When will kids be allowed to just have a cold again?

[HugeAckmansWife]

Snotty, phlegm. No temp. But school sent child home and can't go back til PCR comes back. So I'll be off too while my A level and GCSE classes are mid-assessments. At what point are we going to move the goalposts on this and remember that kids get colds that aren't Covid? What's the point of vaccinating if we're still going to have to isolate etc?

I'd settle with until the teachers and any vulnerable DC have been vaccinated.

How young do we go though?

Vaccinating vulnerable infants as young as 3 months old so they can safely be part of society? Or waiting until they are 1yr old so they can go to nursery safely? Or until they are 4 years old so they can start school safely?

I really wish these options were feasible but I can’t imagine it’s going to happen in the too near future

I know there’s talk of vaccinating secondary school children but I can’t imagine a time coming soon when younger children, toddlers and babies will be vaccinated etc. Would parents even want their very young children vaccinated?

I do wonder whether just vaccinating the adult population is going to be enough to keep things at bay.

I don’t know what the answer is for people with vulnerable children, this whole thing is a really shitty situation for them to be in.

How long is this supposed to go on for though? Until all school children are vaccinated? Is that even in the pipeline?

Until the same applies to outside of school.
Not sure why schools should be exempt from the guidelines earlier than for the general population.

When it's deemed 'safe' enough for no one to need testing if they have a new cough, a temperature, etc than it's 'safe' enough for school children too.

Why should it be before it's okay for the general population?

When it's deemed 'safe' enough for no one to need testing if they have a new cough, a temperature, etc than it's 'safe' enough for school children too.

That’s kind of my point.

When will it be safe?

Deaths rates are so incredibly low yet testing for Covid if a person has a cough is still required.

At what point will it no longer be required?
When all adults are vaccinated?

At what point will it no longer be required?
When all adults are vaccinated?

When we’re at herd immunity levels I expect. That’s not all adults, just most.

Death rates were low last summer and autumn, then look what happened over Xmas. Death rates were low in India in January, look what's happening there now. The bodies are piling up. Also Brazil.

There is still the potential for it to get out of control here very quickly and for hospitals to get overwhelmed. It's still a way off before enough adults are vaccinated that it couldn't take off relatively quickly, particularly with more transmissable variants like the Indian ones that are already outcompeting the Kent variant (that one that caused havoc at Xmas). That's assuming there's no vaccine escaping variants, and we're more likely to get those if we give up on the things that stop transmission now.

It's so frustrating that this has been played out here and elsewhere in the world so many times and yet people still don't seem to get it. Now's the time to continue to be as careful as possible. We worked hard to get cases low, why would we want to fuck it up (and risk destroying the benefits of the vaccine program) just so that kids don't have to miss a day of school to do a test?

How long is a piece of string

We all want this to stop but clearly we are not in a place yet where we can say 'fuck it, it doesn't matter if it is covid' are we?

I think everyone has to try to accept where we are. This has been an epic disruption, it has been totally shit, but impatience won't help us at all.

but impatience won't help us at all

Quite the opposite in fact. Impatience will destroy the gains we've made and risk sending us backwards.

Mine has a cold right now. School didn't send him home. He doesn't have Covid symptoms 🤷🏻‍♀️

Lots of snotty kids in my DCs reception class!

I imagine that unless the cough fits the ‘Covid description, then it isn’t seen as an issue. And for any of their symptoms of respiratory illness: blocked nose, snooty nose, sore throat, sneezing etc etc aren’t classed as anything of concern.

My DH and our two sons all have the above symptoms, the total lurgy whereas I’m absolutely fine (but I have a good immune system) which I reckon is from an event we went to last weekend with thousands of unmasked and un-socially distanced children and adults being around each other for 2-3 hours.

I do wonder as well if whether because we’ve all been protected from such viruses by lockdown, isolations, masks, SD etc, that our immune systems have taken a bit of a nosedive and germs that may previously have not affected us are now hitting us harder.