Predicted 2nd wave

[Pixxie7]

So they are predicting a 2nd wave twice as big as the first at the beginning of December if the track and trace system isn’t improved. Do you think the government has learnt anything?

I have to say that with increased travel over august due to summer holidays, kids and students back in sept and then autumn it's a perfect storm for increased transmission.

They seem to be very quick to react to local spikes but it's more of a social lockdown than full on lockdown now cos economy

Silvercatowner@ I am not scaremongering I repeated what was on the news. My question is about the government.

Good article here:

www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(20)30095-X/fulltext

Useful to shut schools with flu epidemics nearing peaks as kids get it and are symptomatic. With Covid-19 - kids get it but are not symptomatic. So need to balance shutting schools (huge societal costs of this) and whether it will reduce transmission effectively. Probably only works to reduce when combined with other measures and when lockdowns are ‘new’ - so population is complying. If we keep schools closed now, compliance will be reduced so kids will mix across households anyway - older kids with friends, younger kids with grandparents as parents are working again. So it will be less effective.

We are using the mitigated risk route - so schools will reopen but class bubbles and in secondaries, the teachers moving round, and management of movement and breaks.

Taiwan reopened its schools early and then used local lockdown of schools and class quarantines.

It's still just guesswork OP, even if it's come from university research. All computer models are based on data

Exactly and in a couple weeks things may change and the data and resulting modelling will also change.

YANBU.
People are still going to Spain despite another wave then coming back not isolating (know of someone personally who did this 🤦🏻‍♀️) and then you have everyone flocking to the pubs and restaurants. It’s ridiculous. It’s already picking up again 7 out of 10 of my family members in one city (who all live seperatly and haven’t seen each other) have caught it these past two weeks in a city that’s not even on lockdown. Fun times ahead of us!
I’m very glad I live rurally now.

The second wave will begin as soon as the kids go back to school and escalate from there..
Not scare-mongering. Just a fact

I’m not sure about this, schools went back partly on 1st June... was there any escalation from that? None of the schools round here had confirmed cases and they had a lot of pupils back.

Sounds like people Want do disbelieve it just because it's a model

But what else can you do to predict the future ?

If you don't want to rely on models, a range of which are all saying the same thing, then you ware happy to continue on blindly and get into the crap before you will believe that's where you were headed? Or do you have something other than wishful thinking to suggest?

Gosh we really need to prioritise getting children into school and getting an education. The tooth fairy does not exist. Nor does Santa.

I am always suspious of someone claiming "They say" or "they are predicting".

Who are these mythical "they"?

@Alpotato there was a big uptick in reported cases in schools throughout June and July.

Small print at the bottom, 98% traced in NI 90% in Wales. Sloppy reporting ...yes fear of second wave, but implying it was because tracing was too low in the UK is inaccurate. However lower than their threshold in England so definite concern there.

Are you a teacher OP?

The children need to go back to school. We cannot cower at home for ever.

There is a high level of hysteria on MN about this and I think it's ridiculous.

We'll find out soon enough I suppose! Whatever you want to call it, a wave or whatever, increasing indoors, prolonged, social contact with people familiar to you has definitely led to an uptick in numbers of people getting infected. Maybe it will be different for school children. I can't quite see how or why, but I'm happy to be proved wrong.

Very few people are cowering at home anymore. We are mainly out and about, sometimes socialising indoors with people, sometimes not social distancing or wearing masks, getting back to life.

I'm with Silvercatowner TBH. This is one for the Covid board.

Personally I'm not going to spend my summer second-guessing the situation in December. Millions of children & young people need educating & socialising. Vulnerable ones need protecting, & schools are vital to that. There are children out there suffering horribly because no one is watching out for them right now. The evidence re schools to date leans towards them not playing a significant role. We really can't go on punishing the young, especially the vulnerable yoing, largely to somewhat prolong the lives of people in the 70s, 80s & 90s. Not when we have other tools to protect that demographic.

@Literallynoidea

Are you a teacher OP?

The children need to go back to school. We cannot cower at home for ever.

There is a high level of hysteria on MN about this and I think it's ridiculous.

I don't understand why people jump to this conclusion. I don't think people should cower at home or that schools should be closed. I think that there are proven ways to keep it supressed and knowledge of what activities are higher risk than others, so why on earth aren't these being implemented and enforced?

Government needs to start enforcing social distancing, mask wearing and sizes of gatherings, they need to insist on everyone wearing a mask in school and making class sizes smaller. Then hopefully by doing this they rates can be kept low enough that a sizeable part of normal life can carry on.

It's definitely not working by issuing wishy washy guidelines and then asking the nation to pretty please abide by them voluntarily.

The thing to take from this is that model shows that unless track and trace is improved the probability of community transmission is increased. They have run different scenarios with kids bring more or less likely to pass on the infection. It seems obvious and intuitive that if cases asymptomatic or otherwise are not identified and kept out of school cases will rise more than they would otherwise.

This should be a government priority. Has anyone seen what NS has proposed for "school surveillance" for schools yet or is this a token gesture?

in addition if those vulnerable socially distance and wear ppe then the risk is reduced in terms of hospitalisations and serious cases

School staff who are vulnerable will be working in environments with way less than 2 metres distance, without PPE. Also likely to pick,up a high viral load being in rooms with the virus for up to 6 hours a day.

I think it’s pretty obvious that there will be another rise in infections at some point. I don’t think the government seem to be prepared at all. The test and trace seems fairly ineffectual, but of course we are not privy to private planning meetings. All I know is, they cannot keep schools shut so they will have to try everything else they’ve got to keep the virus under control. Stopping this ridiculous idea that people should get back to offices would be a start. I think they have to accept that WFH at least part time is the new normal and there will be very unfortunate economic consequences, but less unfortunate than the youth of the nation not being educated.

I wonder if some people would like us to be locked down forever. Some people really love the drama and love staying home and quite like to impose that on others.

I imagine for the WFH brigade without children at home or with childcare (nannies etc) it works. For the need to go out to work to live and no childcare and children who really miss school/socialising it's tough.

Answer to OP - it's a model. Remember the earlier models - some wrong and an occasional correct one. Who really knows. It does scare some people though into paranoia/hysteria.

Personally I'm not going to spend my summer second-guessing the situation in December. Millions of children & young people need educating & socialising. Vulnerable ones need protecting, & schools are vital to that. There are children out there suffering horribly because no one is watching out for them right now. The evidence re schools to date leans towards them not playing a significant role. We really can't go on punishing the young, especially the vulnerable yoing, largely to somewhat prolong the lives of people in the 70s, 80s & 90s. Not when we have other tools to protect that demographic.

Wow, SomewhereEast. Are you going to promote a eugenic approach to the virus now? Let's not forget those people in their 70's, 80's and 90's are the grandparents of the precious vulnerable children you wish to push out there. (And as to the blanket statement of those children "suffering horribly", I'm not certain you know what suffering is.)

@Literallynoidea it's not "hysterical" to point out that, if we want schools to go back safely, England needs to sort out its track and trace system.

It's not "cowering" to suggest that we up our testing and employ other methods to lower the amount of virus spreading in the population.

You can shout down people who are telling you things you dont want to hear but, frankly, it just makes you look stupid and afraid.

@GinDrinker00

How are the 7 out of 10 of your family members (not living or socialising with each other) with covid doing? Still have it, recovered. Just wondering since many have a mild version and then back to normal

I think the thing is with schools, is that people shouldn't underestimate the sheer size and scale of the March outbreak - we basically allowed CV19 to filter in unchecked throughout January, February and by March it had grown to an enormous number of people.

If school/child transmission was a big driver, I think we would have seen scenarios where whole class groups and their parents got struck down at the same time - and there doesn't seem to be much ?any evidence of that. Understanding why, and how concerned we should be about schools is something we really need to understand.

As for the government, they can't do right from wrong. They were too slow to get going, but now they get critised for being silent, critised for 'secretly modelling London shutdown' (a scenario which I think is eminently sensible for a government to discuss). People want to be treated like adults but when given a rule they moan, when given flexibility they moan. With the novel nature of the virus, decisions have to be last minute, the picture is changing all the time, we just have to get used to less planning time, more pragmatism and more flexibility.

Silvercatowner@ I am not scaremongering I repeated what was on the news. My question is about the government. So do you really think they don’t scaremonger on the news? Come on, most of this hysteria has been caused by the media.

And what exactly do you expect the government to do? They are working on track and trace, but the truth is that a lot of the reason why track and trace doesn’t work is because individuals refuse to comply. You only have to look at some of the threads on here when it came into force “oh I refuse to give them my details/oh if I give out my telephone number to a pub then the barman will use it to stalk me/how dare they request my personal details.”

If people don’t comply then the system cannot work.

And when the government imposed local lockdowns people bitched and moaned and complained about it.

Fact here is that COVID is here to stay. The vaccine date is as yet unknown, but even when there is a vaccine there will stil be people who catch COVID, and there will still be people who die of COVID.

Lockdown was never about eradicating the virus, it was about slowing its progress so the health service could cope.

Oh and, I’ve reported this thread and asked for it to be moved to the scaremongers ... erm I mean COVID topic.

We really can't go on punishing the young, especially the vulnerable yoing

What about the young vulnerable to the virus? Can you imagine how it feels to be the parent of, say, a type 1 diabetic right now?