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?

All countries will keep schools open as much as possible. Across Europe and here

Why do most people on MN seem to think they will die if they catch COVID?!

"A few weeks of homeschooling" IS a big deal when you're a single parent who would still have to carry on WFH FT while homeschooling 2 primary aged children. They don't just sit there and get on with it, and all the school did was send some YouTube links and similar other shit.

@IceCreamAndCandyfloss

Education would only be lost though if the parents didn’t support it or ensure it was done.

Get lost.

I’m not a trained teacher. I’m a single parent and I run a very busy business with employees with bills and children of their own who are counting on me to keep us open. I have two kids under ten who do not take online work instruction from me. It didn’t work last time so won’t work now.

So fuck off with your ‘don’t support it or don’t ensure it’s done’

Exactly @ElizabethG81

Hardly blended learning is it. Just some stuff sent to parents !

appeasing us4them selfish types who would rather tens of thousands of people die than little Johnny miss out on a month of school

What about if little Johnny lived in a 2 bed flat, with 3 or 4 siblings, and out of work, alcoholic parents? Or a single parent trying to work to feed her children? Or a parent who beats their children, and Johnny spends all day trying to keep the little ones quiet so they don’t upset them?

It doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to recognise that many many children would not be able to access remote learning. Those children are already at a huge disadvantage, and closing the schools again will only make that worse. That’s why the schools need to stay open.

Might be needed if people don't follow the rules. Our local hospital has more covid patients than 1st time round, patients queuing for beds and all ICU beds are full, My friend says she has never seen so many sick people on ICU. Scary times, frustrating that people are not taking it seriously.

@IceCreamAndCandyfloss

Education would only be lost though if the parents didn’t support it or ensure it was done.

So naive. Did you homeschool children during the last lockdown? Do you work?

@IceCreamAndCandyfloss

Respectfully you haven't got a clue what you're talking about

@IceCreamAndCandyfloss a few weeks of homeschooling is a big deal if you have to work. As I recall you saying before your children are older so you won't have the issue of needing to work and fully supervise young children through their education. So it's easy for you to say schools should close when it won't affect you that much.

@IceCreamAndCandyfloss

Education would only be lost though if the parents didn’t support it or ensure it was done.

Education would be lost, because a lot of parents would either be unwilling or unable to step in. Because they have jobs they don’t fancy losing, or they’re unable to provide the assistance their child needs, or they’re generally useless, or they have the time and the motivation and the ability but they live in a house where there’s no way they could plonk four children in front of four laptops running four separate live classroom video sessions.

There are some parents whose children would be fine, but we can’t base national policy on ignoring everyone else.

If shutting schools is the only way to stop cases. Rising then it’s what we’ll have to do. But if there’s any way to avoid that, then we should avoid it, because the harms of lost education (and the losses of everything else school provides) is not something the government can just fix after the fact.

@TheHoneyBadger

I think the reality is that if schools and unis had stayed closed and providing remote learning we could have managed to keep everything else open with covid secure measures. The economy would be better off. It's actually a pretty tiny percentage of workers who rely on school to be able to work.

You could close down everything but schools and still have soaring numbers whilst trashing the economy for nothing other than political grandstanding and appeasing us4them selfish types who would rather tens of thousands of people die than little Johnny miss out on a month of school (which he'll likely miss out on anyway when bubbles burst and teachers are having to isolate due to being in contact with positive cases.

4 week closure of uni and schools and continued sd and Covid measures elsewhere could make a real difference to the numbers. Obviously total lockdown would do more but at the expense of us keeping gyms, pubs, cafes, etc in our local communities if they go broke.

Unis are mostly online/remote anyway, but stupidly with the students doing it from Uni/campus accommodation that they're paying through the nose for. Unis should have been honest to say there'd be little, if anything, in person for those not doing medical/lab based degrees. Yes, it would have been a financial hit for them in terms of lost accommodation revenue, but they really shouldn't have coerced the students to go to Uni with false promises.

@IceCreamAndCandyfloss

Education would only be lost though if the parents didn’t support it or ensure it was done.

Please can you advise how you're supposed to do that when you both work ft??

@ElizabethG81 she probably works 3 full time jobs whilst home schooling 4 children in different year groups. Whilst also growing her own veg.

@GoldenOmber

us4them selfish types who would rather tens of thousands of people die than little Johnny miss out on a month of school

Us4Them are bonkers but keeping schools open if at all possible is not. The government can prop up a lot of sectors by throwing money at them; it can’t mend the harms caused by lost education. That’s why other governments in Europe are also prioritising schools over other things.

Sadly, the government probably could have done a great deal to keep schools open in a much safer way, but seemingly schools are so vitally important yet they aren’t actually worth investing an extra penny in!

Makes very little sense really.

@IceCreamAndCandyfloss

Education would only be lost though if the parents didn’t support it or ensure it was done.

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.

No more lockdowns! I wish the media would start reporting daily job losses instead of daily infections

I cried almost every day during the last lockdown, until my kids were finally allowed back in school in June as keyworker children. I had to work FT, homeschool 2 primary age children, queue up outside supermarkets so that I could feed said children, while regularly getting snide looks and comments for daring to have those children with me rather than leave them tied up outside the shop.

When I took my son to A&E, and obviously also had to take my 7 year old daughter rather than leave her home alone, the nurse rudely shouted "have you nowhere to leave her?" while pointing at my daughter. No, I fucking didn't have anywhere to leave her as the government have banned me from leaving her with anyone else. So excuse me if I have no desire for another "full lockdown" to save people from a disease that's so deadly most people don't even know they've got it.

@lljkk

... I was talking to some care home workers today about how painful it is for residents not to see their families. That reality won't change anything, though. The residents will suffer along with rest of us not able to see loved ones. if SAGE reckons we are on path to exceed reasonable worst case scenario of 85k deaths this winter, I wonder what the actual death toll will be? 90k? ~Or more?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54750775

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says there are around four times as many people catching Covid than anticipated.

A "reasonable worst-case scenario" is used by officials and the NHS to plan for the months ahead.

It had estimated 85,000 deaths from Covid over the course of winter.

But an official Sage document, dated 14 October and published today, reveals we are in a worse position than expected.

Scientists crunching the numbers estimated that, by mid-October, there were between 43,000 and 74,000 people being infected with coronavirus every day in England.

Their report said: "This is significantly above the profile of the reasonable worst-case scenario, where the number of daily infections in England remained between 12,000-13,000 throughout October."

Schools now have to provide a proper online timetable if we go into lockdown. We've all been trained and ready to go. An extra week over half term would have been ideal to test this out.

Besides, from what I can gather from most pp comments, they have primary aged children? Primary schools would be the very last to close. It's the older children/teenagers linked with high cases.

But you know all that already. So frustrating.

Sadly, the government probably could have done a great deal to keep schools open in a much safer way, but seemingly schools are so vitally important yet they aren’t actually worth investing an extra penny in!

This. What will close schools - or remove their ability to deliver any meaningful learning, even if they are physically open - will be levels of infection that remove too many staff or too many students from the classroom.

What would prevent this is better infection control.

However, that costs money, which has not been forthcoming. As a result, the only way of improving infection control is reducing the number of students in the classroom at one time - which means part time education, which isn't acceptable.

So we have chaotic forced school closure by infection as the 'best outcome'. Appalling.

A national lockdown is inevitable because every part of the UK is significantly above levels deemed acceptable for entry to the country without quarantine (20/100K).

People saying the Regional approach will continue are wrong. It can’t. It’s impossible to keep cases with areas and they’re ignoring the fact that cases are growing across the U.K.

The worst hit places are so bad, they've normalised this high level of incidence which exists across the U.K.

Data is coming in from school studies in Florida, one of the few areas to start in person schooling. It increased community transmission by just under 1/3.

Primary schools would be the very last to close.

Babysitting by the 'last adult standing' within primaries will be very late to close, yes. Education will stop much earlier through lack of staff.

Yes it's written

The frustrating thing about schools not staying open potentially due a shortage of staff is the fact that most of those people will be sitting at home for 2 weeks with mild cold symptoms because of 'self isolation'.

Imagine a world where we hadn't heard about Coronavirus and this was any other winter. We wouldn't be batting an eyelid.