Is anyone not sending their secondary school child back initially?

[lastkisstoo]

I've decided to keep my 15 year old home, probably until the October hols to see what happens.

We are in Scotland. What just happened in the pubs in Aberdeen is exactly what I see happening in schools. Mostly young adults, enclosed space, no social distancing.

My child has asthma, and while not on the list for sheltering I still feel is vulnerable enough that I don't want to see him being used as a guinea pig while the government assess just how big the uptick in cases will be on schools re-opening.

Sorry sweetheart but that is wrong.

@SpanishPork

www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/world/middleeast/coronavirus-israel-schools-reopen.html

Here is the New York Times article about Israel. Schools reopened, teachers caught covid, it cites at least one who died.

Quite a few teachers have died in the UK too.

Now, with any infection, we are going by reasonable probability of where the infection was caught, but this article makes a very good case for transmission in schools.

So could you stop repeating that dangerous idea that teachers can´t catch this from students please, as it isn´t supported by current best understanding of the disease process.

Ta.

[quote SpanishPork]@disorganisedsecretsquirrel

What a very odd post. Your DD has an obligation to take sensible precautions of course. But she does not have an obligation to give up her education to avoid the tiny likelihood that she could be infected and kill someone!

I'd be going NC if I were her. You need to seek treatment for your anxiety as it is not healthy at all for your DD.[/quote]
Thanks for the advice. !
I have to say that I am not remotely anxious. Nor have I ever suffered from anxiety thank goodness.

I am however logical, and work in criminal law so set great store in evidence and knowing what the big picture is.

It is in all our interested to keep ourselves informed. This shit show of a government certainly won't do it for us. I do this by following the Imperial College epidemiology feed and the Cambridge University daily live feed.

I base my decisions on that. As for my daughter. She has offers for life sciences and biology .. so has an equal academic interest in this field and doesn't require anyone to advise or influence her - but hey ! It's great to be patronised this early in the evening. SpanishPork.. but by all means book mark this post and come back in October/November and tell me I'm wrong.

My daughter is happy to go to uni next year... or the year after .. or the year after that.

But dead adults are still dead.

@SpanishPork

"Only 2% of those admitted to hospital with Covid in the U.K. have been under 18- all of whom had significant underlying health conditions."

How can that be true given the 13 year old boy who died and had "They said he had no apparent underlying health conditions and tested positive for Covid-19 on Friday, a day after he was admitted to hospital."

I'm not aware of any underlying health conditions being declared since.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/uk-52114476

Death from Covid 19 in educational occupations from the ONS ;

Data published today (22 May) by the Office for National Statistics provides information on deaths involving COVID-19 across England and Wales, broken down by occupation.
It shows at least 65 education staff have died with coronavirus, of which 43 were women and 22 were men, as of April 20.
That includes 17 secondary school teachers, seven primary and nursery teachers, two SEND teachers, ten teaching assistants, six school lunchtime supervisors and school crossing patrols and two school secretaries.

This is a fact... and those numbers were only up until April. How anyone cannot see why teachers and assistants are not scared is beyond me. Shop workers get screens .. but what ? Teachers are meant to have special powers to repel this virus by pure will power ?

@disorganisedsecretsquirrel

There is no evidence that any of those teachers caught the virus in school. They could quite easily have caught it in the corner shop or pharmacy.

Orchid, I think you put the stress in the wrong place in my sentence.

Let me rephrase.

The virus is the killer. The children are not killers.

Squirrel, the fact you work in criminal law is irrelevant to whether you sound anxious.

I’m pretty senior in mental health. I’d say you sound highly anxious.

Interesting isn't it, what pigs are associated with, whether Spanish or not.

People from all sorts of professions have died.

Where’s the evidence they caught it at work?

The definitive evidence. You know, that would stand up to scrutiny in court. My friend the GP who has antibodies for this virus has no idea whether she infected the elderly in a care home, or whether she caught it there.

How would we know? We might get a better idea now there’s some sort of track and trace, but her patients were dying in March/April.

If she had died, we could say ‘GPs going into care homes are dying.’ Still no clue where they caught it.

I have 3 kids. The middle one 15yrs is not going back. He has bad excema on his face, neck, arms and hands. He can't use sanitizer or wear gloves or wash his hands as much as needed/expected. A mask is also not going to work . There is not yet any evidence that he would react badly to the virus more than anybody else but as his immune system is already messed up I'm not willing for him to be a guinea pig. There just isn't enough evidence any which way, the virus is too new.
I will be teaching him myself, I am an ex primary teacher. We began in March and his grades have already improved.

[quote SpanishPork]@disorganisedsecretsquirrel

There is no evidence that any of those teachers caught the virus in school. They could quite easily have caught it in the corner shop or pharmacy.[/quote]
Much less likely to have done so. The more time you spend with people and the closer you are, the more likely transmission will occur.

So

• we don´t make diagnoses of people over the internet

• squirrel is making a lot of sense

• in medicine, and especially in mental health, a lot of the evidence we use is necessarily circumstantial. Circumstantial evidence does have value in itself- in a complicated situation, and where it is the best evidence we have.

We certainly can´t prove that these teachers DIDN´T catch the coronavirus at work,especially when, as in the case of the 64 year old teacher in New York, this has appeared most likely explanation. We can´t discount the fact that these deaths happened.

The evidence is now strongly suggesting that children aged 10 plus spread the coronavirus just as much as adults www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-children-schools.html.

Since teachers are in fact adult human beings, it follows that there is no reason why children could not spread coronavirus to them.

This process has not been happening much in recent months as schools have been shut or open to only small groups of children. Also, extremely vulnerable individuals have been able to shield.

However if we fling the doors open and squish them all in, especiallly without social distancing or masks, and plonk the vulnerable teachers and children in the middle, well we can expect negative outcomes.

@SpanishPork

The head at the DCs' school has been clear that parents playing silly buggers with attendance in September will simply not be tolerated.

Unless there is evidence from a medical consultant showing that a DC absolutely cannot be in school, parents who don't send their D.C. will be reported to the Education Welfare Officer and Social Services for truancy prosecution and referred to hospital for anxiety treatment.

Referred by who? I suspect there's a huge waiting list for this sort of treatment, if any parent is on the list threatening to keep their child away from school looks like a good way to get bumped up.

@CountessFrog

People from all sorts of professions have died.

Where’s the evidence they caught it at work?

The definitive evidence. You know, that would stand up to scrutiny in court. My friend the GP who has antibodies for this virus has no idea whether she infected the elderly in a care home, or whether she caught it there.

How would we know? We might get a better idea now there’s some sort of track and trace, but her patients were dying in March/April.

If she had died, we could say ‘GPs going into care homes are dying.’ Still no clue where they caught it.

It is very easy to prove where who someone caught the virus from, test the RNA. Its just as straightforward as a paternity test. You need the cooperation of the person you think you caught it from though.

@StealthPolarBear

The head at the DC's school has said he will personally refer every parent who refuses to send their DC back to the local hospital mental health team for anxiety treatment.

He will also refer every one to social services and the Education Welfare Officer for prosecution and a large fine.

[quote SpanishPork]@disorganisedsecretsquirrel

There is no evidence that any of those teachers caught the virus in school. They could quite easily have caught it in the corner shop or pharmacy.[/quote]
unless they didn't go to the corner shop or pharmacy

[quote SpanishPork]@StealthPolarBear

The head at the DC's school has said he will personally refer every parent who refuses to send their DC back to the local hospital mental health team for anxiety treatment.

He will also refer every one to social services and the Education Welfare Officer for prosecution and a large fine.[/quote]
What an idiot. Why would you send your child to a school run by someone like that?

The head is quite right @mosquitofeast and I fully support him on this. There is far more harm from DC being out of school Ryan in schoo and it is the mist disadvantaged (who can least afford to miss education) who will suffer most if parents are given free rein.

Heads should absolutely be putting their foot down and instructing parents to send DC as normal.

*than in school

[quote SpanishPork]@StealthPolarBear

The head at the DC's school has said he will personally refer every parent who refuses to send their DC back to the local hospital mental health team for anxiety treatment.

He will also refer every one to social services and the Education Welfare Officer for prosecution and a large fine.[/quote]
I thought I smelt bullshit, the HT can't get a large fine issued, it's a £60 penalty per parent if paid within 28 days. Yes they can prosecute you but with the backlog since covid it's going to be a long wait. Plus you can reasonably argue why you are not sending your child. Plus no HT used SS as a threat, they are fully aware that SS are not child nappers but an agency that supports the family. And we've already discussed that Mental Health services are stretched to the core with actually unwell patients.
I can't work out if you are a bog standard troll or working for the government.

Covid is horrible, and I don't agree with the no face masks at school policy.

Am sure teachers have died of covid. Just as many professions have. They are not a high risk profession though.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19relateddeathsbyoccupationenglandandwales/deathsregisteredbetween9marchand25may2020#women-and-deaths-involving-covid-19-by-occupation

@CountessFrog

People from all sorts of professions have died.

Where’s the evidence they caught it at work?

The definitive evidence. You know, that would stand up to scrutiny in court. My friend the GP who has antibodies for this virus has no idea whether she infected the elderly in a care home, or whether she caught it there.

How would we know? We might get a better idea now there’s some sort of track and trace, but her patients were dying in March/April.

If she had died, we could say ‘GPs going into care homes are dying.’ Still no clue where they caught it.

If you're calling for absolute definitive evidence in this way you clearly have no idea how epidemiology works.

[quote SpanishPork]@StealthPolarBear

The head at the DC's school has said he will personally refer every parent who refuses to send their DC back to the local hospital mental health team for anxiety treatment.

He will also refer every one to social services and the Education Welfare Officer for prosecution and a large fine.[/quote]
Now you are talking bollox.. really give it up.

If I can't get someone with advanced schizophrenia, sleeping rough in a bus stop, having assaulted 3 people in the last week (real life situation) a referral to a MH assessment... then a headmaster is not going to get very far with people making EVIDENCE based decisions about there child's education.

You have come up with some blinders tonight SpanishPork.. things which just aren't fact like no teachers have died when the ONS has actually PUBLISHED the figures!!

To keep blathering in about those of us who believe we have a social responsibility to keep our children out of school to prevent the virus spreading and killing the vulnerable.. are somehow mentally ill , is the biggest load of bolllcks .. and frankly insulting to those who actually do have anxiety about this.

To be really really clear because you seem to have a hard time getting this. I am not concerned about children's health. They will have a mild dose and bounce back. I just do not believe (based on the current viral trend and the current R .) that schools should be open 'as normal' for the health of the teachers and all those adults the kids will come in to contact with especially on public transport and packed schools .

[quote SpanishPork]@StealthPolarBear

The head at the DC's school has said he will personally refer every parent who refuses to send their DC back to the local hospital mental health team for anxiety treatment.

He will also refer every one to social services and the Education Welfare Officer for prosecution and a large fine.[/quote]
Does your local hospital take referrals from teachers? I'm no expert but I think that's very unusual.