Are we heading for another national lockdown

[thebeachismyhappyplace2]

Do you think we are going in the same direction as France and Germany? And do you think schools will stay open if we do?

I have no doubt that we will be in lockdown before the end of November.

[quote Ecosse]@user1471530109

‘Independent’ SAGE are a far-left political group which includes communist party members.

Even if they were independent, they are a single issue group. The government has to make decisions that take into account the fact that COVID is not the only issue in the world.

The lockdown fanatics for example do not care about the most disadvantaged families being plunged into even deeper deprivation or vulnerable DC having their life expectancy reduced by schools closing and ruining their life chances.[/quote]
Yes I really agree with this.

Considering Covid deaths are way below in the death stats of what people are dying from it’s ludicrous that we are fucking up everything because of it.

SM and 24 biased news coverage are to blame

Is 'independant sage' the same group advising the government through the pandemic?

No.

Why should I and 1000s stand in front of 1000s of students week in week out without ppe? Why aren't the clinically vulnerable being shielded and supported. Shame on anyone who thinks they shouldn't. Are our NHS workers also backing your views? Have we forgotten about protecting them from being overwhelmed?

You've missed out the only thing which would actually protect both the NHS and the economy, and that is a proper test and trace system.

@user1471530109

Well it sounds like I need to do some of my own research. Is 'independant sage' the same group advising the government through the pandemic?

I still stand by the belief that we can't let this virus crash through the community the way it's starting to ramp up. I am horrified by some of the counter arguements to this. It should not be a decision as to whether to save lives from the virus or to pay bills. There is a balancing act. I don't believe the government are doing anywhere near enough. Why should I and 1000s stand in front of 1000s of students week in week out without ppe? Why aren't the clinically vulnerable being shielded and supported. Shame on anyone who thinks they shouldn't.

Are our NHS workers also backing your views? Have we forgotten about protecting them from being overwhelmed?

SAGE is the group advising the government.

Independent SAGE is a far-left political lobbying group, who called themselves "Independent SAGE" so that people would think that they're as important as SAGE.

@bookworm14
You have literally no idea how a lot of people live, do you? If schools shut, I cannot go to work and we cannot pay our mortgage. Get your head out of your privileged arse.
Do you wear a mask if you need to at work?
Do you socially distance?
Do you have to mix at close contact with dozens and dozens of different people every day?
I sure as hell bet you don’t, yet you expect teachers and other school staff to put themselves at increased risk just to provide you with free childcare??????

[quote Ecosse]@user1471530109

‘Independent’ SAGE are a far-left political group which includes communist party members.

Even if they were independent, they are a single issue group. The government has to make decisions that take into account the fact that COVID is not the only issue in the world.

The lockdown fanatics for example do not care about the most disadvantaged families being plunged into even deeper deprivation or vulnerable DC having their life expectancy reduced by schools closing and ruining their life chances.[/quote]
1 no they aren't far left

2 they are IMO the best independent scientific advice we have

3 they include scientists across a spectrum of disciplines

4 we can't manage the economy without an eye to scientific management of covid, that would be madness

5 SAGE appear to be in agreement with them on many points (and ignored by no 10)

6 we should care enough to fund schools to operate safely & care enough to fund health services adequately. That would be a caring society.

Probably heading for more lockdown measures, however I think it extremely unlikely that schools will close, because of the following

• if people follow other measures (ie no household mixing), cases in schools lead to almost no impact on health service (ie how do elderly people catch it from them?)
• primary age children have very low case rate (nationwide, less than 50 per 100,000)
• primary age children have very low positivity rated (c 5%)
• it is very clearly not spreading in primary age children at anything like the rate in other age groups (see above two points)
• saying that keeping schools open means you are mixing with 30 'households' is totally untrue, when the members that are mixing do not have the disease at anything like the same rate. Your child is mixing with 29 others who also have a 99.95% chance that they do not have the disease. Hardly the same thing as 4 family members mixing with another 4 of mixed age groups.

@Tfoot75 what about all those pesky secondary schools out there? Forgotten us!( like the government).

@herecomesthsun

We won’t be able to fund the health and education systems we have at the moment after another lockdown and millions more unemployed.

Never mind giving extra money to schools.

The Guardian report today that up to 40% of students are already out of school and missing learning In the worst hit Tier 3 areas.

Teacher asked over and over again in the Summer why there wasn’t any investment or provision to cover this pretty obvious eventuality and got naff all response from the government.

Senior schools need to go blended. Parents need choices and the government needs to step up to provide both guidance and funding to make it happen to help support people to go to work (additional childcare funding).

@Tfoot75

Probably heading for more lockdown measures, however I think it extremely unlikely that schools will close, because of the following

• if people follow other measures (ie no household mixing), cases in schools lead to almost no impact on health service (ie how do elderly people catch it from them?)
• primary age children have very low case rate (nationwide, less than 50 per 100,000)
• primary age children have very low positivity rated (c 5%)
• it is very clearly not spreading in primary age children at anything like the rate in other age groups (see above two points)
• saying that keeping schools open means you are mixing with 30 'households' is totally untrue, when the members that are mixing do not have the disease at anything like the same rate. Your child is mixing with 29 others who also have a 99.95% chance that they do not have the disease. Hardly the same thing as 4 family members mixing with another 4 of mixed age groups.

You have completely missed the point whoever mentioned about the mixing of households. They are very unlikely to have been talking about primary schools. In secondary schools teachers are teaching across bubbles. Bubbles which have 200+ student in each of them! And yes. No SD or PPE. This is so frustrating

[quote Ecosse]@herecomesthsun

We won’t be able to fund the health and education systems we have at the moment after another lockdown and millions more unemployed.

Never mind giving extra money to schools.[/quote]
You were talking about being uncaring.

If this government cared about state schools it would have put billions there rather than EOTHO which may well have driven up infection rates.

@herecomesthsun

Eat out to help out only cost £500 million. It will have saved billions more in the long run from businesses that would otherwise have closed and millions of people who would have been unemployed.

What we cannot have is another lockdown that would devastate the economy.

Schools must stay open. The economy must stay open.

@Tfoot75

Probably heading for more lockdown measures, however I think it extremely unlikely that schools will close, because of the following

• if people follow other measures (ie no household mixing), cases in schools lead to almost no impact on health service (ie how do elderly people catch it from them?)
• primary age children have very low case rate (nationwide, less than 50 per 100,000)
• primary age children have very low positivity rated (c 5%)
• it is very clearly not spreading in primary age children at anything like the rate in other age groups (see above two points)
• saying that keeping schools open means you are mixing with 30 'households' is totally untrue, when the members that are mixing do not have the disease at anything like the same rate. Your child is mixing with 29 others who also have a 99.95% chance that they do not have the disease. Hardly the same thing as 4 family members mixing with another 4 of mixed age groups.

1. Elderly people can catch it from children in school as they may be living with/in a bubble with/providing childcare for a child, parent or member of staff.
2. Primary children testing positive do not seem to suffer from the same symptoms as adults. You can only get tested if you have one of the main three adult symptoms. It is therefore very difficult to monitor how many of them are positive as they aren’t being tested, so impossible to track the impact it has on transmission.
3. See 2.
4. See 3.
5. It’s not mixing with only 29 other families. It’s mixing with potentially many more. You could be in year group bubbles of 120 in a primary and in even larger numbers in a secondary. That’s with loads of additional staff members in poorly ventilated classrooms. You don’t know that only 99.95% of them have it, because they don’t have the same symptoms and they aren’t being tested.

The lockdown fanatics for example do not care about the most disadvantaged families being plunged into even deeper deprivation or vulnerable DC having their life expectancy reduced by schools closing and ruining their life chances

We have a huge problem here with relative poverty. Something like 1/3 of children living in relative poverty. Isnt something like 1.4 million claiming school meals in families that I would consider to be living in absolute poverty on less than 8k per annum. There is a difference between relative and absolute poverty. Do we want to see the gap between the rich and poor growing, of course not, and neither do we want to see more immiseration for families.

There is a huge gap also between private and state school resources, and attainment. If all schools close private schools close too. Whilst it may be difficult for poorer families to provide much in the way of education, even richer parents would struggle to offer their DC the education they would receive in their private school. Even with money, these people can not offer the same education that the private school offers. So, your argument falls down.

Eccose, you are no more invested in alleviating poverty than I am in tap dancing on the moon.

If you were sincerely interested in the plight if the poor you wouldn't be using tired old rhetoric to discredit independent sage.

I am in favour of lockdown. I'm also very concerned about poverty. Oh, and I'm a commie. Concern for social justice, is underpinned by my belief that economic justice is central to all other issues. And I agree Covid is not the only thing in the world.....it certainly isn't the crisis, because we were already on the cusp of an economic crisis before Covid made its appearance.

If you want to fix poverty, fix the system that creates it. You seem to be fixated instead on keeping things just as they are. Your fear is evidently more to do with maintaining the status quo, of keeping poor people in their place, and the form of economy that keeps them there.

@Appuskidu

Why are the lives of elderly people worth more than the lives of DC who need an education?

Is it because the reductions in life expectancy caused by DC being out of school are caused by lockdown rather than COVID so don’t matter?

Personally I'd rather my DS saw his extended family than was at school.

And yes, I do work full time.

Lots of children are entitled to school meals and no it doesn’t mean they are in absolute poverty. Go and read up on it 🙄

Eat out to help out only cost £500 million. It will have saved billions more in the long run from businesses that would otherwise have closed and millions of people who would have been unemployed

How did you reach the conclusion that spending £500 million has saved billions? billions....how many billions?

[quote Ecosse]@herecomesthsun

Eat out to help out only cost £500 million. It will have saved billions more in the long run from businesses that would otherwise have closed and millions of people who would have been unemployed.

What we cannot have is another lockdown that would devastate the economy.

Schools must stay open. The economy must stay open.[/quote]
Give it a rest Ecosse for God sake. Keep saying that everything must stay open won’t make it so. We can’t carry on as we are so something has to give. It’s listening to people like you that means the government has blown it by missing a circuit breaker over half term when they could have shut schools for 2 weeks with less of an impact on people. Now it’s a bloody calamity.

If primary schools do stay open they’ll also need to keep nurseries, preschools, childminders and grandparent babysitters in operation or they’ll be a huge chunk of teachers down. An alarming number of primary teachers are parents of young children.

And very few of us can pay the mortgage with one salary while their partner stays at home, so we can ‘do our bit’.

Dustysilkflowers, I read this www.gov.uk/apply-free-school-meals

I would consider those levels of income absolute poverty. Isnt the argument that without free school meals these children go hungry? In what world is it that hunger isn't poverty?

I fear a full lockdown is coming.

I will be gutted because I've worked my arse off since this started as an RMN and the only thing that is keeping me going at the moment is our one or two night trips away. I'm normally a very resilient person but my mental health is not great at the moment and I dread being stuck in with nothing to do but go to work.

We've got a trip planned for next weekend and one in December which I want to be able to go to. Neither trip are to current high covid areas and we live in a tier 1 area.

@Ijustcantcope

All a ‘circuit breaker’ (which is really just a PR term for a lockdown) would have done is kick the can down the road.

We locked down for 3 months and cases started rising as soon as things opened up. 2 weeks would do nothing.

But why is that an issue? Surely we want to be able to keep going until they sort out a vaccine. Which hopefully is looking good at the moment? If our vulnerable are vaccinated then our NHS won't be overwhelmed and the economy can keep going. Surely thats what we all want