"It is, alas, a fact of the disease that it is readily transmissible between children and adults"

[noblegiraffe]

Says our PM.

So can all those people who spent the entire summer telling teachers that their worries about returning to school without any mitigation measures that it was FINE because children didn't spread it please now start campaigning for mitigation measures in schools because it appears that people's lives are being put at risk.

twitter.com/mikercameron/status/1306246353379569665?s=21

This whole situation is frightening.

One of the first questions posed in this thread was: Did people actually believe that the virus couldn’t be transmitted through children?

....and it made me think of the hundreds of posts I would often read on here from people saying over and over again that there was no risk of schools opening as children can’t spread the virus. They would repeatedly say that data during the early stages of lockdown showed that no children wrote affected and there was no evidence of children transmitting the virus to adults and I used to think, “No shit Sherlock, that’s because the schools have been closed and the children have been housebound!”

I genuinely couldn’t believe that people were falling for it.

When I read the posts about schools reopening and when teachers voiced their concerns they received such vitriol and were told they were just being lazy and get back to work like everyone else.

I have said from the very start that the teachers (and the pupils) are being thrown under the bus......but so many people seemed not to care and continued to say that children posed no risk so there was no reason for schools not to open. It baffled me that supposedly people were believing all this crap that Boris and his friends were telling us.

Anyhow - my guess is that teachers are petrified and rightly so. What they are being asked to do is disgusting.....the risk the government is taking with them is so immoral in my eyes.

They deserve the exact same level of protection as every other returning employer has received. Schools, teachers and children are not invincible, the risks of transmission is so high and I can’t understand why the Government don’t care.

I read yesterday that apparent PHE will be doing spot checks on schools to ensure that they are ensuring social distancing as much as possible and I can’t help but wonder whether this is to highlight to the Government that the schools are doing their best but they are in an impossible situation or they are doing it as a way to criticise schools and then ultimately blame them for increased cases. I really hope it’s the former.

I would completely support teachers striking.

I think it was irrelevant in a way that kids can spread it or not. They 100% knew teachers and other staff could to each other and the kids.
And kids do spread other viruses.
With 1/1000 people infected thats straight away 500 teachers a week.
Primary there are 2 adults in many rooms.
Teachers (unlike some office staff) will have to use some shared stuff -photocopiers etc.

But even if children are say 50% less likely to pass it on there are 30 in the room

Shame on this government!

My kids are off
Ive had to take a very difficult 8yo (asd?) to a test
Now the other has a cough.
They have caught this at school as we havent been inside anywhere with the kids. So germs spreading despite all the hand gel etc.
And no work for dc.

Also forcing people to deregister their child when they are concerned because 3% of schools are infected within weeks.

At present I’m not petrified but can understand other teachers being so.

I’m more outraged at the double standards and farce of it all. I’m to be forced into unsafe schools but not allowed a family dinner at different tables with social distancing in my parents garden because that’s irresponsible and dangerous.

Standing queuing in a mask to enter a well ventilated chemists the size of a classroom that only allows 2 people in at a time in masks feels like a bit of a pisstake after a day in school.

What about

www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-catch-up-premium

?

That works out as £80 per pupil so not really going very far. And that is not for the extra cleaning, supply teachers etc that are needed.

You obviously feel that state schools have loads of money and shouldn’t be complaining @notevenat20.

That works out as £80 per pupil so not really going very far. And that is not for the extra cleaning, supply teachers etc that are needed. You obviously feel that state schools have loads of money and shouldn’t be complaining @notevenat20.

I could be wrong but that maths seems wonky. Don’t you need to divide the total by the number of pupils it will be spent on, not the total number of pupils.

I definitely don’t think state schools have loads of money. I just think that our complaints should be set in the right context.

If you’d paid attention you would also spot that money announced is not money spent. That funding was initially for a GREAT SUMMER CATCH-UP that never happened, now pushed back closer to Christmas, AND if schools want to see it they have to pay the first 25% of tutoring costs themselves out of their own meagre budgets. The tutoring will be from government recommended agencies so no doubt a few Tory mates lining their own pockets as well.

Like the laptop scheme where laptops were promised and then delivered months late and in much, much smaller numbers than needed, schools are not anticipating the outcome meeting the hype.

On the topic of money announced for schools, let’s also not forget the pay rise for teachers that was agreed in January yet announced over the summer as a reward for teachers’ hard work during lockdown (knowing this would set people moaning). This pay rise will not be funded by the government so is also supposed to come out of schools’ meagre budgets. To give the pay rise to teachers there will need to be redundancies and it is likely that a lot of teachers won’t get this pay rise at all (as has happened with previous pay rises). But people will remember teachers getting a pay rise because the government announced it.

Don’t think anyone in the know ever said children didn’t spread, did they?
Didn’t generally suffer symptoms, certainly, but that’s a very different issue.

... that money announced is not money spent. That funding was initially for a GREAT SUMMER CATCH-UP that never happened, now pushed back closer to Christmas, AND if schools want to see it they have to pay the first 25% of tutoring[...]

That is the sort of criticism we should be making. Just shouting that there is no extra money when it isn't true doesn't help anyone.

And the Y7 catch up funding has been axed. Many times the wonderful new funding scheme announced by the Government is just rebadging of money they already give to schools, so schools aren’t actually getting any more money, but a new funding scheme always makes good headlines

Don’t think anyone in the know ever said children didn’t spread, did they? Didn’t generally suffer symptoms, certainly, but that’s a very different issue.

No one said that can't infect others. However young children are largely asymptomatic and asymptomatic young children appear to be much less likely to infect adults.

“ However young children are largely asymptomatic and asymptomatic young children appear to be much less likely to infect adults.”

Yes, I know young children are largely asymptomatic. Haven’t we all, for a long time?
It’s also been known for a long time that they can and do infect others.
Just surprised anyone still believed they didn’t, at this stage.

Look, I'd say I'm a feminist but trying to make this a woman's issue when children aren't getting a proper education as a result of this shit show (and teachers forced into an impossible situation) feels a bit like distraction to me.

Children are being failed. State schools were massively underfunded before coronavirus - the amount of basic things our school has had to ask parents to contribute to has definitely gone up over the last 5 years. And they now have no extra coronavirus funding.

The gap between private schools - which can follow best practice (small class sizes, social distancing, and presumably even test and trace if they can pay for tests privately) and state schools is going to get wider, and wider and wider.

The number of kids off isolating because they're sick, or a sibling is sick and they can't get a test must be through the roof.

I've been trying since Monday to get a test and still no luck. It gave me two places last night both hours away from my house and completely impractical to get to (esp with a small child) - but when I clicked through - no slots!

Don’t think anyone in the know ever said children didn’t spread, did they?

Well we had threads like this in August www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4004020-Some-reassuring-news-about-schools-being-really-safe

Schools are really really safe because the children don’t spread it [based on a time when there were hardly any kids in school], says the government.

noblegiraffe

“says the Govt.”

That’s why I qualified with people in the know 😁
That was when the Govt. most definitely wasn’t following the science. They wanted people back at work and all eating out, hence schools were miraculously suddenly proclaimed safe by Williamson. What a fortunate coincidence!

It’s also been known for a long time that they can and do infect others.Just surprised anyone still believed they didn’t, at this stage.

Sorry if this is a repetition but the key statement is that asymptomatic children are much less likely to infect an adult, particularly if they are young.

There has to be a distinction between possible and likely, surely?

@notevenat20

The testing problem is brand new and hopefully will pass soon. There seems to have been a huge spike in demand for testing. You can see this from this graph which shows the number of days to get test results. Most were under 2 days until very recently. (d2 means two days.)

This seems to be the current Government line - “it’s a spike in testing”. Well there’s a spike in testing because demonstrably there’s a spike in the virus. So more weasel words. As to children transmitting the virus - well of course they do, just not as much as adults. Young children (under 12) tend to be asymptomatic, and it’s thought that the fewer the symptoms, the less likely it it that the virus is transmitted. But not impossible. Older children, and particularly those past puberty, are to all intents and purposes adults and just as likely to transmit as adults, though they may not show symptoms. This is why secondary schools are relatively dangerous places.

It is not, fortunately, a fact that COVID-19 is readily transmissible by children:

www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/covid-19/latest-evidence/transmission

This is a review of medical literature on the transmission of COVID-19 collated by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

Evidence suggests that transmission from young children is just about non-existent (although they can catch coronavirus from adults who are the super spreaders). There is clearly a continuum (a 17 year old will be more “adult like’ in physiology) but this is nothing like some diseases -like flu - where children are significant viral vectors. The characteristics of patients who transmit the virus Is likely linked to the characteristics of those suffering badly from it, and so probably double every 5 or 6 years with age. In the same way that no previously healthy child between newborn and 16 years of age has died of Covid19, it seems that they are also unlikely to be responsible for its spread.

Here is a relevant passage:

‘No evidence of secondary cases among child or adult contacts of confirmed paediatric cases was found in contact tracing studies from France [83], Ireland [84] and Finland [85]. In Australia, a contact tracing study in 15 primary and high schools, where nine student COVID-19 cases were detected, found one secondary positive case in a primary school student (out of 735 close child contacts who were followed up) [86].

In Singapore, two preschools and one secondary school identified child index cases and tested close contacts. In a case where a preschool child was the index case (mean age 4.9 years), 34 preschool student contacts developed potential COVID-19 symptoms during the incubation period, however all 34 symptomatic cases tested negative for SARS-CoV-2. In a case where the index child was in secondary school (mean age 12.8 years), a total of eight out of 77 students developed symptoms and were screened for SARS-CoV-2 during the incubation period. All eight symptomatic student contacts from the school tested negative [87,88].“

We should always remember the useful aphorism that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

True, but there is no absence of evidence in this case. See the referenced studies. The logical conclusion is that even if a child (under 16) in a class tests positive for covid19 then there is no need to send the rest of the class bubble home. The sole risk is transmission from adults who are the ones who need to socially distance.

Supermarket workers, public transport workers, estate agents and all workers who come into contact with adults face a much higher risk of contracting covid19 than teachers do but the research does not seem to have trickled down - perhaps teachers being reassured of their lack of risk (probably more from the commute than anything) will help them have confidence to continue delivering such a vital service.

There’s no evidence of transmission in those studies, but that doesn’t mean that transmission isn’t taking place, just that their studies didn’t find it.

Others think differently.
www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications-data/children-and-school-settings-covid-19-transmission

Others think differently.

That's the same isn't it? There is nothing there that suggests that child to adult transmission is close to as common as adult to adult transmission.

The problem is that I honestly don't think anyone understands the virus enough to be able to confidently say that it's safe for kids to mix at school. I completely understand the necessity to get back to education, given that parents need to go back to work and grandparents might not be able to provide childcare, but all the same we shouldn't keep our heads in the sand when it comes to risks.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2768952

study that shows children under 5 have 10-100x the amount of virus in nasal swabs compared to older children and adults.

I think the jury is out on this one.

When I see conflicting evidence I always think about the mechanism. What is the mechanism by which small children aren't infected? What is the mechanism by which - if they are infected - they don't transmit?

Some have suggested their short stature may be why they don't infect teachers - and this has some logic, they are lower to the ground so droplets will sink and be unlikely to be carried (in significant amounts) upwards to where the teachers are breathing in - particularly for pre school.

That doesn't mean that if you're a parent, and your 2 year old sneezes directly in your face, and insists on sleeping in with you when ill, that you couldn't get a massive viral load.

I think there isn't enough evidence yet.

And when you don't have enough evidence, really being precautionary is the only sensible approach (but the government isn't bothering with that so...)

And yes agree with pp - the government is saying lack of evidence is evidence of lack (of transmission) and they are not the same. At all.

Of course children didn't transmit when they weren't in schools and countries were mostly locked down - what else would you expect?