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

@DownstairsMixUp

They can't close completely though can they and they never did. By the looks of it to, more people will be taking their keyworker spots. My kids school did a survey on this to get ideas of staffing numbers they'd need for another lockdown and it had shot up to 70% of the school still being in!

They could tighten up keyworker status yet. My local authority here in Scotland has set its keyworker status for our ‘online learning’ period in January as the same as Spring

• both parents have to count as keyworkers
• both parents have to be working out of the house
• you have absolutely no other adults who could do it (so if you have elderly grandparents who could take them, they have to go there rather than school)

a shift in the epidemiological landscape, with more younger patients, without co-morbidities, developing severe forms of the disease

www.africanews.com/2020/12/21/south-africa-detects-new-variant-of-coronavirus

If kids are at home how do parents work?!

This is an important question, but I do wonder just how many people this affects. You are talking about a relatively small number of people, I would have thought. Firstly you are talking about only primary school age children as secondary age can stay at home by themselves (generally) then you are talking about people unable to work from home, is that a large number of people? I would have thought it possible to find some solution for those people. I’m not saying it would be easy, but there has to be a balance struck in order to get these numbers down.

Of course it's normal to put our children's lives first ie if we asked to choose whether our child or a stranger lived. It's not normal imo to put our 4yo child's not missing a couple of months of normal schooling above other people's lives.

That's frighteningly selfish.

In this country, 75% of mothers and 92% of fathers work. Schools and nurseries shutting will have a hugely adverse effect on the ability of parents to provide for their families. It will further, perhaps irretrievably, damage the career prospects of those who have to take months off work to care for small children. As the March lockdown demonstrated, it is rarely possible to combine working from home with simultaneously caring for children successfully so please let's not see that mooted as a solution again.

There is already a generational wealth divide in this country. Young families are already struggling. More than half of the UK's housing wealth is held by the over 65s. Meanwhile, our child poverty rates are shameful. While every premature death is a tragedy, it is utter folly to further destroy the prospects of children and young families for a disease that, by and large, doesn't affect them. Women's careers, in particular, will take a long time to recover. Many women have been forced out of the workforce and their families left struggling financially.

Instead we need to ramp up the vaccine programme, impose a further stringent shielding programme (including help and support for those shielding) for the vulnerable and elderly and lock down everything else before we go near schools.

so if you have elderly grandparents who could take them, they have to go there rather than school

Nowhere in the guidance does it suggest people send their children to any person in an at risk group, in fact, the advice last time round was quite clear that you shouldn’t.

Firstly you are talking about only primary school age children as secondary age can stay at home by themselves (generally) then you are talking about people unable to work from home

No, it includes many parents who work from home. It is not possible to care for and home educate young children (bearing in mind this modelling talks about closing nurseries as well) while also doing a paid job, unless you are very very fortunate.

Last lockdown was absolute hell and I know a fair number of people who will just resign rather than go through that again. Which you might think is fine, but we are working on public services that are essential at this time. Who delivers those services if a large chunk of the experienced skilled people go “I can’t do this I quit”?

If young children are sent home from schools/nursery, parents need to be furloughed to care for them.

We need to abandon this ridiculous idea that it is possible simultaneously to work and care for children/supervise home education.

I've just had yet another text from school saying yet another 2 positive cases have been reported. I am getting daily texts since school closed asking me to check my email to see if I have been a close contact. That's how infectious and bonkers it was in school in the last week of term. So far 14 positive cases that the school is having to track and trace since school broke up on the 18th. If school was was still open we'd have had another 4 days of those cases sat in classes and spreading it further.

Surely people can see how bad things are? We're in a tier 2 area.

@MintyMabel

so if you have elderly grandparents who could take them, they have to go there rather than school

Nowhere in the guidance does it suggest people send their children to any person in an at risk group, in fact, the advice last time round was quite clear that you shouldn’t.

The guidance for my LA is very clear that if you have any friends or family that could count as ‘informal childcare’, you need to use that before taking up a keyworker place.

@PandemicPavolova

That seems to be why the government are shitting themselves now, because the SA strain does cause greater illness in younger ones than the previous.

I don’t think many people have actually caught up to that fact and are treating it as though it were the original strain that only affects vulnerable ones.

The fact is, government need to step up to help parents who still need to work so their employers can’t penalise them. Because although I think lockdown is needed, it isn’t fair on poor parents who have to deal with their employers demands.

I think mainly people believe what they want to believe. No one can rationally understand the risks involved and the situation in schools and believe they should carry on as normal. Or perhaps that's me believing what I need to believe because I can't cope with thinking anyone could really be that selfish

@MessAllOver

If young children are sent home from schools/nursery, parents need to be furloughed to care for them.

We need to abandon this ridiculous idea that it is possible simultaneously to work and care for children/supervise home education.

Now this I agree with.

Older children it may be easier to work and homeschool but with young children I've heard it's nigh on impossible.

Furloughing should be brought in then.

@TheHoneyBadger yes, agree. This thread proves that yes, they can be that selfish.

Parents not being able to work while looking after their children I understand though. Parents on the breadline with no electronic devices for their kids to access, I can understand their concern. The government has money to help what it believes to be a good cause but can’t help parents in these situations with their employers or provide lap tops for poorer kids

@MessAllOver agreed, furlough needs to be given to parents 100%.

@Jkrowling92

I don’t think unis should be in the same category as schools. Staff and Students at my uni had access to regular asymptomatic testing which showed cases were low. We’re in Norfolk which was tier 2 till most of the luvvies from London came up to their second homes for Xmas-probs on the night Boris announced restrictions in London. Now we’ll be going into level 4

If you're blaming rising cases on people coming up last Saturday, which is 5 days ago then you're pinning it on the wrong people. The incubation period is typically 5-6 days. Even assuming every single one of those passed it on to multiple people on the day they arrived (very late if they only left after the announcement) then you still wouldn't expect there to be many people showing infections.

*both parents have to count as keyworkers

• both parents have to be working out of the house
• you have absolutely no other adults who could do it (so if you have elderly grandparents who could take them, they have to go there rather than school*

That sounds like a good firm approach. I also think they should add being dropped off and collected by either parent also. No point taking up a place if another relative etc is collecting and was available to provide the care or is doing so after school.

Only 8m out of the population have primary aged children. Many of those will have a SAHP or one that works part time. Compared to how many are vulnerable and the sheer number of children in schools that could be affected by the new strain then closing the one huge area of group gatherings makes sense and the scientists will have far more data and facts than we do.

Yes I get that DfE but they need to take that anger and frustration to government not to schools.

For sure parental leave needs to be looked at and financially supporting those who can't work due to lack of 'childcare' and ensuring they can't be discriminated against by employers but the answer isn't just shove them all in school and pretend nothing is happening.

I personally would rather rotas than full closure both for my students and for my son and I really hope parents will start to be a bit more reasonable so that we don't end up with total closures because they refuse to countenance rotas. We needn't have been in this mess if we'd been allowed to use sensible blended learning plans in secondary

@TheHoneyBadger - your post is a rare beacon of sense & rationality in this thread.

I think teachers have been hung out to dry by our (excuse for a) government. I teach in a university, and we've been able to have far more control over our teaching - I had choices (particularly because of my age & underlying health issues).

I hope that parents wake up to the mazing job that teachers do everyday, and have been doing throughout the pandemic, at great expense to their own health & well-being.

www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4944

Are children more susceptible to the new variant?

Yes, in comparison with the non-variant virus. Speaking at a press briefing, Neil Ferguson, director of the Medical Research Council’s Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London and NERVTAG member, said that during the November lockdown in England there was a “general shift in the distribution of the virus towards children—for both the variant and the non-variant [virus].” This was expected, because of schools remaining open during the lockdown, he said, and among those aged under 15 there were slightly more cases of the variant virus in the community than the non-variant, though not significantly so.

But Barclay, who also sits on NERVTAG, said, “Let’s be clear. We’re not saying that this is a virus that specifically attacks children or is any more specific in its ability to infect children. But we know that SARS-CoV-2, as it emerged, was not as efficient at infecting children as it was adults. There are many hypotheses [as to why], but one is the expression of the ACE2 receptor that could be different in children. So if the [new variant] virus is having an easier time of finding and entering the cells, then that would put children on a more level playing field, if you like.”

Only 8m out of the population have primary aged children.

And how many more have nursery aged children?

Of my immediate team of 15 at work, over half of us have nursery or primary aged children. Under your ‘good firm approach’, none of us would be entitled to keyworker care (and we weren’t last time). But what we were doing last time was frantic, urgent work on covid response. If we cannot do that work, then the situation will be worse, and sadly there is not a free-floating bank of magical fairies we can draft in to do it for us - it’s actual humans or nothing.

It is not just me and my colleagues who will be impacted if we cannot do our jobs.

Working from home whilst home educating or looking after a pre-schooler is really not an option, our family and many others I know of were pushed to their absolute limits in the lockdown, which went on until September let's not forget. I have no reserves left to do that again and my employer will just not tolerate it again. I am absolutely for shutting schools if it is the right thing to do but the Government must enable working parents, including those working from home, either access to the furlough scheme, with employers being told to comply or a school place if that isn't an option from the employer's perspective. If this was the case less people would take school places and vulnerable children/true key worker children would be safer to attend.