Rates rising > Kids off school > WTF is the plan??

[HoppingHamster]

I want things to open up. I want vaccines to work. I’ve had my vaccines.

But.

There will soon be thousands of kids off school isolating because they’ve come into contact with someone who tested positive. 10 days off school. I already know of about 50 in our local area through various schools.

If June 21 goes ahead. And we can’t slow the spread among unvaccinated people. And the spread is already increasing statistically among children and younger ages (which it is), where is the plan for keeping kids in school?? For preventing more disruption to their education.

How is it possible to let things open up (and let numbers fly over next few months before more people vaccinated) AND keep kids equally in school? Either you open up and lift all quarantine restrictions. Or you have to do something to plot the spread amongst youngsters.

I’m worried this has been forgotten and it’s going to go wrong again.

[museumum]

Oh and the 30-40 age group that constitutes most primary school parents here have mostly only had one jab and not due another for 5-6 weeks.

[Oblomov21]

I still believe that local implementations are best. If the Bolton area is still having lots of cases and local schools closing then Bolton needs to deal with that. One poster earlier posted earlier that she was nearby but had no cases.

In our county, M25, we have one of the lowest number of cases in the country. Why would we close schools. Or have a national lockdown. And I'm not saying that from a selfish I'm alright Jack principle : if our cases start rising obviously we will have to deal with it but at the moment we don't need to so it doesn't seem sensible to make any national decisions when this is not affecting the local area.

[poppycat10]

Not RTFT but I think it will be moved to coincide with when the majority of English counties break up for the summer holidays.

Maybe with some exceptions like the weddings thing and outdoor events.

I feel pretty sure we'll have to continue SD and mask wearing indoors for a while, though.

[Livelovebehappy]

All that can be done is for them to await their turn in the vaccination process. It won’t be long now. It was the correct decision for children to be last on the vaccination list. Adults have more chance of dying or becoming seriously ill from the virus. The focus was always about stopping deaths and the swamping of NHS with hospital admissions. We just have to be patient.

[poppycat10]

in crowded areas

[Oblomov21]

In some areas vaccinations are behind schedule. But here, we are apparently doing quite well, are ahead of the game. We always have been apparently. Nearly every adult I know has had 2. We've started on the 40's and 30's. Only my youngest friends of say 40, have had the first but not their second, and they are due by the first week of July.

So not every area is behind with vaccinations.

[HoppingHamster]

@Oblomov21 you’re missing the point. No one is calling for school closures or lockdowns.

The point is that children are already being heavily impacted by our choice to allow adults more / full freedoms. How can we prevent that impact from getting worse?

Why is it ok that the price to pay for adults to have “Freedom Day”, yet more and more children end up having to isolate from school?

[SarahMused]

MumDiva99 Flu is more dangerous for children than Covid and there are still children that die each year. It is more than possible that the balance of risks for the individual child are higher for the Covid vaccine than from catching Covid, that is what I think is unethical. We would be vaccinating them for the benefit of older people.
Someone asked why boys are vaccinated for HPV, it causes all sorts of things in boys including genital warts and rarely, cancer.

[Passthesauce]

I'm not entirely sure that not unlocking will make that big a difference - I'm inclined to agree with others unthread that the current measures are sufficient to promote spread.

What would help is if people followed the rules, especially re quarantine and self-isolation (speaking as one who got pinged by the app and is home until Tuesday!). But I think everyone is now doing their own risk assessments and that's not going to change.

A further delay risks increasing lack of compliance in my opinion and I'm not sure will have that big an impact. But will have a huge affect on businesses.

[JellyBabiesSaveLives]

5 children in my son’s year have been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes since March 2020. I don’t know about other years. At the normal rate of diagnosis you would expect there to be 2 or 3 children with Type 1 diabetes in the whole school. That’s a massive, massive increase. It’s unlikely to be a coincidence.

Other incurable disabling auto immune diseases are also available.

[Bryonyshcmyony]

@JellyBabiesSaveLives

5 children in my son’s year have been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes since March 2020. I don’t know about other years. At the normal rate of diagnosis you would expect there to be 2 or 3 children with Type 1 diabetes in the whole school. That’s a massive, massive increase. It’s unlikely to be a coincidence.

Other incurable disabling auto immune diseases are also available.

How do you know this?

[Sometimesfraught82]

@JellyBabiesSaveLives

5 children in my son’s year have been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes since March 2020. I don’t know about other years. At the normal rate of diagnosis you would expect there to be 2 or 3 children with Type 1 diabetes in the whole school. That’s a massive, massive increase. It’s unlikely to be a coincidence.

Other incurable disabling auto immune diseases are also available.

Bollocks

Big and fat and hairy bollocks

You know this is untrue. Obviously you will deny it. But ask yourself - would you be proud of your children grew in to adults and posted irresponsible lies during a pandemic.

[Northumberlandlass]

I’m in NE, within a low Covid number area. Yesterday DS school sent the whole 6th form year home as it is raging through the school.

I’ve had one jab, DP was supposed to get his second this weekend.

I don’t honestly know what the solution is, but I’m pretty sure ‘let it rip’ isn’t it.

DS is waiting on PCR result & is feeling poorly.

I’m pretty sure the surge came from kids meeting up over half term last week (outdoors)

[bojotheclown]

Vaccinate the over 12s!

The vaccine is approved in this age group now, by MHRA, who have deemed it safe and effective.

Of course not all parents will want to vaccinate their children, and that is fine, it should not be mandatory.

But if enough parents do vaccinate their children, we will quickly see a huge drop in case numbers in 12-16s.

Why is the government delaying this?

Even clinically vulnerable 12-16s are being denied the vaccine that has been approved for them at the moment.

[randomkey123]

Our county has 7 patients in hospital with Covid. Yet we are all still following restrictions.

This is getting absolutely beyond a joke.

[bojotheclown]

If the government won't vaccinate this age group with a vaccine that has been approved for them, then the government is implying that Covid is not a concern for this age group, so they need to stop the draconian measures in schools. I suspect that actually this is not the message the government wish to communicate, so they need to take the only logical and ethical solution, which is to offer this age group a vaccine.

[bojotheclown]

It seems the government/JCVI want it both ways:

• not vaccinating this age group with a vaccine approved for them, because they are not at risk of Covid
• while at the same time imposing the harshest of Covid restrictions and measures on this age group if a positive case is found anywhere in their age group, even if the pupils never share a classroom and even for pupils with negative PCR tests (and even fully vaccinated 16-18 year olds)

This is inconsistent.

if the government think this age group is not at risk from Covid then the daily testing scheme for close contacts (currently in place for the government) should be extended to schools.

if the government think this age group is at risk, vaccinate them.

Seems the government want it all ways, none of which benefit the pupils.

[bojotheclown]

here's the funny thing that I've noticed about education in the UK right now as a result of Covid:

-it's no longer about the pupils.

DC's school recently had a couple of parent governor vacancies. Unusually there were many applications, but only one of these many applications even mentioned the pupils (and that is applications from the parents themselves...)

[nordica]

They can't vaccinate 12 year olds now when the country barely has enough of Pfizer available to vaccinate those in their 20s and 30s. There are many people here on vaccination threads saying they are not able to book an appointment despite being eligible because there are none available. One of the newspaper headlines today talks about a Pfizer shortage in the coming weeks, too, and there are lots of 2nd doses to give, too.

[SarahMused]

Agreed, randomkey123 our small southern city has had zero Covid deaths since March 1st and my younger daughter is a Dr in a large, also
Southern but different city, general hospital with no Covid patients at the moment. They are going all out by doing extra shifts to clear the surgical backlog so they will cope with any potential case rises. It is crazy that we are still keeping restrictions going now, let alone extending them. They predicted a bigger rise in the modelling so it can’t have come as a surprise.

[BillyShears]

Don’t worry @HoppingHamster, the government will definitely have a plan for education. They’re really good at this and have a lot of respect for both our society’s teachers and pupils.

[everybodysang]

I'm getting spectacular deja vu from this thread - the exact same stuff as when we'd managed to get case rates down last time about how it was all over and I'm not following restrictions any more, let those who are scared lock themselves away, it's not that serious.

There's such obtuseness about this that I cannot believe that all of these posters are making these posts in good faith. Nobody is suggesting another lockdown. Nobody is suggesting closing schools - that's the opposite of what people are calling for. We're looking for answers on why, given the very good rates of vaccinations and the positives signs that the vaccinations are making a big difference, we should just drop all remaining restrictions on the 21st when there are climbing case rates, kids still in school and spreading it and having to isolate because of that.

A few more weeks and the vaccination efforts will really pay off, kids will be off for the summer very soon which will help. Nobody is saying don't go out and have a great summer. But maybe we'll have to continue with masks for a touch longer. Maybe those full scale indoor events won't happen just yet (and I saw this as someone who has spent the whole of this week dealing with the professional fall out of this so it's no small thing to me). We've got so much freedom back already - what's the real problem with holding on a bit more to allow the vaccination programme to take full effect?

[mrshoho]

The post commenting about the number of children diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in their child's school may not be as farfetched as some are assuming.

At the peak of the pandemic some hospitals in London reported admitting twice the number of children they would normally see who had developed type 1 and research found there to be areas with clusters.

This is not to scaremonger but to point out that there have been rises in some areas and research is ongoing into possible links to covid.

[Orf1abc]

I still believe that local implementations are best. If the Bolton area is still having lots of cases and local schools closing then Bolton needs to deal with that.

I thought the government is putting all its efforts into "levelling up"? Bolton is an area of high deprivation. Telling them to deal with it, without any further financial input or support for education, achieves nothing but worsening levels of inequality and attainment.

I agree that local authorities should be given more power over case management, for instance test and trace, but that means redirecting funding from Dido Harding's epic failure, and that's not going to happen.

[LeoOrTheo]

They can't vaccinate 12 year olds now when the country barely has enough of Pfizer available to vaccinate those in their 20s and 30s.

They should vaccinate 12+ year olds before 20-30 year olds as 20-30 year old don't tend to mix in such large groups and are more able to WFH etc.