Will cases rise when schools go back ?

[DinosaurDiana]

The obvious answer is yes, but I’m wondering if we will end up in lockdown again ?

Any measures introduced in schools are not likely to be followed when children aren’t being supervised

So fuck it let’s not bother? They spend most of their time at school supervised in classrooms with no mitigation measures and yet that’s the riskiest place for transmission, so measures could easily be implemented there that would reduce the risk.

However, I do think waiting until cases are really low risks the mental health of a lot of children. So I think opening schools with rotas to reduce risk a lot and break the transmission chains would be a compromise.

I'm a bit perplexed about the government - they've seemingly gone from wanting herd immunity to being so cautious. This makes me a bit worried about what data they might have about the impact of the new variant(s).

But then again, if they had data that showed - for example - children were more affected, you'd hope they wouldn't have a criteria for 'critical worker' which basically means anyone.

It's probably just they're incompetent.

The risk of serious illness for children is very low, there are many other illnesses that children can catch. Yes we have a pandemic but for this group the illness does not pose the same risks as for the older and vunerable. Enough damage to the physical and mental health of those who have been locked down to protect those groups already - they are now vaccinated

@twelly

The risk of serious illness for children is very low, there are many other illnesses that children can catch. Yes we have a pandemic but for this group the illness does not pose the same risks as for the older and vunerable. Enough damage to the physical and mental health of those who have been locked down to protect those groups already - they are now vaccinated

Many of the vulnerable groups aren’t vaccinated yet, including the age groups most likely to end up in ICU.

The vulnerable e are being vaccinated or are sheilding we need the country to move on

Yes of course they will rise. Worse though will be again allowing mutations that are more effective at infecting children and young people and result in higher contagion and viral loads in adults creating worse illness in younger and not previously thought vulnerable groups.

I really hope science will guide us not anti lockdown freedom fighters.

You have no idea that this virus will mutate to affect children more @TheHoneyBadger you can speculate but don’t present it as fact.

@twelly

The risk of serious illness for children is very low, there are many other illnesses that children can catch. Yes we have a pandemic but for this group the illness does not pose the same risks as for the older and vunerable. Enough damage to the physical and mental health of those who have been locked down to protect those groups already - they are now vaccinated

Children aren’t the only people in schools though ....

Of course cases will rise but it doesn’t have to be open vs ‘closed’ (which primaries especially are not). If the government would just put in some mitigation measures we might be able to actually keep schools running.

THIS is what unions were asking for with the section 44 letter; two weeks to set up safety measures on a par with supermarkets etc. Schools need money for cleaning and supply costs, for adaptions to be made to buildings to allow for ventilation, masks to be worn and yes maybe even rotas to allow for some form of distancing.

Cases fell in November when schools were fully open, because everything else was shut. If nothing else opens, I doubt cases will rise because schools reopen. As many people on here are keen to point out, they've never been shut anyway, and up to 50% of pupils are still in at the moment.

@IloveJKRowling

However, I do think waiting until cases are really low risks the mental health of a lot of children. So I think opening schools with rotas to reduce risk a lot and break the transmission chains would be a compromise.

I'm a bit perplexed about the government - they've seemingly gone from wanting herd immunity to being so cautious. This makes me a bit worried about what data they might have about the impact of the new variant(s).

But then again, if they had data that showed - for example - children were more affected, you'd hope they wouldn't have a criteria for 'critical worker' which basically means anyone.

It's probably just they're incompetent.

I don’t think it’s the risk to the children itself or mutations.

www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/15/uk-study-finds-kent-variant-may-be-70-more-deadly

If we ignore the more deadly for a minute, a change to the cohort of patients needing hospitalisation to include more women and younger patients is significant.
Parts of Italy are closing schools because of big rises in cases involving the Kent variant largely thought to be being driven by children. There’s also some data from Germany showing that while the overall number of cases is falling due to their lockdown measures, the number of cases of the Kent variant is still rising because the measures aren’t enough to prevent transmission.

I think there’s enough preliminary data to explain Boris’s unusual caution. We do need to think carefully about how and when schools return if we don’t want to end up with a big issue.

Its very hard... I know how hard it has been for kids and parents of school aged kids .. however we are doing so well with the vaccine roll out ... I would like to see them wait until after Easter to send them back... thats only 15 more school days, yet It will be 35 more days of the r rate being under 0... at the current rate 17.5 million more vaccines could be given in that time... personally I think it would be worth sacrificing 15 more school days for that.

Cases fell in November when schools were fully open, because everything else was shut. If nothing else opens, I doubt cases will rise because schools reopen.

That makes no mathematical sense.

Cases fell in November despite schools being fully open, because cases were very high and the impact of closing things for the majority of the population outweighed the impact on infection rates of schools being open.

If everything is closed for everyone and has been for a couple of months and case numbers are very low, and we reopen schools, then of course cases will rise. Cases will rise wherever lots of people mingle freely in large groups, which is why it's currently not allowed.

Would we send children back before Easter if we knew that it would incur a fifty percent probability we would have to have another winter of lockdowns due to vaccine escape?

I think these are probably the kind of discussions that are going on. It won't be a certainty that reopening relatively quickly will actually extend, rather than decrease, restrictions, but it will be a very risky gamble that it might.

@noblegiraffe

Cases fell in November when schools were fully open, because everything else was shut. If nothing else opens, I doubt cases will rise because schools reopen.

That makes no mathematical sense.

Cases fell in November despite schools being fully open, because cases were very high and the impact of closing things for the majority of the population outweighed the impact on infection rates of schools being open.

If everything is closed for everyone and has been for a couple of months and case numbers are very low, and we reopen schools, then of course cases will rise. Cases will rise wherever lots of people mingle freely in large groups, which is why it's currently not allowed.

It's not necessarily right, but it isn't mathematically nonsense. If R was 0.6 with schools closed and then 0.9 with schools open, then cases would still fall, just not as rapidly.

However, I think it's probably more likely that R is already pretty close to 1 and there's a pretty good chance opening schools will push it above 1.

So, I think you're right that it's wrong, but wrong that it couldn't be right!

Nellodee
You win MN for today! It's difficult to argue with So, I think you're right that it's wrong, but wrong that it couldn't be right!

considers plagiarising this phrase on other threads

According to Indie Sage, over 50% of people in ICU are of the age groups that won't be vaccinated by the time kids go back (if they go back March 8th) and they are also the age groups more likely to have contact with school aged kids.

Add in a variant that might make younger adults (i.e. parents) sicker and the risk of vaccine escape and it seems madness not to have rotas or other mitigations.

But I'd really rather that kids went back sooner to safer schools. Or at a minimum be offered outdoor PE / forest school etc. Because total isolation IS a big mental health risk to kids. But since politicians won't consider any half way house at all they clearly only use mental health concerns as a way to get what they want and don't actually care about kids at all (also indicated by chronic underfunding of schools, and largest class sizes in Europe) .

I see your point, nellodee.

I think SAGE puts the impact of reopening schools at 0.4-0.5

R is currently 0.7-0.9 according to gov.uk.

It would certainly increase cases in the younger age groups, but I concede that they could still go down elsewhere. My gut feeling was it wouldn't be enough based on current infection rates in various age groups and in impact on school closures on the infection rate in secondary pupils but that was a gut feeling.

However, R rate currently suggests that the increase would outweigh the decrease though and cases would increase.

Why they don't just start with rotas to enable social distancing and lower transmission I don't know. That's basic common sense. Lots of countries have done it and have not seen the massive rises we had.

This is what we've done in my US state. Rates of transmission in school have been much lower than in the community. We haven't had to close schools at any point so far this academic year.

Our Covid rate is down to around 50/100k despite no lockdown and schools being open and everyone basically being indoors almost all the time (it's very cold here).

We have half the students in school at any time. Everyone wears masks and stays 3' apart. At lunchtime they sit 6' apart while they eat. We don't keep windows open.

I still don't understand why the UK only seems to see 'totally open' and 'totally closed' as the only options for schools, but given that we are nearly a year into this it doesn't look like anything will change.

Would we send children back before Easter if we knew that it would incur a fifty percent probability we would have to have another winter of lockdowns due to vaccine escape?

I hope they're having these discussions. Why aren't they having a discussion about opening to half the school population at a time?

Given a choice between a rota where DD is in socially distanced school from Mar 8th 1 or 2 days a week for 2 or 3 months, versus full-time from March 8 and lockdown again in Sept, who on earth would chose the latter? We KNOW those countries with proper rotas haven't had the same problems as us. What's it going to take for them to consider this as an option? (as @ZZTopGuitarSolo illustrates - I have friends abroad with a similar setup and similar result in terms of rates)

DD is suffering at home and I'd rather she went back sooner to a safer school, even if it only meant 1 or 2 days a week. It would also have the benefit of protecting teachers, so they can, you know, stay healthy and actually teach (not to mention parents, so they can stay healthy and parent!)

Socially distanced school must have a much lower risk of vaccine escape too (particularly if ventilated and masks worn - again we could look at examples of where this has worked).

@Honeybobbin

No way, schools are safe. There's a report out this morning that schools don't affect transmission.

I don't believe that for one second. Proof?? Schools are proven infection routes, of course they are.

Sorry @Honeybobbin - didn't see the sarcasm there!

I agree JK. I’m not arguing for schools to remain shut. But we need to think carefully about how they reopen.

I do think some in person teaching and socialisation for all pupils is probably better than having some year groups in all the time and mitigation strategies, such as masks will help keep spread down further.

A halfway decent PH campaign about why mixing in schools doesn’t mean you can mix further, and in fact means you should probably mix less outside would help too.

Thing is, kids go back and adults get out and about more too. See Giles Coren's wife in the paper banging on about getting her life back. There are other thingsto say aboit thst article, but mostly.. no, that's not the point. Just do the school run. Stay home. If you want schools back, take another few weeks before you start doing other stuff. See what happens.

@noblegiraffe

Cases fell in November when schools were fully open, because everything else was shut. If nothing else opens, I doubt cases will rise because schools reopen.

That makes no mathematical sense.

Cases fell in November despite schools being fully open, because cases were very high and the impact of closing things for the majority of the population outweighed the impact on infection rates of schools being open.

If everything is closed for everyone and has been for a couple of months and case numbers are very low, and we reopen schools, then of course cases will rise. Cases will rise wherever lots of people mingle freely in large groups, which is why it's currently not allowed.

I’m really hoping you’re not a maths teacher.