Coronovirus IS transmitted in schools

[mosquitofeast]

And lots of teachers have died

I am just clarifying this, as I don't know how many times I have read on Mumsnet that this has never happened. I don't know where this misinformation is coming from, but its rubbish

It was transmitted several hundred times in my school (secondary)before lock down. Hundreds of children and dozens of staff were affected. Some have been seriously ill and have been left with long term health problems, such as low lung capacity and loss of hearing.

I am a teacher and I was infected at school. I did not use public transport, or go into any shops or other businesses for the whole of March, and I was living alone. The only time I was in any contact with anyone else was in school

A school near us (also secondary) had to close a week before school closures were announced, as so many teachers were infected.

Thankfully, no staff or student in our school died, although several students have lost parents, and many have lost grandparents. One of my sixthformers has withdrawn her university application as her mum has lost a lung and a leg and now can't run her home and care for her younger children on her own.

However, according to the union, around 200 school staff have dies to date, so we have just been lucky so far.

So please don't repost this fake news that "no one has ever caught covid in a school" - because |I have watched it happen in front of my eyes, and experienced it myself.

KittyMcKitty

That isn't bitching, its my opinion of you still putting words in my mouth.
Its the second time that you have done that (with a slight change), because I clearly stated in schools.
Which is quite feasible for all pupils if the correct measures are put in place.

As for your answer, its something that we can agree on.

Its funny what can happen when you stop making things up.

I don't see how children especially high school don't transmit Covid. My teen was possibly the super spreader in my family. I say possibly because some of my children had no symptoms. All my colleagues want schools open. We have missed our students terribly and worry about certain ones. But we also want some safety precautions. I think that's OK to ask for.

@AldiAisleofCrap what is the fake news?

@KittyMcKitty I get your point but I think you’d be feeling pretty pissed off if you had been working since schools closed and had prepared for a full opening in September and still got told you’re “sitting on your arse refusing to work and getting full pay”

I’ve literally been in 90% of work days since school closed, voluntarily after my placement was pulled and then teaching full time after I qualified, on reduced pay. It’s such a kick in the teeth being told you don’t care about children and you’re wanting a handout while refusing to do your job. And we get told this literally time and time again.

@FrippEnos if I misread your post then I apologise but I am not ignorant or making things up.

I spoke honestly about my son and your reply was to ask how I would feel if he didn’t go back to school until January which bore no relevance and to be blunt was hurtful and rude.

Anyway I don’t need to stay here to be insulted so I will bow out.

CKBJ
Clavinova no this wasn’t the start of the new school year this was students returning to school BEFORE the summer break.Article on BBC news feed.

I couldn't locate the BBC article - the Guardian didn't mention anything about schools in the US being open during the last two weeks of July. I am assuming that the 'children' were infected in the community.

No mention of US schools being open in July here either;

"The report was released as lawmakers and health experts around the nation grapple with questions about whether to reopen schools, which were shuttered in the spring when the coronavirus first began spreading throughout the country."

"Between July 16 and July 30, a total of 97,078 children tested positive for the virus, marking a 40 percent increase in child cases, researchers found.About 7 in 10 cases over that period were reported in states in the South."

"The report noted that age ranges for children varied by state. Alabama, for example, listed children cases for anyone 24 or younger."

thehill.com/policy/healthcare/511274-nearly-100000-children-tested-positive-for-coronavirus-over-two-weeks

@KittyMcKitty also, you want to centre children? So do I, as I said earlier in the thread it’s kids who will suffer if there isn’t adequate protection for everyone because schools will end up closing and we need them to be open, with healthy staff, for the children. Obviously the staff and our families matter too.

@Hercwasonaroll

but share your experience of everything changing overnight,

I don't think teachers did have it worst. However you moved your computer home and your job role was still the same.

I became TV presenter/YouTuber overnight with no training. I had to learn how to use new software, purchase my own equipment while simultaneously being slated.

My point is that teachers have a can do attitude. The majority have been incredibly flexible, mixing online and in school learning and adapted at short notice to an ever changing situation.

We just want to be as protected as any other workplace. Why is that presented as us being workshy?

No - this is your assumption and it is wrong. My entire role also changed overnight, and I also spent time in a strange limbo trying to minimise the impact on my pre-existing work whilst having to do a whole new job because that was what covid demanded of us. I categorically did not continue doing my usual, chosen role but from home instead, and neither did the vast majority of my colleagues.

Neil Agreed, I think literally hundreds of jobs changed overnight. I am a teacher and our jobs certainly changed but so did everyone’s. I don’t think competitive one-upping helps anyone.

@walksen

Honestly , the government has moved heaven to get ppe for NHS and care workers etc including specially chartered RAF flights and millions to companies with no track record to produce ppe that will never be used as they are not suitable.

Education they won't spend a penny. Teachers are the only profession where covid measures and protections have actually been reduced as the pandemic has gone on. Then they produce a study made when all those protections were in place saying school is safe for kids and only adults are affected anyway.

Let's face it teachers are expendable. No doubt they have calculated that overall the public won't care if a few hundred teachers croak as long as their kids at back at school. In a few months they will offer a few glib comments like they regret every death, the science has changed, there will be time to learn from mistakes when the pandemic is over etc.

This was all about keeping the NHS going, not about protecting individuals. We also didn't have PPE at the start, and honestly even now it isn't really sufficient. I feel safer in it because it protects me from splashes of bodily fluids (I am a midwife) but honestly, if a woman with CV puffs and pants in my face, I really don't think a paper mask is going to help me much.

Of course teachers aren't expendable, no human is. However of course the government don't care about any of us at individual level. Teachers are certainly not expendable to their colleagues, pupils, family, friends etc.

It's hard to believe that the children are not part of the chain of transmission

It would be a very strange and somewhat intelligent virus to see a young child and know not to infect it. Children may not have symptoms, or get a mild illness, but I refuse to believe that they are somehow not transmitting the virus at all. It is different to what we knkw about children being spreaders of other bugs, including other corona viruses.

The reason why it currently looks like children are not involved in spreading the infection in this country (because other countries are different in how they managed lockdown, numbers of infections etc) is because the on,y research that has really been done - including testing - was conducted in a time when most children were not at school and those that were were social distancing properly.

Anecdotally im pretty sure that some of the teenagers in my teenagers social circle had the virus after ski trips during Feb half term.

As for us for them....well as a childless person I've been told many times in my life that I'm selfish, self absorbed and generally a terrible and defective human being. It's so nice, now, to realise that the real selfish, self absorbed and terrible human beings are actually this subset of parents.

I'm on a Facebook group for people with long tail (long haul ) COVID. Several posters on there report that their toddler was the first in their family to catch COVID (from daycare) and then passed it on to their families. My neighbours dd (4) was likewise the first one to get sick in her family. She wasnt tested because they weren't testing children then but her parents were positive a week later.

@SecretSpAD - one possibility is that young children do contract covid but are so mildly affected that they don't spread it to others very much (i.e. low viral load, minimal coughing and sneezing). The evidence that children under 10 are minimal transmitters is pretty compelling. It's a much thornier issue for older teenagers and I hope that tomorrow's guidance includes better safety provision for secondary schools.

www.theguardian.com/education/2020/aug/10/scientists-urge-routine-covid-testing-when-english-schools-reopen

The last paragraph

“When there are statements that there are not outbreaks among schoolchildren, you self-evidently don’t find them if you don’t look for them,” Hanage said, although he said that unlike with flu, younger children might not make a disproportionate contribution to transmission of Covid-19.

Also Nick Gibb has also said that they will only test in schools when showing symptoms.

Children are know to be asymptomatic so they are not even looking for it in children.

@IncidentsandAccidents
I would have to disagree with that compelling evidence.
www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/07/31/new-evidence-suggests-young-children-spread-covid-19-more-efficiently-than-adults/

@AldiAisleofCrap

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200710100934.htm

adc.bmj.com/content/105/7/618

How vulnerable to coronavirus are children?

Published on Aug 10, 2020
Sky News' Thomas Moore weighs the evidence from around the world about how at risk children are from catching coronavirus, spreading it and suffering serious consequences.

I would find the links to it spreading amongst children in FULL schools in the us, Israel and Australia but I see little point in indulging in link ping pong. It gets us nowhere.

I will note that the science daily link that says they don’t spread it above states this theory is reliant on a) social distancing and b) level of transmission,

There will be no social distancing in our schools,

Then there’s Gavin’s study which was carried out in socially distanced schools. It tells us nothing about full schools.

The truth is no one’s really come to a conclusion yet. There’s evidence both sides and even then evidence comes with conditions and grey areas.

I don’t know if I’ll send dc back but I do know blindly believing the headline of One study that fits ones narrative Is not the way to go.

No, we shouldn't blindly believe one study - the BMJ article is a review of many studies (the author also has a very helpful Twitter feed). "Gavin's" study is actually a large scale study by PHE. Professor Russell Viner's team also assessed 350 studies from around the world. As you say, we could go back and forth to no avail, but please don't accuse me of blindly following anything, it's extremely rude and unnecessary.

Many, many thanks to the posters on this thread who have acknowledged that yes, children and young people can catch and spread covid 19.

I had it in March, along with my two DC. I think that it came from youngest DC who had symptoms including a fever a week before I did. Both me and older DD have ‘long covid’ even though she had much milder symptoms initially (mine were more severe throughout).

My children go back to school on Wednesday with little or no social distancing, full classrooms, classes laid out in groups and very few precautions. I feel like I am in some weird dream where the last five months only happened to me, and the rest of the country has somehow blipped past it.

I said to someone today that I wanted DD in senior school to wear a mask and they made a vomit signal with their fingers at me. It felt like a slap in the face because they know I was ill for months. It feels like schools are supposed to carry on as if nothing has happened, and I am really struggling with that. Something did happen and we had one of the highest death rates in the country, and many people have still not recovered, including me. And yet, we are sending schools back full-time with few precautions. I genuinely cannot get my head around it.

Why wouldn't it be transferred at school?

AldiAisleofCrap
From your Forbes link;

"The first [study] which was published in JAMA yesterday, reports findings from a pediatric hospital in Chicago, Illinois.The second, a preprint manuscript awaiting peer review, was conducted in the mountainous province of Trento, Italy."

If you clink on the JAMA link there are several negative critiques from scientists at the end of the report - the second study is awaiting peer review.

@KatySun my family had Covid too. I am just breathing better and chest pain has just improved now 4 months on. Hope you are better soon.

That is exactly it.
Without funding the government is expecting schools to run as normal, and people are buying the bubble bullshit.

The reality is look at the schools around the world. American schools have started to go back, they closed. Same with Australia, France, Germany, Australia and more.

If it wasn't transmitted in schools, then before they were closed, individual schools wouldn't have closed when they didn't have enough staff.

We still don't even have a decent track and trace system in England.

Oh and isolation, even if teachers don't have symptoms themselves, remember they have to self isolate if someone at home as symptoms. Same with the pupils.

But in this bubble, only those immediately around them have to self isolate.

Isn't that the point of track and trace?
Person A has tested positive, all those who that person has been in contact with are advised to isolate and test. Well unless you attend/work in a school

@ineedaholidaynow

I would probably ignore the OP's posts and concentrate on the concerns the majority of the school professionals have *@Haenow*

@ineedaholidaynow

Oh yes, I have. I am listening to teachers and do support them. I think a minority of posters are OTT though and it winds up those on the opposite end of the spectrum.