Schools - what are you expecting?

[DBML]

I’m a teacher and throughout November and December our school was hit badly by Covid. We had all year groups off, at least 50 confirmed cases in pupils. Tens of staff off confirmed. One member of staff passed Covid on to a parent who then passed away. One learner passed Covid to her mother who passed away. We had 2 children seriously ill in hospital, luckily now recovered. Horrendous is not a word I use lightly, but it became frightening and eventually unsustainable.

Because some groups were in and others out, remote learning was patchy and difficult to manage. I caught Covid after having a year 7 in my class who tested positive and I was ill for about 7 - 10 days, so quite mild luckily. But I couldn’t breath easily and had panic attacks. Was unable to sleep laying down and was convinced that I had no air. It was awful.

‘Us for them’ is campaigning for us to go back to this again. No safety measures in place...just a full reopening and having been there, I cannot understand why?

I know many posters here want school’s ‘reopened’ again too and as quickly as possible. I was wondering whether rather than just say ‘schools must open’ someone could explain.

I get that home learning is not ideal; can be inconsistent and that working from home is challenging when children are there. I get that parents are worried about their children’s and their own mental health...I get it, because I am trying to work full time and am a parent too. But, having seen how bad schools can get, I also accept that tolerating this situation until cases are right down is necessary.

I don’t want to die. I don’t want my husband to die. I don’t want my son to get seriously sick. I don’t want my pupils to get sick or to lose parents. I don’t want to return to school without anything there to keep us safe. We were not safe.

I was wondering what those who want schools to just open are expecting? Are you expecting children not to catch it? Not to pass it about? Are you willing for some teachers, parents and pupils to die because it will only be a very small percentage and a price worth paying? Are you happy to put up with the endless isolations and then reduced quality of online learning?

And if you just want ‘normality’ do you realise that’s just not possible?

Genuinely interested in the reasoning and not just the statement ‘schools need to open’.

We had 2 children seriously ill in hospital, luckily now recovered.

The data shows that severe Covid is very rare in children. You must have been extremely unlucky!

I caught Covid
...
I don’t want to die.
...
I don’t want to return to school without anything there to keep us safe.

You know how the immune system works, right?

@HalfPastThree

We had 2 children seriously ill in hospital, luckily now recovered.

The data shows that severe Covid is very rare in children. You must have been extremely unlucky!

Are you accusing me of lying? One was just turned 18, the other 16 with a common underlying health condition.

@HalfPastThree

I caught Covid ... I don’t want to die. ... I don’t want to return to school without anything there to keep us safe.

You know how the immune system works, right?

I do. I know of people who have had Covid twice. I also did not pass Covid to my immediate family as I was able to isolate from them. I have seen Covid deaths. They have not been in 70, 80 or 90 year olds. I have known of 4 people who died of Covid and all in their 50’s.

Are you accusing me of lying?

Not at all! I'm saying that, statistically, speaking, this is extraordinarily unusual.

Don't you have school tomorrow?

@HalfPastThree

Are you accusing me of lying?

Not at all! I'm saying that, statistically, speaking, this is extraordinarily unusual.

Don't you have school tomorrow?

I do have school tomorrow. I’ll be up at 7am. Don’t worry about me :)

I know of people who have had Covid twice.

Reinfection is not impossible but it is very uncommon. If you know of people (plural) who have had it twice, as well as having two children in your school who were seriously ill in hospital, this is quite an astonishing run of bad luck.

Our school of 800 has had only one child test positive, resulting in five children having to isolate. Very strict measures are in place. The age range is reception to sixth form.
I'm expecting the teachers to carry on their full schedule of remote teaching as they are doing currently. When allowed I expect them back at school. All students will be tested twice before being allowed back and teachers will be tested weekly.
My daughter is Y11, and is currently expecting to take exams as they are iGCSEs which have not been cancelled. She needs to be back in rhe classroom as soon as possible.

@HalfPastThree

I know of people who have had Covid twice.

Reinfection is not impossible but it is very uncommon. If you know of people (plural) who have had it twice, as well as having two children in your school who were seriously ill in hospital, this is quite an astonishing run of bad luck.

Sadly I live in an area where we have had some of the highest Covid rates in the UK for a sustained period of time. So, actually around here it’s not that unusual at all.

I feel so honoured to have qualified epidemiologists like halfpastthree on here advising us. Don’t you?

@Justthebeerlighttoguide

Yeah, says it all - only 150 teachers have died, only 150 lives and families ripped apart with a family member lost to them forever!

Is this the kind of society we are when people ( not on this thread but others and Us for them ) literally say things like well 500 bus divers are dead and only - 150 teachers so whats the problem - get on with it - Kids needs to be in school to get on with THERE learnin'"

Shouldn't we all be calling for all jobs to be made as safe as possible? I think cashiers in SM need a screen all around them, can't aldi, lidl, waitrose - asda afford that????

Everyone everywhere should be calling for safer conditions! NOt comparing death rates and saying there are worse rates so get on with it - Kids need there learnin.

I agree. That comment "ONLY 150 teachers have died"....whoever wrote that is incredibly callous and lacks empathy.

@Cheesecats
I know. And they are also concerned with how much sleep I’m getting...an added bonus there.

During the first wave I had a neighbour die aged 58, but that was the only case I even heard of as sad as it was. I couldn’t understand what the ‘Covid’ fuss was about and assumed my neighbour died because he must have had another health condition.

Around October I started hearing of more people testing positive. Largely at schools in our area and a factory.

Then it came to my school and that’s when I got a good idea of what this virus does and it’s weird!
My one colleague gave it to their parent (50’s and healthy) and they died. I passed it to my parents in their 60s and whilst mum was poorly but not hospitalised, dad barely knew he had it and spent his illness/isolation refitting their kitchen. It hits people differently and I wish we could be told why? As that’s one thing I find quite unnerving. You just never know how sick you’ll get.

But of course, I’m just mysteriously unlucky to know all these people getting Covid. My area had at one point nearly 1000 cases per 100,000 people.

@HalfPastThree

I know of people who have had Covid twice.

Reinfection is not impossible but it is very uncommon. If you know of people (plural) who have had it twice, as well as having two children in your school who were seriously ill in hospital, this is quite an astonishing run of bad luck.

Quite. Given that there are I think, only a few confirmed cases worldwide of reinfection within the current outbreak ( as opposed to repeated, prolonged positive tests) that is an amazing coincidence. You should probably contact the Lancet?

I know lots of people who have had Covid but no younger people who have died and no reinfections. I had Covid in March, along with a good few friends, and no long covid here either. No deaths of teachers or kids in any school in the local ares that I know of.

@manicinsomniac surely you must realise that being in a school with a max class size of 18 is extremely rare, and puts you in a different category to almost all mainstream state schools in the U.K.?
I think since you already know you're in a very different position to most, you must also know you can't extrapolate your feeling of safety in schools to all schools experiencing similar?

I think since you already know you're in a very different position to most, you must also know you can't extrapolate your feeling of safety in schools to all schools experiencing similar?

She literally said that.

Yes, of course lockdown. But I'm just trying to explain where the feelings of wanting schools to be open come from (which is what the OP was asking for, I think).

In Sept, I didn't think a class of 18 woukd be that much different to 30 because of course our classrooms are half the size with half the number of tables and chairs. Our bubbles were also 2 year groups each (around 65-90 children) instead of single classes. So those bubbles ate together in the dining room, had chapel together and had the same break areas. But it must have made a difference anyway.

So, combine that with the worst I heard locally and in the media bring repeated bubble popping and high levels of absence and that's what led to my belief that schools should be closed. Yes, of course I knew we were lucky and privileged not to have cases. But I just didn't hear about all the death and trauma surrounding children in some schools until reading mumsnet. I read headline news, I don't seem out stories from multiple sources. And when you get caught in a term time bubble of busy-ness, not much exists outside of your school and family (my older children didn't have a case in their school either).

I did think (and still do) that individual schools needed the discretion to close for circuit breaks if badly hit or if absence was too high to be safe. But blanket closures did not seem needed to me because of the environment I was in.

I, for instance, am in Scotland and where I am we have not seen anything like the rates of some schools in various parts of England. My own dc have had no periods of isolation due to positive class members. But this experience is one small part of the U.K. experience and it's not as if we don't hear about places that are much worse off - I can't think of a time in this past year when I've thought "schools" were safe because my own school situation hasn't been too bad.
But I suppose my eyes have been opened and kept open to the situation elsewhere through discussion with teachers on mumsnet, if I just relied on the news I might be chanting schools are safe along with Boris Johnson!

I think the trouble is that there is such regional/county/ward variation in COVID cases/rates.

I live in a very "white collar" area where many work in healthcare (vaccinated) or university (online), can't work (hospitality) or can work from home. According to the NHS dashboard the school is in a ward with a 60 per 100,000 case rate. I know one family that has had COVID since March.

Even going into school one day/fortnight would make a massive difference to DC's wellbeing (simply to see some of her friends).

DD's staff do have scope to arrange smaller classes/move to other local buildings to ensure an element of face to face teaching. Unless all the parents suddenly decide we are all essential-key workers the school won't have the insurance cover it needs to open.

I have some friends who have had it twice, once earlier last year the second time in January. They were more unwell the second time round.
I know lots of kids and young adults who have had it and been mildly unwell. Sadly I also have multiple friends now who have lost a parent to it. So, if you have been somewhere where it is circulating it's actually very scary and real.
It's easy to blame the Government (and I do) for handling this poorly, at this moment several other countries are also dealing with second waves too.
I don't know how the Government can apply any differential rules to schools going back as it may just widen the gap between those who have coped well/been well supported and those who have not.

I think that there are posters desperate to tell themselves that Covid isn’t that bad, doesn’t affect that many people, doesn’t spread that easily and is still a million miles away from them. That anyone who says otherwise is either exaggerating or making it up.

@HalfPastThree

Are you accusing me of lying?

Not at all! I'm saying that, statistically, speaking, this is extraordinarily unusual.

Don't you have school tomorrow?

My DD has had it, thankfully only mildly and the rest of the house either didn't catch it or were asymptomatic. I don't know where she caught it exactly. She's at High School and is hugely cautious and careful, washes her hands a lot, sanitises everything, wears a mask, follows the rules. None of her close friends had it, or were asymptomatic, we weren't notified by track and trace. So her contact would have been fairly fleeting or by proxy or with someone asymptomatic.

[quote Rowenasemolina]@ElliFantspoo. I am not going to quote your post because it so so completely scientifically wrong that I don’t want to be responsible for it appearing twice. Starting from flu is not a corona virus, you don’t inherit immunity and it isn’t ‘basic’. Why do do many people with no training and education in virology at all consider themselves experts as soon as they read any old dross online?[/quote]
@Rowenasemolina because they have one of these

@HalfPastThree

I know of people who have had Covid twice.

Reinfection is not impossible but it is very uncommon. If you know of people (plural) who have had it twice, as well as having two children in your school who were seriously ill in hospital, this is quite an astonishing run of bad luck.

I know people who catch the flu every year. What do you expect from a flu strain? Immunity after having it once? This virus will be here for ever. H1N1 is the most common flu strain. Millions of people get it every year. 100 years ago it killed millions of people on the planet and was called The Spanish Flu. 100 years later we have not figured out how to stop it. But we have built up immunity because whilst their parents and grandparents were dying 100 years ago, children were catching it and building immunity, and they passed their immunity on to their children, and the species adapted to the presence of the virus in the population.