How should we be dealing with Covid then?

[DBML]

Genuinely interested.

I agree that children’s education is very important and for all children, school is the best place for them. I also understand that it’s a necessity for parents to be able to work.

We were previously told that children were less likely to catch or spread Covid, but this turned out to be incorrect...perhaps due to a new strain...and we are now learning that whilst not affected any worse than they already were (so thankfully illness is mild), they are as infectious as any other age group.

We also are aware that schools can not ensure social distancing due to space, but social distancing appears to be our biggest protection as a society against this virus.

We know looking at the cases in the lead up to Christmas that the virus was spreading in many schools, due to lack of social distancing and safety measures. We are hopefully not daft enough to think that cases won’t go back up again as schools reopen.

So, what should we do?

We can’t (can we?) allow numbers of cases to keep rising in schools as inevitably children will take the virus home.

We haven’t got the SD measures needed to reopen the schools safely.

What should schools do? Particularly to throes who would prefer schools not to shut at all.

Thank you!

Just to add, there are numerous threads to discuss the ‘impact’ on parents, pupils and staff.
I’m really looking at what different people think the solutions are.

Or of course whether, just driving up the R rate and living with large numbers of infected people IS what people think we need to do.

We need online teaching for most pupils and schools open for children of key workers and if known other vulnerable children. We also want to prevent further functional mutations which is a risk when we let the virus run riot. We need to add teachers to vaccine priority list. And perhaps start vaccinations for exam year students should follow soon after.

National lockdown, scrap the tiers.
Schools closed til March at least, exams cancelled. Use Oak Academy/BBC for some sort of ad hoc solution.
Uni students to stay at home for now.
Re-jig the vaccination schedule to prioritise medics and teachers.
Use the military and anyone else qualified we can find to aggressively roll out vaccinations.
Close borders (10 months after the fact).

And track, trace and isolate. However we missed the boat on elimination in Feb. And then in June now all we can do is control the situation till vaccines are administered. And hope we don’t have further functional mutations

Thank you both. I can see both ideas include short to mid term school closures. I’m in agreement due to current rates of infection - I think it’s inevitable really.

I’m also interested in what the people who want to see school back Monday would have them do?

“ We were previously told that children were less likely to catch or spread Covid, but this turned out to be incorrect...perhaps due to a new strain...and we are now learning that whilst not affected any worse than they already were (so thankfully illness is mild), they are as infectious as any other age group.”

I don’t think this is quite right. Evidence so far shows that it is more transmissible across all ages, but so far evidence isn’t quite supporting children having an increasing share of infections with the new variant, is my understanding.

Fortify the food supply with vitamin D.

Just took this screen grab off our world in data to compare deaths in the UK vs Finland. Interestingly, the Uk's deaths (per million) over the summer were nearly as low as Finland's, indicating the protective role of sunlight formulating vitamin D in the skin. Finland is a lot further north than the UK, yet has much lower death rate. Both have similar standards of living. Finland's average vitamin D blood level is ~75 nmol/l, the level considered the beginning of optimal. Levels can be commonly as low as 25 in the UK winter.

Finland started a large fortification programme after a long history of children developing rickets due to a high northerly latitude:

www.iadsa.org/mind-the-gap/english/finland

Ok, more specifically, how do parents expect schools to be safe enough to return to by say, Monday?

I'd like to see England taking the approach that (possibly only some of) the US is taking.

In arizona, children chose whether to do online or in person schooling. There were fixed points for switching between the two as well, so parents could vary their approach. I think schools allocated staff to either in person or online, but I don't exactly know how this worked administratively.

I was watching a video about schools in New York. All the comments on it were about how awful it was there. It seemed like bliss compared to here. They had a fixed point at which schools in a district would be allowed to open or have to shut. They had all the worry that we did but were at least given a clear rationale, unlike what we had with the recent London Borough fiasco and are continuing to have with the national issue.

All of this seemed to happen smoothly. I don't know what it is that made their education system more able to adapt to this, but it allows parental choice, which we can see from vehement arguments on either side on mumsnet is so desperately required. It allows more social distancing. It gives a bit less uncertainty to staff, parents and most importantly, pupils.

I know that we're meant to bash the USA, but we're not doing well here and they do seem to be.

May I ask what practical solutions people have for repercussions of some of these ideas, like

close the borders So that means no accompanied freight. How would that happen, some kind of borrowed trailer scheme on the Chunnel? And lots of Brits stranded abroad; what would be the scheme to allow them to ever return to UK? Would airplane flight staff be allowed to enter UK? What about the sort of people that accompany legal documents or organs for transplant.

Vaccinating school age kids and teachers, would that be after the CEV and health care workers but before the age 18-74 group?

Uni students stay home What about student HCPs ... and social workers, engineers. Should we just forget about their placements and practical learning? Will govt repay all the Halls of residence fees? Do we just accept that we'll be massively short of these keyworkers at some point soon because they couldn't finish their occupational training?

Which foods should be fortified with vitamin D?

close schools Do we know how many people would be able to keep their jobs with kids at home 24/7 ... could they take furlough of some kind and still have a job to go back to?

I assume govt pays for everything... When would you like to start raising taxes?

Interested that teachers should be up there being vaccinated with medics.

Why?

This is IndependentSage’s view:

“ A nationwide lockdown with immediate effect is vitally necessary now.
Schools contribute to the increasing transmission (R rate). We all want staff and children in schools safely, but sadly that is not an option now for at least a month. The unprecedented crisis requires Government immediately provide digital access for all children, recruiting retired teachers and others to help provide excellent online teaching, enabling children who can’t work from home to attend school along with vulnerable and key worker children. The Government should use January to make schools safe, e.g. extra space from unused buildings to enable 2 metre distancing, free masks and encourage all to wear them, multiple sanitiser stations and support for improved ventilation. There should be an immediate Government taskforce, including teaching unions, local authorities, governing bodies and parents, to implement this plan.

There must be a clear strategy to mark the end-point of the new lockdown. This is when the number of new cases has dropped to the point where all those with the disease and in contact with them are isolated, with support where necessary, from the rest of the population. A fully operative Find, Test, Trace, Isolate and Support system must be in place through local public health services and the army, which will need appropriate funding.

Meanwhile, an explicit strategy for vaccine rollout is required. Current rates of immunisation, whilst a good start, are insufficient to ensure coverage of priority groups by Easter 2021. The necessary primary-care-led upscale requires new resources and staffing now. Appropriate support and messaging to all communities is required to ensure sufficient uptake to establish population immunity, and minimise death, disease and long-term physical and mental ill-health.

We must also support and contribute to the rapid roll out of the vaccine to low and middle income countries – the more Covid-19 is allowed to spread, the more opportunities it has to develop new mutations.
We must institute an effective Covid control strategy at our borders. As in other countries, personal travel, especially international travel, must be monitored and regulated effectively, with advance application for travel to and from the UK, a negative PCR test prior to travel and managed isolation on arrival.

The lesson should by now have been learnt by the decision makers. Prompt action will be better for the health of the country and our economy. Delay can only lead to further rapid growth of this pernicious disease, paralysing our ability to manage it.”

It is a very good point OP.

I am erring on side of schools being closed but with a very heavy heart because the toll it will take, especially on vulnerable children (and no it’s not as simple as “they will be in school”) and families is extreme.

What I would like to know is what the government’s plan B was if the vaccine hadn’t come off, so I could assess the relative harm of that approach can basically fucking everyone and everything over to try to suppress a super contagious variant.

@ATieLikeRichardGere

“ We were previously told that children were less likely to catch or spread Covid, but this turned out to be incorrect...perhaps due to a new strain...and we are now learning that whilst not affected any worse than they already were (so thankfully illness is mild), they are as infectious as any other age group.”

I don’t think this is quite right. Evidence so far shows that it is more transmissible across all ages, but so far evidence isn’t quite supporting children having an increasing share of infections with the new variant, is my understanding.

RichardGere

It really doesn’t matter if children’s proportion of infected has not increased. The point is transmissibility has increased and schools are perhaps the biggest contributor to value of R because of mixing of household in small unventilated closed rooms

This is IndependentSage’s view
it looks bang on the money to me!

The retail price of vitamin D is £10 per person per year. The raw material price is something like £5 per person per 25 years. Literally pennies to the exchequer compared to the healthcare costs of both infectious and non-communicable diseases which are influenced by vitamin D deficiency, and their associated hospital stays, work days lost, social care costs etc. The pandemic costs are in the trillions... furlough, testing infrastructure, huge demands on hospitals and the health service, productivity loss/reduced economic activity etc. Many orders of magnitude return on investment. If we simply raised vitamin D levels to that typical of a Finn, so much of that economic loss could have been prevented, not to mention the emotional and bereavement loss to so many families across the country.

@MagnificentDelurker I wouldn’t disagree with that at all, but I still think we should try to be clear and accurate about what the evidence actually says because, as we saw on multiple manic threads yesterday, people panic. It’s true there are few levers to control the spread just now besides school closures, but it’s not because we’ve been lied to about the role children and schools play in transmission in general.

Schools should be closed but with adequate online learning, whatever form that takes. Parents should keep their children indoors unless accompanied on exercise, not allow them to roam parks in massive groups or go into shops. If children really are these superspreaders, keeping them isolated for two weeks should break the chains.

Schools should then have time to set up proper testing with on the ground military support, not screen/phone nonsense. My ex-military DP has just volunteered to help at my DDs secondary school.

When schools are deemed safe, masks worn by all pupils at all times to try and mitigate risk to teachers. Teachers moved up with healthcare workers for the first dose of vaccine.

One adult per family shopping. It is not a day trip out.

Stricter enforcement of all borders, including tier borders (none of this dickheads from Milton Keynes going walking in Snowdon bollocks).

Dispersal orders in place to prevent gatherings in town/city centres.

All the usual caveats for vunerable, support, care bubbles etc.

No more pussy footing around the public and bleating about 'speshul reasons' to be out. Other countries can do it. We should be locked down too.

National lockdown, scrap the tiers.
Schools closed til March at least, exams cancelled. Use Oak Academy/BBC for some sort of ad hoc solution.
Uni students to stay at home for now.
Re-jig the vaccination schedule to prioritise medics and teachers.
Use the military and anyone else qualified we can find to aggressively roll out vaccinations.
Close borders (10 months after the fact).

This sounds very straightforward.

Kids going back part time to reduce class seize and allow social distancing.
Regular, testing of pupils and staff.
Stricter enforcement of self isolation.
(Not sure about the vaccine. As it stands, we don't know if people who had it are still able to speed the virus. It's also not licensed for children.)

The retail price of vitamin D is £10 per person per year.

Still a £670 million wasted if the fortified foods are ones no one eats. So I asked which foods would be fortified.

A tub of 365 vitamin D tablets costs £10 on amazon. Raw costs of vitamin D is £5 per person per 25 years as I stated above. Put that in foods like margarine and milk, as they do in finland, as I posted in the link above. Or just give everyone a tub. £670 million is a hella lot cheaper than furlough, lockdowns, much reduced manufacturing and service industry outputs, testing infrastructure, PPE, hospitalisations etc. And saves a lot of morbidity in a wide range of other diseases, such as some cancers, depression, T2 diabetes, heart disease etc. Wins all round and a huge return on investment many times over for 11 Downing St.

[quote ATieLikeRichardGere]@MagnificentDelurker I wouldn’t disagree with that at all, but I still think we should try to be clear and accurate about what the evidence actually says because, as we saw on multiple manic threads yesterday, people panic. It’s true there are few levers to control the spread just now besides school closures, but it’s not because we’ve been lied to about the role children and schools play in transmission in general.[/quote]
RichardGere

Thanks for clarification. I still believe that schools did contribute to R rising above 1. Maybe the new strain has increased R from 1.1 to 1.5. With R being around 1.1 we still needed lockdowns and children were still self isolating for weeks. R being around 1.5 is a total disaster. Incidentally for overall estimates of number of deaths increased transmissibility is more dangerous than increased fatality rate. Increased transmissibility leads to more deaths because the effects are exponential

We need to shut schools whilst robust testing regime is implemented. Schools should open only when properly covid safe. This should always have been the case.

To do this will require proper IT support for teachers to record lessons in progress for secondary schools and having half year in at a time alternating weeks. Teachers won't need to teach online too, just record the lessons and be available at set times for help.

Primary schools should wear masks too but with shorter days. One half of the class in mornings, the other in afternoons. It's for such a short time we can't afford to mess this up further.

Masks should be worn by everyone leaving their house, even outside. Can be removed briefly in safe environment to eat then back on.

This is only temporary. Once the first wave of vulnerable are vaccinated by about March/April, things can go back to tier 2/3 restrictions. Possibly even remove restrictions dependent on the numbers getting very ill.

We are nearly there. But our health service is on its knees. This means should you or a loved one need the NHS after an accident or for poor health, the treatment you need might not be available. If we pull together as a nation for 14 more weeks, the worst will be over.

It seems that a lockdown (a short but tough one) is the most ‘popular’ and I say that lightly, opinion. And I tend to agree, as a pp said, wi to a heavy heart.

In my head I think, surely we could do it in 3-4 weeks! Bring down that R rate and then hopefully children won’t have the virus to spread in school.
Get a robust testing system set up and help parents out for the next month, financially.

It’s interesting to hear some comparisons to the US and I certainly think there is some merit in allowing parents to make the choice about sending their children to school and it could certainly help with social distancing. My only concern with this would be whether the ‘right’ pupils would be working from home.

I think we are out of options, which is very worrying as I honestly thought as a country we’d be on the road to recovery now.

I have bought myself a tub of vitamin D capsules not that I need them now, but I’m very easily sold to so....

Thank you all for your input! I think it’s clear what we need to do and it’s ‘actually’ to follow the science.