Schools - we just have to bite the bullet...

[Warhertisuff]

It's completely futile to think we can stop Covid spreading through schools in the longer term. Who are we trying to kid? We may be angry that we are in this situation, but we are and we have to live with it.

It seems to be that it will be far better all round if Covid is just treated as we would the flu in schools. From September all teachers and CEV pupils should have been vaccinated, so we may as well just let it happen, with children off school when they are too unwell to attend. At least that way, disruption will be minimised and concentrated into a few weeks at the start of term.

@Lemonmelonsun

Op, then dose of covid you get, determines how ill you get so having ventilation, is key to keeping infection low

There isn't a black and white situation, when covid gets bad, we should at least in secondary and beyond effortlessly switch to on line, masks, bubbles.

IT shouldn't be something that builds and builds and builds whilst stress builds then it explodes and we are locked down for months.

Yes, I've never said I'm against ventilation.

Op the children who fared the best and hardly missed school were the ones whose school could simply go on line.

Viral load is key, it's that we need to reduce and whilst an open window and proper ventilation may not stop evry child getting it, it will certainly reduce the load they get.

@TheKeatingFive

Yet with covid you think it’s ok to have no mitigations, and everything will be fine

The vaccines we have are the ‘mitigations’.

Not perfect, but capable of minimising impact significantly.

The vaccinations that kids can’t currently have of course I hope you’re right that vaccinating most of the adult population will be enough, but that’s not the way that we deal with any other viruses. (Correct me if I’m wrong though!) We don’t not vaccinate kids against TB because enough adults have been vaccinated against it. We don’t not vaccinate against measles because most adults are probably immune.

OP you're sounding scarier with every post.

We don’t not vaccinate kids against TB because enough adults have been vaccinated against it. We don’t not vaccinate against measles because most adults are probably immune.

True. We vaccinate because those diseases have widespread and serious effects on children.

Has OP ever come back to explain this -
It seems to be that it will be far better all round if Covid is just treated as we would the flu in schools

• which as many posters have pointed out ignores the fact that children are vaccinated against flu?

@tiltedtomatoes

You're assuming that nothing more will be learned about covid over the next few months, that no new treatments will be identified, that nothing at all will change, and so there's nothing to be gained by exposure of the population being gradual rather than fast. I'm not sure that's a good assumption.

There's a lot to be gained from gaining immunity quickly... Firstly, a protracted the current "whack-a-mole" approach to Covid in schools would mean Education would be disrupted for a long time ahead, possibly years. That's incredibly damaging.

Secondly, the more immunity we gain over the summer and early autumn, the better placed we'll be to avoid further restrictions in the winter and be more resilient when (not if) vaccine evading Covid variants emerge.

I have no power and nothing I can do to change what the government will do, but I think my kids deserve better and I don't understand why so many parents have no fight in them and are happy to accept their children getting ill when it doesn't have to be this way.

• invest in ventilation
• wear masks
• better TTI
• vaccinations for children 12+

Have you had covid @noblegiraffe?

Correct, Keating Yet covid, which has left my ds with ongoing problems for over a year now, is apparently completely harmless so no vaccine or mitigations needed. Guess he was just unlucky! (Him and around 9000 others.) Yes, thankfully relatively rare to have that level of problems after, but also shows how covid is completely unpredictable. Ds was slim, fit, sporty, only 10 years old - he should have been the lowest of low risk. Having had this first hand experience, the idea of “letting it rip” through kids is hard to hear.

@lannistunut

I have no power and nothing I can do to change what the government will do, but I think my kids deserve better and I don't understand why so many parents have no fight in them and are happy to accept their children getting ill when it doesn't have to be this way.

• invest in ventilation
• wear masks
• better TTI
• vaccinations for children 12+

Agree

Secondly, the more immunity we gain over the summer and early autumn, the better placed we'll be to avoid further restrictions in the winter and be more resilient when (not if) vaccine evading Covid variants emerge.

It is not sensible to cause additional illness now to avoid having to deal with illness in the future.

Defeatism/resignation is an understandable emotional coping strategy, but not a sensible plan.

Yet covid, which has left my ds with ongoing problems for over a year now, is apparently completely harmless so no vaccine or mitigations needed.

No one said that.

I have no doubt long covid is effecting a small amount of children. I’m sorry it’s happened to your family,

The data I have seen thus far is not reliable enough to come to any conclusions as to how widespread or prevalent long covid in children is. The JCVI has access to the most up to date information and obviously that had fed into their recommendations.

@Halfwaytoholiday

Has OP ever come back to explain this - It seems to be that it will be far better all round if Covid is just treated as we would the flu in schools

• which as many posters have pointed out ignores the fact that children are vaccinated against flu?

No, but there's plenty of material online from respective medical sources that state that Covid and flu risks are very similar for children:

www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/09/kids-covid-19-flu-equally-prone-severe-illness

As for vaccinations, the flu vaccine isn't especially effective compared to Covid vaccines.... just 10% effective in 2004-05!

www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/past-seasons-estimates.html

@lannistunut

Secondly, the more immunity we gain over the summer and early autumn, the better placed we'll be to avoid further restrictions in the winter and be more resilient when (not if) vaccine evading Covid variants emerge.

It is not sensible to cause additional illness now to avoid having to deal with illness in the future.

Defeatism/resignation is an understandable emotional coping strategy, but not a sensible plan.

It is sensible in my opinion when the cost of mitigations, such as isolating contacts for 10 days, in an attempt to slow the spread is causing significant disruption to education and business. I'm not arguing here about wearing a mask in Sainsbury's.

Covid is not flu though.

The people who say this are cowards who are hiding inside their bubble heads and telling themselves stories.

It is sensible in my opinion when the cost of mitigations, such as isolating contacts for 10 days, in an attempt to slow the spread is causing significant disruption to education and business. I'm not arguing here about wearing a mask in Sainsbury's.

If you are interested in what is 'sensible' then there is no sense in infecting two million in a short space of time, causing many to develop long term symptoms, which will cost us a fortune in health costs and lost tax revenue due to loss of earnings.

Only an imbecile (I am looking at Johnson here) would risk harming a nation's greatest asset in the numbers he plans to this summer.

@Warhertisuff

It's completely futile to think we can stop Covid spreading through schools in the longer term. Who are we trying to kid? We may be angry that we are in this situation, but we are and we have to live with it.

It seems to be that it will be far better all round if Covid is just treated as we would the flu in schools. From September all teachers and CEV pupils should have been vaccinated, so we may as well just let it happen, with children off school when they are too unwell to attend. At least that way, disruption will be minimised and concentrated into a few weeks at the start of term.

We don't have enough paediatric hospital beds for this policy. Let alone paediatric ICU.

@TheKeatingFive

Yet covid, which has left my ds with ongoing problems for over a year now, is apparently completely harmless so no vaccine or mitigations needed.

No one said that.

I have no doubt long covid is effecting a small amount of children. I’m sorry it’s happened to your family,

The data I have seen thus far is not reliable enough to come to any conclusions as to how widespread or prevalent long covid in children is. The JCVI has access to the most up to date information and obviously that had fed into their recommendations.

I think JCVI should absolutely justify why long-Covid cases in children were insufficient cause to recommend vaccines to over 12s. I find it hard to believe they would have overlooked it. If they did overlook it, it would be scandalous.

@lannistunut

Covid is not flu though.

The people who say this are cowards who are hiding inside their bubble heads and telling themselves stories.

No, of course Covid isn't flu, it's Covid, and will have its own characteristics.

When people say it's like flu, they mean it's about as serious as flu. For children, this seems to be justified:

www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/09/kids-covid-19-flu-equally-prone-severe-illness

We don't have enough paediatric hospital beds for this policy. Let alone paediatric ICU.

Yes this is a real concern. If 1 in every 200 children is hospitalised (current rate), covid will soon start killing children - by using up all the hospital resources/spaces.

If 1 in every 200 children is hospitalised (current rate)

Is there a source for this, because it seems wildly unlikely.

I think JCVI should absolutely justify why long-Covid cases in children were insufficient cause to recommend vaccines to over 12s. I find it hard to believe they would have overlooked it. If they did overlook it, it would be scandalous.

Long covid is a real risk to young people (due to working years ahead of them) but vaccines do not appear to help much (data not clear yet) - what young people need is low cases, as vaccines do not stop spread much either. The increased transmissibility of Delta has negated the transmission suppression of the vaccines.

The latest study I saw suggested that around 30% of children have had covid already.

That is in a year where schools have been closed to most students for a large part of the year and with various strong mitigations such as self-isolation for close contacts, the bubble system, cancelling extra-curricular activities etc and some increased ventilation and mask wearing. And now there is the delta variant which is more transmissible anyway.

Mitigation measures would probably have to cut the transmission rate tenfold to prevent most children getting covid in the long-term and we already know that that is infeasible unless you have a hard lockdown with schools closed.

If you have a five year old starting school, assuming that they won't be vaccinated until they are 12, does anyone really think ventilation, masks and social distancing in schools would prevent them getting covid before they are vaccinated (or that years of that sort of schooling would be worth it if it did). A child's whole school experience could be sitting 2m apart from their classmates with a mask on in a marquee with no mixing between year groups and no extracurricular activities with periodic stints of remote learning, if we implemented the policies which some people seem to want. I think we have lost sight of how damaging even "just" social distancing could be on a long-term basis.

The best that those measures are likely to do is create a timing difference in when a child catches covid, which is not particularly helpful anyway as it is generally better to get it younger.

Of course there may be a change in approach to vaccination at some point or covid rates might fall so much that being infected in school becomes unlikely. In those scenarios there might be a benefit for some children in slowing down transmission as fewer children would then get covid in the meantime. But you could spend years waiting for this sort of change, which might never come, and for many children that will be years of their education with these damaging policies.

These arguments end up being about whether long covid is an issue for children and protecting CEV children but I think that misses the point. Mitigation measures are not going to prevent most children being exposed to covid at some point unless they are much more effective than any measure we have tried so far or we just educate children remotely on a long-term basis.

And I don't think the comparison with flu in the context of children is that far off. Certainly, when I looked up the stats for babies a while ago flu was significantly more dangerous and we don't vaccinate babies against flu or do anything special to stop them catching it.

I find it hard to believe they would have overlooked it. If they did overlook it, it would be scandalous.

Wouldn’t it just. This might be an interesting read for you.
inews.co.uk/news/children-covid-vaccine-claim-better-getting-naturally-jab-dangerous-1080768

Highlights:

Scientists have pushed back on the claim that allowing teenagers to catch Covid-19 naturally could be better for them than getting vaccinated, saying such a suggestion is “very dangerous”.

Professor Robert Dingwall, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and a sociologist, tweeted on Wednesday that since the virus was so mild in teenagers, vaccines had to be “exceptionally safe” not to do more harm than good.

“Given the low risk of Covid for most teenagers, it is not immoral to think that they may be better protected by natural immunity generated through infection than by asking them to take the possible risk of a vaccine,” he wrote.

Experts told i there is a huge health risk to implementing herd immunity for young people and they believe the risk associated with not vaccinating them is far greater.

A spokesperson for Public Health England said Prof Dingwall was speaking in a personal capacity and not on behalf of the JCVI.

Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist from the University of Warwick [says] “Not every adult can get a vaccine for health reasons and many adults continue to shield even though this officially ended in April. Ensuring the population has a high-enough level of protection is key.”

“I think the idea of just letting children get infected anyway is very dangerous, because it means that the virus will continue to spread,” he said. “As the virus spreads and grows, it can change and this is when variants crop up.”

Professor Young is confused why the UK is delaying the campaign to inoculate children, highlighting much of the world has already begun doing so, and the MHRA approved jabs for young people earlier this year.

More on Dingwall:
Byline Times can now reveal that, back in April, Prof Dingwall was the main coordinator of an open letter demanding that the Government lift all COVID-19 protections, signed by 10 signatories of the GBD.
GBD - Great Barrington Declaration

The GBD’s proposed strategy of letting the virus run to achieve herd immunity by natural infection has been widely criticised by more than 7,000 public health scientists. The declaration was sponsored by a right-wing libertarian think tank plugged into the Koch-backed climate science denial network, with a history of spreading misinformation on behalf of private health and tobacco lobbies. Most of the GBD’s supposed medical scientific signatories remain unverified and unvetted.