No social distancing in 6th form classrooms/common room

[kitnkaboodle]

I know that there was an earlier thread on this that ran to 1000 messages and shut down, but ...

I'm sitting here with egg on my face, as through the summer I didn't believe my DS (16) telling me that in his (new) Y12, they wouldn't have to distance from the other pupils in sixth form or be spaced out within the classrooms. He said that things would be 'the same as normal', and I honestly thought he was talking rubbish.

He's just home from his first day and, sure enough, the WHOLE sixth form is classed as one bubble and there are no social distancing measures at all between the kids there apart from desks all facing the front. I'm not sure about teachers - will ask later, but I presume they aren't in the bubbles and have to keep apart.

I glanced at the earlier thread title (that was something along the lines of 'the govt are letting the public believe there will be SD in schools') and thought it was all a bit paranoid (without reading it). However, I now genuinely believe that photos of all the 'back to school' stories have been carefully curated to show kids standing/sitting at least a metre apart. I'm one of those who thinks that we just need to 'get on with it' now, regarding schools, but I do feel royally hoodwinked by that. It was very subtle ... (and now I have to apologise to DS for not believing him!!)

Social distancing would be terrible for teenagers’ mental health- it would be horrific telling them they had to stay two metres apart from their friends after not seeing them for two months.

I don’t think that’s what meant by SD at schools... Nowhere is forcing children to be 2m part from others. It would be physically impossible anyway. It’s more separating year groups and avoiding situations where there are tightly packed crowds.

Totally right @uglyface - the media has been portraying a safe, covid secure environment by using photos of socially distanced classrooms from June. I have been complaining about this repeatedly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/#/Complaint

Now we are seeing a rise in cases by around 2000 a day and a shortage of coronavirus testing, with people being sent miles away... Is this being reported on enough? Hardly. It feels like it's all being kept hush hush.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints/make-a-complaint/#/Complaint

I have to admit, I'm of the view that my children can see friends after school if they see them within school. I see the point of them not mixing in different groups, like drama clubs, though.

I agree. I don’t see the issue with that. If one of them has Covid, they’ll likely to have passed it on to their close friend anyway if they’re infectious.

It’s more separating year groups and avoiding situations where there are tightly packed crowds.

Yes we accept that sd is not always required within a bubble but try and implement it as best when we can so we spread the tables out in rooms if possible, wear masks in corridors if bubbles can't be effectively separated, have breaks outside. In most lessons we can't SD really but that doesn't mean we ignore it completely everywhere else.

Social distancing is so called because that is the distance humans choose to stay apart when being social. Any closer than that and we are 'invading personal space' and would tend not to want to do that unless we were close to someone. Teenagers do do this a bit more than adults but is is hardly abuse to try to ask people to say in someone's social space!

Trouble with schools, heavily used transport, the house of commons , planes,and other settings is they force upon us much invasion of personal space.

Now i know where my 17 year old is......every hour of the day

Do you really though

Yes.

@herecomesthsun

It’s not gaslighting at all. 2000 cases a day (which we don’t have) is equivalent to 0.00000002% of the population. The likelihood of an infected person not only being in your DC’s school but also sitting next to them in class or on a bus is tiny.

For comparison, you have a 1 in 700,000 change of being struck by lightning and a 1 in 114 change of dying in a car crash in your lifetime. So presumably you never use w car or go outside, just in case?

How does the 1 in 114 chance dying in a car crash work?

Statisto - bollocks.

@ineedaholidaynow

Everyone will die of something, and there is a 1 in 114 change that the cause will be a car accident.

People do also keep pointing out that this is not about chance of dying but about moral responsibilities like community spread. Hey ho.

Chance of catching (and spreading) it is exactly what I’m talking about @Piggywaspushed. If only 0.00000002% of the population are diagnosed with COVID each day, the chance of you sitting next to someone who has it is absolutely tiny.

How do you get that percentage?

Source boston??Those are not UK statistics and that is in your entire lifetime. The chances in a year are 1 in 200000 , which is more or less the same as Covid, but obviously the risks escalate with age with Covid and deescalate with age with transport accidents.

Actually the chances of you dying in a car accident became slimmer this year as it goes.

It's a rubbish tactic to sue such poorly understood statistics to minimise risks. All they achieve is arguments for mitigation (eg not going outside in a thunder storm , not speeding , and wearing seatbelts, buying cars with good safety records etc.)

You do know it varies by area right boston??

Get yourself on the statistics thread and they will rip this to shreds.

And diagnosed with is not the same as having.

You’re wrong I’m afraid @Piggywaspushed. Admittedly the 1 in 114 chance is an American statistic, but the figure for the U.K. is 1 in 240.

That means you actually have a 1 in 20,000 chance of dying in a car accident every year.

Dying in a car crash is far more likely than someone catching COVID with the present level of circulation and far, far more likely than that person going on to die from COVID or passing it on to someone who will.

Yes, a stray zero got in there. But it is still a 0.005% chance of dying in an traffic accident (not car : all transport) in a year.

More or Less on R4 did a brilliant piece on the run over by a bus argument a few weeks back.

You also can't catch car crashing by sitting next to someone.

"It’s not gaslighting at all. 2000 cases a day (which we don’t have) is equivalent to 0.00000002% of the population".

Problem with that thinking is if everyone uses that same reasoning then sitting next to anyone has practically no risk. So how come infections are rising?

You are also neglecting the risk people who are diagnosed are infectious for more than 1 day. Ons own statistics based on their survey and randomised sampling says that about 1 in 2000 people in this country is infected which is 0.05% and of course you might sit closer than 1m to more than 1 person each day especially at a sixth form Plus you have neglected the fact that some areas will have less than this and some much more. It is also true that younger people are more likely to be infected than the average person at the moment and you have ignored this too.

But you keep telling everyone to ignore sensible precautions based on your deeply flawed statistics.

How come everyone harps on about what damage missing school does and the suffering it causes but then rubbishes a parent asking how to make sure they stay there?

@walksen

There may have been a big disparity between numbers testing positive and those who were infected but not tested at the start of the pandemic, but that is unlikely to be the case now that testing is available to anyone.

[quote BostonCalling]@walksen

There may have been a big disparity between numbers testing positive and those who were infected but not tested at the start of the pandemic, but that is unlikely to be the case now that testing is available to anyone.[/quote]
Boston, the 1 in 2000 figure is based on the weekly large scale randomised official testing (I always forget whether it is ONS or PHE, but it is large, official and considered the best information we have on prevalence of infection outside hospitals and care homes)

It is due to improve even further with an even larger sample size.

Office for National statistics:

latest version here, but published weekly

Maybe so, cases at the peak have been estimated to be 100,000 a day.

There were 1800 positive tests ( collated yesterday alone) and of course somewhere around a third to maybe three quarters of people ( especially under 40's which is the Demographic getting most infections right now) have no symptoms so won't get tested. Then there will be people who can't drive 50 miles to get a test, those who won't get tested because they can't afford it , won't get paid etc. I'm not sure how you can claim we don't have 2000 infections a day. To my mind that is an underestimate although nowhere near peak levels.

How do you have so many zeros in your percentage @BostonCalling?