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?

And are you actually advocating 11 year olds staying at home alone 8/9 hours a day for the foreseeable? Would parents really be happy with this?

The choice here isn’t

1. Schools go back almost exactly as they were before.
2. Children don’t go back to school for the foreseeable future.

There is a lot in between which sadly hasn’t been investigated.

I fully expect schools to close again.

How did we get to this point where parents feel entitled to hand their children to the state five days a week?

It’s not ‘entitlement’, it’s how we’ve organised working practice alongside the state’s educational commitments, so that parents can work to provide for their children without relying on state benefits.

We can’t just dismantle this without serious economic consequences for everyone. Including education budgets which rely on tax revenues generated in the private sector for funding.

Of course it helps to clarify the size of an ‘outbreak’.
A couple of hundred is different to one or two cases. I’m not saying you don’t need to get on top of those cases but it’s a different situation with different consequences.

Not minimising just wanting more information! Surely that is helpful in this situation rather than lumping all ‘outbreaks’ together and treating the same?

How did we get to this point where parents feel entitled to hand their children to the state five days a week

There is no other childcare provision in place. Are you deliberately being obtuse or are you just thick?

I heard the scientist behind this research on the radio this morning.

They were actually coming from the perspective that schools need to reopen for all, what do we need to do to try and achieve that without a second peak.

Their models suggest a substantial improvement in track and trace ( where the actual rate is 50% of contacts traced when you follow through what seems like initially much higher figures from government). So the message I guess they were trying to get across is let’s heavily invest/change things to try and get to a better place on track and trace.

They certainly were not scaremongering or trying to use data to say schools shouldn’t open. Given the recent rises in the rest of Europe it would be naive not to consider that this seems likely to also happen in England and to try and take proactive action to do our best to ensure schools return whilst allowing as much to remain open as possible.

Part-time schooling for everyone is not an option unless some key worker children are allowed in full time.

Primary school pupils need supervision but many of them have family childcare available. Other parents will be able to work opposite shifts or adjust hours. There aren’t that many parents who couldn’t work around it somehow.

DH and I are teachers - not possible to work shifts or adjust hours. Nearest family are 80 miles away and are over 70.

For schools to reopen normally, distancing in other parts of the community needs to increase, including closing some things like pubs that are already open. We need to expect that there are going to be a number of localised school closures too. Parents whose DCs school are closed temporarily are probably going to have to take unpaid parental leave if it's not possible to work from home. That's what DH and I will have to do. Really there needs to be some sort of enforced protection for lower paid workers who end up in this sort of situation - emergency funds and guaranteed job protection for a short time. Doubtless there won't be though.

There is no other childcare provision in place
What I object to is the assumption that this problem is the responsibility of the state and other people who don’t have children.

@Piggywaspushed @wintertravel1980 Thank you for the link, but I've already seen that. I guess I was optimistic that there might somewhere be a breakdown by number of cases per educational setting (2 in School A, 15 in School B) and by type of educational setting (nursery, primary, secondary, sixth form college etc) rather than just the number of outbreaks. The information obviously exists, as schools and LAs must know so it is frustrating not to be able to access it.

My LA doesn't provide that information at the moment though we know of local school closures (only 1 bubble in one primary because of a case in child of key worker in last 4 weeks of term) but we don't know any information about how successful the closure was in terms of stopping onward spread.

@LadybirdInTheWindow me too I was nearing a breakdown and my 5 year old was too scared to get out of the car !!!

What I object to is the assumption that this problem is the responsibility of the state and other people who don’t have children.

If you take away state provision that has existed for decades, you cannot be surprised that supply of private provision doesn’t magically and immediately appear to fill the gap. Especially as childcare is heavily regulated.

Parents are magicians. They can’t summon up childcare options that don’t exist.

The education sector also needs to think about how it is funded and the part of its role that facilitates this funding being generated.

If you take away state provision that has existed for decades, you cannot be surprised that supply of private provision doesn’t magically and immediately appear to fill the gap
I generally feel that the state provision is not good. Perhaps this is a good time for our society to take stock of how we educate, to update and improve. That’s where we should be spending money. Not giving grown adults cheap dinners.

The education sector also needs to think about how it is funded and the part of its role that facilitates this funding being generated
Indeed. I strongly feel that the role of the state should be to provide education facilitated by qualified teachers. Not to provide childcare. Otherwise we end up going in the direction we’ve been heading, where quality of education declines due to under-funding, and it ends up being mainly a holding pen for children so parents can work. Recently we’ve been increasingly seeing classes that are too large and being taught by unqualified teachers, which just demonstrates that quality of education has become irrelevant and it’s all good as long as the kids are being babysat.

BBC news
WHO
Yes it's rubbish but was the first wave. Doeant mean we roll our eyes and ignore it.

Indeed. I strongly feel that the role of the state should be to provide education facilitated by qualified teachers. Not to provide childcare.

In practical terms that’s meaningless.

When children are in school, they are legally obliged to be in school. They cannot be in alternative childcare. School is providing childcare whether it likes it or not, by virtue of having the children under its roof and in its care.

What exactly are you suggesting? Childminders in classrooms along with teachers? An army of childcare providers on stand by at all times ‘just in case’?

Teacher recruitment is of course a separate issue.

For schools to reopen normally, distancing in other parts of the community needs to increase...

Agree with this.

including closing some things like pubs that are already open.

...while this might not necessarily be true.

Switzerland has recently published summary of their test and trace data. Impact of schools on community transmission post re-opneing has been negligible (0.3%). Impact from the opening of bars/pubs/discos was low (1.6% - pubs and bars, 1.9% - discos/night clubs).

The highest proportion of transmissions (by far) has been happening within households (27.2%).

www.bag.admin.ch/bag/fr/home/das-bag/aktuell/news/news-02-08-2020.html

This. I want to shout it from the rooftops. Radio silence on school transmissions in June and July.

News blackout more like!

News blackout more like!

Not really - the thing is once journalists look at both pages 10 and 11 of the weekly surveillance reports, the numbers of confirmed COVID outbreaks in "educational settings" appear too small and trivial for a Sun or Daily Mail headline.

The numbers quoted by @ohthegoats are indeed high but they include flu (which remains in circulation throughout the year).

The press did try to make a story out of an outbreak in Milton Keyes but, in fact, (i) it was not obvious how many of the transmissions originated in the nursery and (ii) the situation was well handled with many mild / asymptomatic cases being picked up through extended testing:

www.nurseryworld.co.uk/features/article/how-we-kept-our-nursery-open-through-a-coronavirus-outbreak

The question is also really as much about how long individual schools will be able to remain open.

It relies on low community transmission and very fast, effective test, track and trace.

Schools will be returning in sept, I'm a teacher, clinically vulnerable and I want my son to return. I want to return. Safely.

There will be stringent measures regarding the number of cases that pop up in schools triggering closure, this will be decided with local PHE who will know where cases are across the community.

But there's also going to be a grey area where staffing is an issue too; how well can a school remain open if staff are waiting for test results or their own children's, or self isolating due to a partner's positive test. Or their child's school closing.

It's like dominoes, and was in March, even if there weren't actually that many cases or outbreaks in many schools.

That's why test track and trace and community levels are so very important for September to happen, and it will be driven by localities rather than government top down decisions.

It's a bit chicken and egg but where we start from is very important, because schools will increase community transmission too.

Especially near Xmas where households will want to mix.

Winter, it was notable that schools were not discussed during that time as the overwhelming message from the government was to encourage parents to feel safer about school, and preparing all for how we would return in sept.

It was quite noticeable at the time that the care home numbers of outbreaks were being discussed from that data and the higher number of schools was entirely glossed over.

France is expecting a second wave in the Autumn/Winter... copied from BBC news.

France’s scientific committee has warned that a second wave of the virus in autumn or winter is “highly likely”.

It comes as cases in the country have risen over the past few weeks. About 3,376 cases were confirmed over the past three days and the number of people being treated in ICUs has started to increase, Reuters news agency reports.

“The short term future of the pandemic mainly lies in the hands of the population,” a statement from the scientific committee on the virus said in a statement.

The notice also called on large cities to prepare a plan for “more or less significant local containment depending on the epidemic”, Le Monde reports.

France isn’t the only European country to see a rise in cases in recent weeks – Belgium, Luxembourg and Spain have all seen a spike.

confirmed COVID outbreaks in "educational settings" appear too small and trivial for a Sun or Daily Mail headline.

But one pub never does??

And re the nursery in MK , of course all 23 cases could not necessarily be tracked back to the nursery because there must be a vanishingly small number of infections where anyone knows who or where someone picked it up. But all 23 cases were actively linked via the same nursery.

They do know , however that parents in Canada picked up Covid from children who returned from a summer camp.

A different prediction everyday, new reports, leaked alleged plans and then a host of Mumsnetters who think they can predict and read the data more efficiently than the experts.

Who knows?! Nothing came of the BLM
protests, the bank holiday beach days, VE Day...

[quote Letseatgrandma]@nikori

That chart is scary.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/japan-coronavirus-schools-reopen/2020/06/06/9047be8c-a645-11ea-8681-7d471bf20207_story.html%3foutputType=amp

This article suggests schools went back a week or two into June; is that being attributed to the second wave?[/quote]
Japan has been doing track and trace from the beginning. Every evening, the city officials hold a press conference and give that day's number of newly detected cases in the city. They also give basic information about the people, such as Japanese or non-Japanese, male or female, age to the nearest 10 years, work status (full-time, part-time, student, not-employed), have they been abroad recently, and their symptoms and when they were tested. They also give more detailed information for some cases. Often with clusters they will give more history. This information is uploaded to the city's website and also the website for the prefecture. I think in bigger cities, like Tokyo or Osaka, they give less information because they are dealing with a lot more information.

Very few cases have been linked to schools. A lot of cases have been linked to bars and drinking establishments. So, not many people have been worried about problems with schools, but a lot of blame for the second wave has been placed on young people going out drinking and having a good time. Weirdly, the second wave in Japan started before they reopened pubs i the UK, so I was surprised given that information that they decided to go ahead and do that in the UK.

In Japan, all kids aged 3 and up have to wear masks to kindergarten/school and they have to take their temperature every morning and fill in a sheet.

I think another problem is that the second wave coincided with them easing travel restrictions. Obon is coming up and it's an important time for people to travel to their hometowns. Basically, the government wants people to act with restraint so they can avoid calling another state of emergency.

The situation in Japan is a bit ahead of the UK, so my parents are well ahead of the curve. I warned them to stock up on basics like pasta, medicine and toilet paper before shortages hit the UK and they were so grateful. I warned them not to travel and to avoid gatherings. I also warned them not to return to normal too quickly because a second wave is likely.

Also, summer holidays have been drastically cut at most schools to make up for lost time in April. My kids will get less than 2 weeks off school. It really sucks for everyone. There are still massive travel restrictions on going abroad.

They do know , however that parents in Canada picked up Covid from children who returned from a summer camp.

I have not seen any reports on the Canadian summer camp cluster.

There is a well publicised case of a summer camp outbreak in Georgia (US) but the infections were picked up quickly and children did not have any time to interact with their parents:

www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6931e1.htm?s_cid=mm6931e1_w#T1_down

The first person tested positive was a teenage staff member (i.e. not a young child).

If you have a link to the Canadian case, could you please post it here?