Now we know why the govt were suppressing the schools infection data

[noblegiraffe]

...because for secondary it’s very worrying.

They choose to release it the day before we break up for half term, too late for any circuit breaker like the other U.K. countries.

They’ve quietly removed the assertion that schools aren’t high risk settings from the guidance. At what point are they going to start to be honest about the risks, particularly in sixth forms and colleges?

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/928749/Weekly_COVID-19_and_Influenza_Surveillance_Graphs_W43_FINAL.pdf

@Ecosse your perspective is that people (parents and teachers who are at risk) should be lied to as to the extent of the risk they are taking to stop them being too uppity?! Yes I agree that is certainly on the road to fascism.

You believe they are too stupid to deal with figures and make their own assessments of their personal risk? I am absolutely astounded by you superior view or perhaps it’s blind belief that those in power have the countries best interests at heart... ( which they’ve proven they don’t, money and power is all they care about).

My last post was addressed to Eccose.

I'm out, quite honestly I don't suppose any of us have any power in any of this. I'm off to read about fluffy things to take my mind off it.

Two last questions for Eccose, because I'm fascinated by your ideas, genuinely enthralled.

If we should not be worrying about catching Covid and its a little walk in the park, why are you so fixated on it?

Imagine a scenario where you told us this, and we believed you, and then we all got very sick or died? imagine only you had the facts and knew the truth. How would you feel? Is that a risk worthy of considering?

Heads are not virologists or Health and Safety experts. Heads have responsibility for safety but there’s no extra budget. The government guidelines on safety don’t address aerosol transmission.

@RoseTintedAtuin

Unfortunately the majority of the public do not have any understanding of their personal risk or indeed the general threat posed by COVID.

There was a recent poll showing that on average the public think 7% of the U.K. population has been killed by the virus (the actual figure is less than 0.1%).

I suspect a great majority of the public have a hugely inflated view of the COVID fatality rate also.

We would not see the compliance we are currently seeing and people would not be so scared if they knew that the infection fatality rate may be as low as 0.3% and way lower still for under 75s. There is a reason the media has not reported on the true fatality rate as far as I can see.

Oh, I'm sorry, one last question for Eccose.

If the government reduces testing, hides the facts and obscures the data on what basis could they argue for the vulnerable to be shielded? genuinely I'm perplexed.

[quote Ecosse]@RoseTintedAtuin

Unfortunately the majority of the public do not have any understanding of their personal risk or indeed the general threat posed by COVID.

There was a recent poll showing that on average the public think 7% of the U.K. population has been killed by the virus (the actual figure is less than 0.1%).

I suspect a great majority of the public have a hugely inflated view of the COVID fatality rate also.

We would not see the compliance we are currently seeing and people would not be so scared if they knew that the infection fatality rate may be as low as 0.3% and way lower still for under 75s. There is a reason the media has not reported on the true fatality rate as far as I can see.[/quote]
Oh but they have reported on the fatality rate. Its there, everyone knows.

There's not too much joined up thinking going on in government is there? We were told a) children don't get it and b) young people are often asymptomatic. That really makes sense.

Part time schooling for year 11 's who are expected to sit exams in a few months isn't realistic
But it will be ok as they have delayed exams by 3 weeks

They have been too arrogant to listen to scientists and people who try to help keep the schools safe.

They are causing avoidable death and disability. They don’t give two hoots about education.

Who cares what the school data is... There's an incredibly low risk for that age group. People love to be dramatic.

Who cares what the school data is... There's an incredibly low risk for that age group. People love to be dramatic

Well the government did, by suppressing the data and then removing the schools aren't high risk clause.

There might be low risk for school age children, but if you break it down it seems that secondary kids are not far behind adults in terms of risks especially in terms of spreading.
And I have a practical issue: atm there is a general consensus among scientists that about 5% of covid cases turn into long covid.
If we apply this number to the infected school children it means that in the long term we are losing that many people from the overall workforce. So not spending money on them now is just kicking the can down the road in a big way.

On a way more personal level: as a parent I cannot let my kid go into school light heartedly without knowing more. This is an unfolding public health issue with way too many unknowns. And the kids are the lab rats. Some will be fine, some won't. I know what it is like to have a lifelong condition that permeates every second of every day (okay, being slightly over dramatic here) and I do not want to expose my kid to having to go through life the same way because some ass high up thought it was a good idea to test out irl how kids get/spread the virus.
Not even the most basic health measures are in place: masks always and by everyone.

@Jericoo

Who cares what the school data is... There's an incredibly low risk for that age group. People love to be dramatic.

data please to prove your point. There is loads of data to the contrary, but would like to see your reasoning worked out.

"Who cares what the school data is... There's an incredibly low risk for that age group"

People said the same when 20 something infections surged in the summer but now we see all the heatmaps showing the infections spreads to other age groups.

People care about schools data because there is a lack of transparency /honesty that schools are a major source of infection in the community and this is seemingly actively ignored with no attempt to refine guidance or procedures which might minimise disruption to pupils and their families from constantly having to self isolate.

It is also the case that there are people in school who are not at low risk from covid. Today a colleague, father of young kids under 40 tried to return after infection and couldn't carry a bag of books down the stairs and got sent home. It's kind of insulting to a passionate and motivated teacher like that to ignore problems in schools and make no effort to refine mitigating measures.

Universities mass tested halls of residences and found rampant asymptomatic infections. Action was taken and infections in that age group are now falling. My school has had dozens of symptomatic infections in the last 2 weeks and no extra proactive testing (even if only staff) etc is being done. Theres a deep clean over half term though!

@Jericoo

Who cares what the school data is... There's an incredibly low risk for that age group. People love to be dramatic.

The low risk people pass it on to other people

@DeRigueurMortis

I'm struggling to understand why *@Ecosse* is getting such a hard time on this thread if I'm honest.

I don't agree with everything they have posted but I keep going back to my first post on this thread asking what do you want?

Do you think it's worth sacrificing yet another years student's education?

No I don't think education should be sacrificed. I think time and effort should go into making it socially distanced, well ventilated and as safe as possible. That could mean partly on line, at least for some people, or at home, at least for some people. There should be options, and an element of choice, and that would reduce worry hugely for vulnerable people and make it safer.

It isn't possible to weed out all the clinically vulnerable as people don't fit into boxes and society is too interconnected. We need an intelligent plan.

Regurgitating that everyone must do the same thing again and again is unhelpful.

The government are never up front or open and honest. As of 22nd Oct it became law for all schools to have an online learning platform. Money fed into the Oak academy all gone quiet. The tiering system for schools all gone quiet. The removal of “high risk” etc The stance on schools will shift very soon Wales already making the leap England will be following soon.

Yes secondary aged kids

Years 7&8 need to do two days a week. Work set for home learning.

Years 9 10 11 need to do three days a week plus work set for home learning

Days in school

www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30785-4/fulltext

The Italians spent the Summer preparing for home learning. They’ve been ahead of the rest of Europe (bar Germany) on much of mitigating spread. They’re starting to close schools in some regions or move to blended. Their cases are far less than ours at present.

If Ofqual had actually stripped back all the unnecessary padding and repetition form more than juts Eng Lit and history GCSEs we would also ahve time to do blended learning : and ,arguably, to actually reinforce skills and give kids more time to write, rehearse, practise (which is the Thing at the moment) rather than ramming more content in. But the government insist more content =more rigour. And so we are stuck with the same content as ever with kids (and teachers) in and out like the hokey cokey and enormous disruption to learning. Why people can't see that this is more of a threat to them than smaller class sizes and slowing the pace of study is beyond me. Instead they have given us 3 more weeks (again not all subjects actually get this, so exams have concertinad; once more, more stress!)

It's very short sighted to blithely say that the young aren't in a risky age group.

Their teachers are, and as most teachers are women, they could be more at risk of long Covid.

So spread must be reduced in all schools but especially secondary or there will be much disruption to education simply because staffing is so low.

Experienced teachers will be on long term sick leave.

@Oaktree55 quoted from The Lancet.

School closure was widely adopted previously to control influenza outbreaks and pandemics, and was shown to reduce and delay peaks of epidemics.16, 17 For SARS-CoV-2, the role of children in its transmission is still unclear. A modelling study from China showed that school closure alone could not interrupt transmission, but it could potentially reduce peak incidence by 40–60% and delay the epidemic of COVID-19.18 In this study, we showed that closing schools alone could decrease transmission by 15% (R ratio 0·85, 95% CI 0·66–1·10) on day 28 and reopening schools could increase transmission by 24% (1·24, 1·00–1·52) on day 28. It should be acknowledged that in our analysis, we were unable to account for different precautions regarding school reopening that were adopted by some countries, such as physical distancing within classrooms (eg, limiting class sizes and placing transparent dividers between students) and outside classrooms (eg, physical distancing during meal times, recreation, and transportation), enhanced hygiene (eg, routine deep cleaning and personal handwashing and face masks), and others (eg, thermal temperature checks on arrival).19, 20 Such precautions are imperative for safer school reopening. A COVID-19 outbreak was reported in a high school in Israel 10 days after its reopening; students were in crowded classrooms and were not instructed to wear face masks due to high temperatures.21 In addition, it should be noted that we did not consider the normal school holidays in some countries. We were also unable to assess the effect of reopening different levels of school (eg, elementary vs middle schools) since the effect might differ by finer age bands within school-age children and adolescents.21, 22 A report found that children younger than 5 years with mild to moderate COVID-19 had high viral loads in their nasopharynx compared with older children and adults, and thus could potentially be important drivers of transmission in the general population.23