"Forcing children to self isolate was needless"

[Greentrees2021]

News today of Oxford study that has found daily testing of children who are contacts to be just as effective at stopping spread as 10 day isolations.

The results show "98.4% of children sent home never went on to develop Covid."

I think many parents have known this anecdotally for a long time.

What I am worried about is that this Oxford University study compared isolating to testing contacts and found no difference. However where was the control group of "do nothing"? It really worries me that we are not trialling a 3rd option which is isolate the child with symptoms and let the other kids get on with life. 98.4% aren't catching it anyway and others that do will show symptoms and can then isolate themselves?! Why are we persisting with all this testing without conclusively proving that there's a value to that?

I don't trust the DfE as far as I can throw them, so I'll be waiting for the results to actually be announced and something to be done about it before I think it's good news.

At the moment it's at the 'DfE announces it's looking into ventilation so that they can say they've addressed the problem of ventilation without actually doing anything' stage.

Its a bit late for this pandemic but its still worth doing. It sounds like those sluggish afternoon lessons could be carbon dioxide building up in some schools and so many days missed for asthma.

I think being a year late to look at ventilation after 128k people have already died is not good news, I mean it needs to be done but they are not getting a thank you card from me for doing a study into whether to shut the stable door after the horse has bolted.

#covidisairborne is not new news.

While they're there they could look at temperature. Over 30 degrees in some classrooms.

@karmakameleon

if you think of isolating as a proportion of life, a 5 year old isolating for 10 days is equivalent to a 50 year old isolating for 100 days.

Honestly, words fail me. This isn’t logical at all. Common sense really isn’t that common.

I meant in terms of how long it feels. Sorry I perhaps wasn't clear on that point. To an adult 10 days often flies by but do you remember how slow time was as a child. The school summer holidays felt like an eternity. So we may think "it's just 10 days" but that feels a really long time to a young child yet we are forcing this on them.

Anecdotal, but DS year 6 class has isolated 3 times since return to school in March. First two times, no one else caught it. Last time (still isolating) 11 children in the class, and they in turn have infected a number of parents and siblings. DS dad has caught it from him and he is double jabbed.

it's just 10 days" but that feels a really long time to a young child yet we are forcing this on them.

Plus many had repeated isolations. More stringent than lockdown no leaving house / flat to exercise.

There’s no doubt it had a negative impact on many.

I'm utterly sick of people who don't work in schools who haven't experienced what we've had to deal with denouncing the need for masks, isolating and now testing for pupils in school. It just wouldn't be accepted elsewhere. We had no cases during the period we wore masks. These last few weeks it has ripped through staff and pupils. Some people have had mild symptoms, others not so lucky.

I meant in terms of how long it feels. Sorry I perhaps wasn't clear on that point. To an adult 10 days often flies by but do you remember how slow time was as a child.

Of course it is, and I have a very bored child isolating upstairs right. It’s only day three and he’s totally fed up. And it regular testing is a way out this, I’m all for it. But I don’t understand the ‘why do we have do anything at all, why can’t we just ignore it?’ attitude. Regular testing gives us more data and that may prove it to be unnecessary, moving straight to let’s let Covid run rampant seems particularly reckless.

@flumposie

I'm utterly sick of people who don't work in schools who haven't experienced what we've had to deal with denouncing the need for masks, isolating and now testing for pupils in school. It just wouldn't be accepted elsewhere. We had no cases during the period we wore masks. These last few weeks it has ripped through staff and pupils. Some people have had mild symptoms, others not so lucky.

I'll never understand why anyone thinks isolating children for 10 days possibly on multiple occasions is an acceptable course of action to take, its completely disproportionate to the risk its trying to prevent

That's helpful. Less concerning to be sending them back to the new system.

We've tested a lot of kids lately. It was enlightening, seeing how long they've bent m been testing at home for, seeing his many kids had no idea how to test. Many kids were sent home due to positive tests. Felt a bit like being a nit nurse.

But then, I have a friend who thinks that testing kids is making everything worse and that we should ignore symptoms in kids. She knows how shit it's been in schools, because of me, but she won't test her kids in case they get a positive and have to isolate.