The government is about to tell you that schools are safe

[noblegiraffe]

It's being reported that the government are about to embark on a two week PR campaign claiming that schools are safe. We've already seen hints of it in that Warwick report that was widely misreported as showing schools don't fuel community transmission (majorly pissing off the author who advocates a cautious return to schools).

The ONS random sampling survey graphs released today are amazing. They show a huge reduction in the infection rates due to lockdown, but the most incredible reduction is in the infection rate of secondary school children. They've gone from being the most infected subset of the population by far, to the 2nd least (behind 70+). It's clear that despite arguments that secondary kids were catching covid out of school (sleepovers, hanging around in parks etc), this just isn't true and the lack of mitigation measures in secondary schools allowed covid to run riot.

We can't re-open in the same way as in September. That would be madness. I know that people will say that it's fine, vulnerable people are being vaccinated and kids don't get it badly BUT what is not acknowledged is that kids aren't being vaccinated, a lot of their teachers won't be by March 8th, nor their parents and so we still need to keep infection levels down. In addition, rampant covid is incredibly disruptive to education. Teachers off for weeks, kids off isolating, some kids in, some kids out...Sept to Dec was a mess that we should be trying our best to avoid repeating. Vaccinations don't address that issue at all.

Community levels are low, but then they were low in September. Pubs, restaurants and non-essential shops are shut now, but we want to be able to open them. We cannot rely on community levels remaining low to stop covid getting into schools and proliferating.

We need to be careful, because certainly secondary schools aren't safe to re-open in a Big Bang gung-ho way that some are advocating, particularly with a more transmissible variant in circulation. Remember to the week before Christmas when school attendance plummeted in Kent and London? In one LA, secondary attendance was at 17%. And yet the DfE decided to threaten schools that wanted to close early to stop the spread with legal action. The schools were right, and the DfE was wrong. Gavin Williamson can't be trusted to have sensible conversations about safety, he's more interested in bully-boy tactics and setting himself up in opposition to teachers and schools.

What can be done? I think there is room to open schools in some way on March 8th. My personal preference (and I'm no spokesperson for teachers here, other opinions will vary) would be primaries back and exam years back for three weeks, then Easter can be used to examine the impact of the full primary re-opening . I'm not sure that school is such a major factor in transmission at primary as it is at secondary for various reasons, however I'm sure that my primary colleagues have their own ideas about what needs to be done there. If full primary re-opening looks untenable, then I would prefer rotas to only certain year groups in. Some school for all pupils would be better than all school for some pupils as we had last year.

Secondary is a different kettle of fish and should be treated separately. Secondaries were a massive risk for transmission. The word 'bubble' should never be used in reference to secondary schools again, as 'bubble' means a group of people who all have to isolate if one of them catches covid, which went in the bin in secondary around the end of September. There are some easy wins in secondary -
Masks in classrooms would be easy and cheap to implement. Exemptions would apply and clear ones could be provided where necessary for lip reading.
A national programme to improve ventilation.
Testing and isolation of any contacts where positive cases are found to flush out asymptomatic pupils (PCR not LFT).
Moving quickly to remote learning where there are outbreaks instead of trying to keep year groups in and schools open as covid works its way through - the attendance just before Christmas in some schools meant kids would have been better served educationally if they were all at home.

Home LFT testing of kids - I'm not convinced tbh, maybe in addition to above measures, but certainly not instead of them.

So if the government messaging is as it has been: schools are safe and no additional measures to contain the spread in secondary are needed then they are lying and our kids deserve a more consistent and sustainable education than they got from September.

Fingers crossed they are more sensible than we have previously seen.

@itsgettingwierd 50% of hospital admissions are working age people. All those are Entitled to covid secure workplaces. And it includes teachers.

That's a disingenuous way of presenting the statistics.

So let's look at them (see the spreadsheets here: www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/)

Number of hospitalisations in England (don't have the time to add the other nations) by age, March 2020-3 Feb 2021:
Total hospitalisations: 91,882
Ages 0-5: 1,560
Ages 6-17: 1,484
Ages 18-54: 46,235
Ages 55-64: 32,934
Ages 65-74: 40,285
Ages 75-84: 52,865
Ages 85+: 46,061
Unknown age: 879

To break it down:

The working age population (let's call it 18-74 for stats' sake, but there are very few 70+ year olds working) hospitalised to 3 Feb 2021 in England number 119,454 (of which 40,285, or nearly 30%, are in the 65-74 age bracket. I want to see some stats on how many teachers are actually aged in their 60s.....my guess? Not many)

The population aged above 75 that has been hospitalised is 99,805

However, this is a bad comparison, since if we look at ages 18-64 rather than up to 75, the hospitalisations are 79,169, i.e. 35.61%.

I am not disagreeing that teachers should get vaccinated (but not forced to). But then again so should other employment types, e.g. bus drivers, retail workers, NHS receptionists and other admin staff who face 'customers', factory workers in what are often poorly ventilated factories.....many of these employment types will face 100s of different people each day.

@Delatron

From a few days ago. It is all over the news if you read the news..

figures ranging from 50% - 92% have been all over the news for months...

I thought the same @hamstersarse

No children's wellbeing is too important for it to be sacrificed any longer. I'm sorry there are going to be more covid deaths but I don't think taking away children's education is the answer. The consequence of this is going to be more child mental health problems, more drug use and delinquency, more teenage pregnancies, the consequences are going to be really longterm and in my view outweigh the lives saved now in the short term.

@herecomesthsun

Yes and the percentages have been increasing the more information we get. There’s new news on this most days. It’s exciting the vaccinations are more effective than we thought.

Info from Jan 15th is very out of date now.

Er can we also point out that a covid hospitalisation can mean 'tested positive while already in for something else'. So a 35 year old diabetic already in hospital for an infection tests positive for corona on admission and becomes a covid admission and case. If she then dies in hospital she is a covid death. The statistics are all over the place and I am astounded they are driving policy without being cleaned up.

@starpatch

No children's wellbeing is too important for it to be sacrificed any longer. I'm sorry there are going to be more covid deaths but I don't think taking away children's education is the answer. The consequence of this is going to be more child mental health problems, more drug use and delinquency, more teenage pregnancies, the consequences are going to be really longterm and in my view outweigh the lives saved now in the short term.

Schools aren’t just full of children though and the staff inside them are entitled to the same safety mitigations as other workers.

If this is impossible (hint-it’s not, it just isn’t free), then they should all be offered the vaccine before returning. If school is vital and needs to reopen now, then so is protecting the staff inside them.

@Delatron
The most up to date studies I have read claim 85% efficacy for the Pfizer vaccine when given 3 weeks apart, which isn’t the case in the uk. Which study are you referring to?

I've yet to see any evidence that noble is extravagantly anti-children.
Perhaps selfish is fair, in that we all have to look out for ourselves.
Shite, not so much.

We have a lot of cases still in Greater Manchester, and I'm worried tbh.
I have a Y12 who fortunately is receiving the same education at home, provision has been excellent.
I know this hasn't been the same for everyone, perhaps I'd feel differently had it been poor.

I can't believe how teachers and childcare workers have been treated in their workplaces.

[quote Suzeyshoes]@Delatron
But we’ll be in a very different place in a few weeks as we’re racing through the vaccinations.

This simply isn’t true.
We are racing through FIRST injections. Nobody is safe until they’ve had the booster, and there are doubts over availability of these. Added to this, the efficacy rate was based on a booster jab that was given within 3-4 weeks which won’t happen. Even if the first jab does its job, it doesn’t kick in until 12 days post infection.

And of course there’s the fact it’s a virus. The defining characteristic of a virus is that it multiplies and mutates, adapting to its environment as it goes. It’s extremely naive to think everything will be over in a matter of weeks.[/quote]
I've not seen any doubts about the supply of second doses, and one dose affords a high level of protection?

No vaccine gives you a 100% guarantee after all.

The Astra-Zeneca figure is 76%.
It really has been quoted everywhere in the last few days

Maybe all the media reporting is wrong then. Obviously I’m no expert like your DH. But your article from the BBC was 15th Jan and there had been many developments since then.

Well exactly @HauntedPencil

@hamstersarse

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

Yeah I often interpret teachers asking for a safer environment for our children and our families as anti children shite. 🙄

[quote NearlyAlwaysInsane]**@itsgettingwierd 50% of hospital admissions are working age people. All those are Entitled to covid secure workplaces. And it includes teachers.

That's a disingenuous way of presenting the statistics.

So let's look at them (see the spreadsheets here: www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/)

Number of hospitalisations in England (don't have the time to add the other nations) by age, March 2020-3 Feb 2021:
Total hospitalisations: 91,882
Ages 0-5: 1,560
Ages 6-17: 1,484
Ages 18-54: 46,235
Ages 55-64: 32,934
Ages 65-74: 40,285
Ages 75-84: 52,865
Ages 85+: 46,061
Unknown age: 879

To break it down:

The working age population (let's call it 18-74 for stats' sake, but there are very few 70+ year olds working) hospitalised to 3 Feb 2021 in England number 119,454 (of which 40,285, or nearly 30%, are in the 65-74 age bracket. I want to see some stats on how many teachers are actually aged in their 60s.....my guess? Not many)

The population aged above 75 that has been hospitalised is 99,805

However, this is a bad comparison, since if we look at ages 18-64 rather than up to 75, the hospitalisations are 79,169, i.e. 35.61%.

I am not disagreeing that teachers should get vaccinated (but not forced to). But then again so should other employment types, e.g. bus drivers, retail workers, NHS receptionists and other admin staff who face 'customers', factory workers in what are often poorly ventilated factories.....many of these employment types will face 100s of different people each day.[/quote]
this was quoted as being from Prof Christina Pagel a month ago - there has been a recognition that there appear to be quite a number of younger people in ICU

Yeah.... I'm the extravagant one!

I wish people wouldn't scare monger over vaccines to make their points.

But no we've not done nearly enough yet for it to be a considerable factor yet in schools retuning - hence why we are still in a pretty hard lockdown.

But nearly. I didn't say it was solely the risk to teachers. I said 50% of those in hospital are working age.

Risk isn't just to teachers. It was to show that those saying teachers risk was extremely low was to point out anyone of working age statistically had a 50:50 chance of hospitalisation.

When you add that to the fact secondary ages pupils are 7 times more likely to be an index case in a household and their parents will almost certainly be working age - the risk exists.

And it isn't low. It's about equal.

I think what is missing from those stats is that many of the younger people in ICU are obese. We know that is a huge risk factor. It is missing from all the reports so we hear all the ‘ICUs are full of young healthy people’ stories.

There was a very eye opening report in the papers recently. A journalist visited ICU in a movie London hospital and every single ventilated patient was obese.

And no I don’t have any links or peer review papers but the program was an eye opener.

@itsgettingwierd

But nearly. I didn't say it was solely the risk to teachers. I said 50% of those in hospital are working age.

Risk isn't just to teachers. It was to show that those saying teachers risk was extremely low was to point out anyone of working age statistically had a 50:50 chance of hospitalisation.

When you add that to the fact secondary ages pupils are 7 times more likely to be an index case in a household and their parents will almost certainly be working age - the risk exists.

And it isn't low. It's about equal.

Maybe I'm misreading, but a 50/50 chance if hospitalisation?

Of course schools aren’t risk free, but it’s a risk worth taking for the benefit of kids. Much like it’s a risk worth taking for me to vaccinate hundreds of patients, for their benefit. And shop workers going to work so we can buy food. And home carers visiting service users so they can be washed and dressed.

Risks and benefits, pros and cons - nothing is ever black and white.

Attempting to live risk free lives is pointless.

[quote Indoctro]@Mummyoflittledragon

Nope definitely not luck, in my whole area hardly any schools had cases and if they did it was one or two. We are NE Scotland and it really hasn't been a issue img the schools here and our school should of been back full time , it's a joke the kids here have been off. [/quote]
Ok that’s great. I am with you there and agree on that basis closing them seems either unnecessary or not necessary anymore.

However a blanket statement that schools are safe and everyone needs to be back ASAP tends to upset teachers. This is teachers who’ve lost colleagues, family members and in some cases students. It makes out safeguarding in schools in more densely populated areas is careless and staff incompetent when in reality there is nothing much more schools can do to mitigate risk.

In sum, schools in your sparsely populated region of Scotland are relatively safe, not the whole of the U.K.

@hamstersarse

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

That did make me laugh.

You lose the argument when you sink to personal insults.

@Delatron

I think what is missing from those stats is that many of the younger people in ICU are obese. We know that is a huge risk factor. It is missing from all the reports so we hear all the ‘ICUs are full of young healthy people’ stories.

There was a very eye opening report in the papers recently. A journalist visited ICU in a movie London hospital and every single ventilated patient was obese.

And no I don’t have any links or peer review papers but the program was an eye opener.

So what? we still don't want them to get ill or die do we?