sneery about this strategy - 'They're finding new imported cases/they can't keep their borders closed forever.' This is a horrible argument when you think about it - 'You can't stop me from coming into your space and harming you' played out on an international scale.

We can carry on as we are, living in a reservoir of virus. We can decide that everything is fine as long as the reservoir doesn't slosh up past our ankles. The downside is a continuous cycle of lockdown and release, whole cities and regions switched on and off with little notice and little regard for the people who live there, continuous masks, not knowing from one day to the next whether your business can open or whether you can see your mum ... and we'll have to do this indefinitely because this is not a strategy it's a holding pattern.

This is the government gambling everything on there being a vaccine before they run out of money.

Or we could decide to go for elimination and we could learn from other countries that have taken that route. We could aim to reduce new cases to the level where we could identify every single one, work out how it happened and prevent future transmission.

Businesses could reopen confidently and we could all hug our mums confidently if we knew the virus was just not around, and that any outbreaks that did occur would be quickly contained.

@LangClegsInSpace

This is very well thought out and very agreeable but is this what surely what our political and scientific leadership should be pursuing all along? Is there any credible alternative?

Evidently Professor Whitty's "school progress report" would currently read - satisfactory effort but potential to aim imminently higher to achieve further progress if more applied.

I believe Professor Whitty has much more to offer but is constrained and muzzled by Bojo and Cummings. If he was given more actionable input he would achieve better outcomes. I believe he like Dr Anthony Fauci for USA though less severe, is heavily nullified and feel unable to be forthright in public forever mindful that politics and economic health overrides health - livelihoods before lives. This is naturally against medical scientific instinct and philosophy. To a certain extent as Covid fatalities numbers would suggest, the UK government is "okish" with such large collateral damage causalities of this medical war. Professor Whitty like all senior scientific specialists advisers is very guarded as if ultimately being self moderating to ensure potential litigation (inquiry) professional negligence robustness.

So far UK is the European Covid fatalities leaders! We lost the plot with care homes gross negligent mismanagement. We just about managed to save our tax payer funded "free" at point of use NHS de facto medical insurance from being overwhelmed. However our people (many of us Brits) are already Covid fatigued, financially insecure and possibly mentally devastated. And those are the ones who never knew anyone directly impacted and paying the ultimate personal cost.

On a positive note we will have better outcomes than USA (unless they make better medical treatment progress) and there may be slightly better new Covid medical interventions but unlikely any credible cure. Can we eliminate this pesky invisible highly contagious killer virus? No, not if so many of us are forever pushing the boundaries of decent rule tolerance and adherence (including exceptionism creativity). As so many Brits are more than happy to selfishly and recklessly look for ways to cut corners and belittle the seriousness leading to the localised on off pattern of hotspots and lockdowns. This will inevitably give rise to a pattern of constant recycling and continued onward transmission of Covid unchecked. We are home to millions of Brits who think this is still just a trivial pesky bit of flu! You will note the data do suggest community transmission amongst the young adults who are invincible and oblivious to what's happening and having a jolly time at the beach en mass and at the bar all without social distancing etc etc.

Taiwan is still model governmental response so far! 7 Covid fatalities among population of 25 million and direct proximity to the virus source in neighbouring mainland China. UK will never learn so we all suffer! It's all about personal freedoms and privacy etc etc and fine if that means 60k less people if not me attitude. Our test track and trace sums up the UK's Covid response! Not ideal!

@TheHoneyBadger

I’ve been searching for data but struggling. What I have found is that as of 2017 71.3% of adults were living in households without children. Of the 28.7% living with children a sizeable amount of those will be teenagers or adult children as adult children living with parents is increasingly common.

Although, of course, it won’t feel like it on mn the number of adults with primary age children is very much a minority. Of those some will have sahp, be in private education, some parents will be unemployed.

As a proportion of working age, economically active adults those in need of childcare is actually a relatively small number. Getting those workers back isn’t that big a part of the economy especially considering the % of unemployment that will be necessary in the short term.

Not saying this is the way it should be looked at but from the perspective of an economist that group isn’t going to be massively significant.

Sorry but I think we’re being naive when we assume of course they’ll open schools or we can’t go back to work and the economy needs us. We’re pretty small fry in the numbers game.

How many of that 71% of adults living without children are retired? Adults with children will mostly be between 25 and 55 and are the core of the workforce, surely?

I did see a breakdown on the childless households and was surprised that retired wasn’t a higher proportion. Lots of men living alone from 40-65, couples leaving it later to have kids for career and financial reasons and lots of shared house working singles.

Can’t give percentages sorry. Lots is stuck behind paywalls.

Someone quoted that only 8% of households contain children of primary age and I was looking to find data to disprove or back that up but it’s not easy to find proper breakdowns eg per age of child

Also the average number of children a woman has across fertility years is down to 1.9. Whatever relevance that has.

So basically the UK real life demographics is not as many working, tax revenue contributing, consumer spending parent adults with school children as you would expect on a UK online community for Mums. Definition of mum obviously referring to adult women of a certain biological age with children as probably all here on this forum ironically called Mums Net!

However that being said I am intrigued as to which demographic is propping up the UK economy? Who is the main worker income generating and consumer expenditure demographic keeping the economy going?

In any case I am assuming our children are no longer going to be paying for our future pensions but instead all the recent record government Covid debt borrowing in decades to come!

[quote randomer]@LangClegsInSpace, great points but is CW in charge?[/quote]
No, but he's a political appointment.

We can carry on as we are, living in a reservoir of virus. We can decide that everything is fine as long as the reservoir doesn't slosh up past our ankles.

Part of the problem is that people think that “well,
if it’s sloshing around my ankles, why not my knees.... And it gets to their knees and they think it’s all fine.... Then, before they know it, it’s on their hips far faster than it rose from ankle to knee, and they begin to worry.... and then it’s at their neck in next to no time, and they shout “help!”..... by which time it’s too late.

People seem to have very short memories.... in February, numbers were low, then by mid March it was out of control. If wait until you have significant increases in hospitalisations and deaths before taking action, it’s too late.

@BatShite

Fairly sure its impossible to eradicate a virus when we have no vaccine. Or even effective treatment.

If being extremely hopeful to do something not before done though, obviously the best way!

Eradication and elimination are not the same thing. Elimination is possible.

@LangClegsInSpace
Chris Whitty is a civil servant and as such is supposedly politically neutral and would be expected to work with whoever was in government. Incidentally it appears he was first appointed to a governmental advisor role at a time Labour were in power which shows that he has been happy to work with both major parties. To suggest he is a political appointment under the tories is both disingenuous and undermines the independence of the civil service that both Whitty and Patrick Valance have been keen to make clear throughout the pandemic.

Not saying this is the way it should be looked at but from the perspective of an economist that group isn’t going to be massively significant.

Even if those figures are correct, it’s not just about that, it’s far more complex.

Working parents by definition have dependents. Failing to facilitate them working will lead to significant rises in child poverty and child homelessness, which have huge economic and social implications. Having children disproportionately bear the brunt of the economic turmoil that’s coming is a terrible look and the government are well aware of that.

Women with children are over represented in some of the key worker professions like teaching/nursing.

Speaking for the private section, parent-aged employees are often the backbone of companies. Experienced enough to run projects and win business, but still cost effective compared to their senior colleagues. Having significant numbers of them out of play will impact economic development disproportionately to the degree to which their represented.

The government are well aware of all of this, which is why keeping schools open will be a top priority and they’ve said as much.

Someone quoted that only 8% of households contain children of primary age

Whilst I find that it is often overstated on here when people say if they close schools people can’t work, obviously many can, schools are still a priority.

Be it due to welfare, political realities as well as economics thankfully it’s not just reduced to that 8% figure and the importance of opening them is held to be a priority.

Children have been thrown under a bus over this last few months. They need to be prioritised in September. If that means other things have to close to allow it to happen then absolutely it should

Putting in a good home learning system is not some fabulous alternative that some people make out on here. Maybe it is if you have a quiet child who doesn’t like school, but not if you have a very sociable child who thrives in a classroom

If schools don’t open, to be honest it won’t be my child’s education I will be worried out - I’ll be too busy worrying about his mental health!
He’s only 6 and was a mess, so unhappy, lonely and showing signs of depression before the holiday clubs open. We found one which opened at a private school (so longer holidays) so he went there the last two weeks of his term and will be in some of his holidays

I’ve got my boy back. He is so happy again.

I can honestly say I’m terrified that schools won’t open because I don’t know how he’ll cope. We’re fortunate that work will be fine even if they don’t open so I don’t have that to worry about. It’s his mental health which is the biggest worry

Not returning to school will make my child ill.

@Rainbow12e

Ok, that policy sounds more do able. So it won't be the case that as soon as a child gets a cough, the whole class has to self isolate. Think it may well be fine then. Child A gets sick, next day has a test, day later comes back negative and goes back to school 1 or 2 days later. He has infected child B but child B also gets tested and is negative. If all the cases come back negative can it continue along that line?

Test comes back in 24 hours, however you may not show up on the test as being covid19 until 7 days after exposure. So day zero testing is limited, unfortunately. So you can’t at present be tested straight after contact, show up negative, and then go back to school with any confidence m

I do think schools will open, however it will be a all a bit messy.

My childs teacher is going to take a year out of education. He will have a very new, inexperienced teacher. He has severe SN. I think schools are a risk, they don’t seem to get lack of ventilation or singing as high risks for example, nothing in the guidelines for this. However I was prepared to send him back as I weighed up benefits vs risk.

Now I’m not sure. I think we will see this kind of thing, some teachers will vote with their feet.

I think it was me who quoted the 8% figure. I think I crunched it from some ONS report somewhere. I'll have a dig and see if I can find what I used. If I recall correctly, I had to mangle some figures to get it and it was always a bit of an estimate (I'm usually pretty accurate, but I do make the odd oversight on my fag packet calculations).

8% was on Twitter some time ago.

I couldn't find what I originally used, but I found something which might be better, I think. According to this ONS data, there are 6,679,100 people between the ages of 18 and 67 living in a household with primary aged children. There are 35,298,800 people aged 18-67.
Obviously not all of these are working, not all of these are the parents, and not all of these would be unable to work if schools closed, but it puts an upper limit of 18.9% of working age people might have some impact from things that affect primary aged children.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/educationandchildcare/adhocs/11865estimatesoftheagedistributionofparentsofprimaryschoolagedchildrenenglandocttodec2019

The data above is very interesting in that it shows the number of multi generational families is tiny in this country.

I haven't seen the figure on Twitter - I know I ran some rough calculations a bit back and thought I remembered coming up with 8% or a number like that, of adults with children in that age range. I don't feel responsible for the figure now, then!

It would seem Twitter agreed with you! I tried searching but Twitter search is a useless thing!

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/families/bulletins/familiesandhouseholds/2019

This one?

There are 3,644,000 women between the ages of 18-67 in those households. I'd say they would be the ones most at risk of not being able to work. I think only about 75% of women actually work and some of that age group are siblings rather than parents of primary school children. I think we are looking at about 1.5 to 2.5 million working women with primary aged kids who require childcare to work. Although I am sure this is a large enough number to affect government policy, it's also a small enough number for them to seriously consider just running a bus over.

The government are well aware of all of this, which is why keeping schools open will be a top priority and they’ve said as much.

If that's what they want then they need to come up with the cash to facilitate it. But I suspect they are preparing themselves to blame the teachers when it all goes belly up.