London School of Hygiene & Medicine states that all schools need to be closed

[SoscaredforJan]

Pre-print of the new B.1.1.7 lineage published 23rd Dec 2020.

“Our estimates suggest that control measures of a similar stringency to the national lockdown implemented in England in November 2020 are unlikely to reduce the effective reproduction number Rt to less than 1, unless primary schools, secondary schools, and universities are also closed.

We project that large resurgences of the virus are likely to occur following easing of control measures.

It may be necessary to greatly accelerate vaccine roll-out to have an appreciable impact in suppressing the resulting disease burden.”

cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/uk-novel-variant.html

Same lines they've been parroting all along

And it’s fucking impossible and irrational to kill an economy and an education for a virus that in the main affects such a small amount of the population! You won’t have the nhs if people aren’t working and paying for it. Ffs some people are so thick!

@Whyisitsodifficult

And it’s fucking impossible and irrational to kill an economy and an education for a virus that in the main affects such a small amount of the population! You won’t have the nhs if people aren’t working and paying for it. Ffs some people are so thick!

pot - kettle

Reading this thread, it’s almost as though a random poster suddenly posted ‘I know! Let’s just for the hell of it, close the schools!’

There’s a pandemic. It’s been a very long time since the last pandemic. It’s unprecedented. It’s killed nearly 68,000 people.

I’m a teacher in secondary. Most of my classes are made up of between 31 and 36 children. They often sit three to a two-person desk as the rooms are so small. To avoid movement around the building, we now have two hour lessons...so that’s me, in a classroom with 36 teenagers, for 2 hours at a time.

I’m just recovering from Covid which I caught in school. I’ve passed it on to my family at home and my parents...as you often spread it before you know you have it. My parents live with my grandparents who are in their 90’s...a great age and I understand they can die anyway, but I really don’t like to think of them suffocating to death slowing without anyone they love around. I don’t know if I’ve inadvertently passed Covid on to anyone else, for instance in a supermarket.

That’s my story, but more of those 36 kids in my class also took the virus home. I know of 6 who tested positive, many who didn’t test at all...but I don’t know who they’ve perhaps spread it to.

Surely people realise that this can’t go on? We can’t just keep letting this happen, no matter how important face to face education is? We have to for a short while, find another way.

You don’t think that an overwhelmed NHS with people too petrified to leave their homes because people are dying in the streets will affect the economy?

The countries that protected health primarily have also protected their economy. We have done neither. You can’t sacrifice health and keep the economy.

Quite DBML. It's like trying to have a conversation with flat earthers - complete disregard for the scientific facts of the situation.

I hope that your ds is doing okay.

You don’t think that conservatives and a libertarian prime minister wouldn’t put the economy over health if it was at all doable? For Christ sake, they have done as much as they can to protect the economy over health. Even they know that there is no alternative to lockdown down low. I suggest you peruse a few legitimate scientific research papers on Covid

Government decisions have caused the UK to do poorly in regard to public health and the economy.

They're inherently linked. You can't have a functioning economy, health and social care system, education or anything much else if too many people aren't well enough to work.

No shit Sherlock, they should never have reopened them in September, other than as childcare hubs for key workers and the vulnerable.

They could/should have been opened with many, many more mitigation measures.

@AldiAisleofCrap

No shit Sherlock, they should never have reopened them in September, other than as childcare hubs for key workers and the vulnerable.

Sure that is right and my keyworker husband should obviously not have gone to work either. Putting himself and us in danger.

He worked for the greater good. At his age was worried constantly and still finds it stressful. However life has to go on.

Opening schools in September was the right thing to do. Better measures should have been taken but still we can't change that now.

Now we can close schools until end of January or longer in some areas. Learn more about mutations. Plan new management strategies. Hopefully secondary now wearing masks in lessons. Maybe try rotating weeks for secondary at school. Whatever it takes but schools need to open up fully as quickly we can.

Online classes don't work for so many kids. Many kids are in abusive or neglective homes. Some have or are starting to have mental health issues. Others are just little gits that won't do the work at home.

All the teachers I know don't want schools online and I live in London. They want some changes and more freedom to choose how things are managed but kids actually attending school.

@christinarossetti19

They could/should have been opened with many, many more mitigation measures.

Yep

The new guidelines published only two days ago still say no masks.

In other news re lateral tests, Liverpool mass testing missed 60 per cent of cases and didn’t impact on infection rates, report says.

Latest surveillance report covering schools. It’s certainly not looking good at primary level either.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/947873/Weekly_COVID-19_and_Influenza_Surveillance_Graphs_w52.pdf

@Piggyinblankets

The new guidelines published only two days ago still say no masks

Isn't there a formal mechanism to challenge these 'guidelines'?

I don't believe they can be that obtuse. What's the rationale behind all of this?

Things are changing on a near daily basis at the moment. I really think you should wait until after new year to see the next lot of changes.

It's all ideological truly!

There are three things going on here:

1. we’ve proven that children spread the virus as effectively as adults which means the free mixing at schools pushes cases into the wider community. SAGE estimates that closing schools for face to face and sending learning remote would reduce the R by up to 0.6.
2. But education is important and the government doesn’t want to pump money into a public service because they are all about private enterprise and a small state. So they’ve propped up businesses and kept schools open.
3. The knock on effect of this has been the long term closure of the arts, hospitality and (intermittently) retails sectors. AND the slow collapse of the schooling system in some of the most deprived areas of the country (which just so happen to also have had the highest infection rates).

So, to summarise- keeping schools open at all costs was not to help working parents because working parents of children too young to leave make up quite a small percentage of the working population. It was actually because the government would much rather fund private enterprise than public services. They have a statutory duty to provide education for children but don’t want to pay out what it would cost to provide that in remote/blended way for everyone.

However, by letting the virus run rampant through schools they may have inadvertently allowed a mutation that better targets children. Viruses are only looking to reproduce successfully. If the only available hosts are kids then the virus will better adapt to that host.

Schools should not be closed again. We’ve already done that for six months from March. The impact on the young has been horrendous. We are in the north, high covid area. No cases in my kids’ primary school during the whole autumn term. Why should that school be closed? Ridiculous.

Yawn! We’ve had this argument a million time. Your school is alright for now...until it isn’t...and it won’t be with the numbers infected we have now. All the science says that schools as they are are not feasible. If you cared so much about schools staying open you should have campaigned for better mitigations in schools in September.

@festivetimes @BelleSausage has well addressed some of the problems with leaving schools open as they are.

You don’t think that conservatives and a libertarian prime minister wouldn’t put the economy over health if it was at all doable?

No I don’t. Because they know that they will get the blame for Covid deaths in the near term whereas they will likely be gone by the time we see the medium to long term problems (which include deaths) caused by lockdowns.