1000+ in ventilator beds already & school return with no household isolation

[RumblyMumbly]

Number of people in ventilator beds 1,014 on 31/08/21

It has been a steady / manageable rise since restrictions lifted in mid May when there were 125 patients in ventilator beds & while obviously awful for the people affected and their families this means the NHS has coped while there has been a lot of Covid cases

Does anyone else feel we may be at the tipping point? Schools in England mostly return this week for Autumn term.

If we compare with last years school return there were only 71 ventilator beds occupied on 31/08/20. Yes, we now have 64% of the total population double vaccinated which puts us in a far better situation than last year when the population had no protection. However, we had household isolations this time last year for positive cases, this year other household members of a positive case will be attending school and workplaces alongside everyone else and generally people will begin meeting indoors much more over the next few months.

Purpose of my post - nervousness about what will happen next...I don't want schools to close at all, children have already had 2 years of disrupted education. But to give my own personal experience - obviously other peoples differ - secondary remote learning can work if absolutely necessary (full schedule of lessons / homework) but primary remote learning (1hr lesson per day) did not work AT ALL & the vast majority of primary aged children are not ready to become independent learners while parents are in an impossible situation as they can't work and moonlight as a teacher.

I hope SAGE / the Government are watching the figures very closely and if we need a circuit breaker in October to keep the NHS manageable they act fast.

@IcedPurple

*Again, I think you have struggled to read the words posted.

I ask genuinely - what is the purpose of your abrasive posting style? What do you seek to achieve?*

If calling you out on your failure to provide evidence and constant moving of goalposts is 'abrasive', that's fine.

You're clearly unable to back up your own hastily made claims so maybe best to leave it at that and spare you any further 'abrasiveness'.

I just find the snipey tone a bore. Wtf is 'calling out' anyway? 'Calling me out' on considering the German furlough scheme to have been better prepared, and European sick pay to be better than UK in most cases, and Spanish law protecting workers to be stronger? These are all fairly general knowledge.

I would be grateful to escape any further abrasiveness, yes.

Regarding ventilation, do you have the foggiest idea what this would entail? Even converting a cupboard in a school involves architects, costings, plans, putting out to tender…. Anything larger takes forever .

Since I am sure you would want the whole system to be transparent, and no rushed awarding of contracts or use of questionable materials (Grenfell) surely you can appreciate that installing ventilation systems in all schools would take years .

Plus where are all these expert ventilation system fitters? Where would enough materials be sourced from?

It’s easier to keep the windows open. (Which they did in Italy all last winter; anyone complaining just had to wear more clothes!)

'Ventilation' covers different things, yes some more structural, but other countries are investing in this and we should be too.

We've had over a year of knowing we needed to improve ventilation - even an additional budget to replace windows that do not open would be a start!

Tableflowerss I can't understand your logic - 'sadly people will die' yet you have huge empathy for Sarah Harding.

I'm 41. I've got cancer - aggressive lymphoma. I've got two children aged 5 and 7. I've just undergone a stem cell transplant which destroyed my immune system (my lymphoma is essentially a cancer in my immune system) and so I now have the immunity of a newborn baby. I've been double jabbed but no covid immunity.
I am hopefully now in remission but there is a fairly decent chance my cancer could come back.

My doctors' biggest concern for me at the moment is covid. If I caught it I could become very ill very quickly and have not much to fight the disease with. On discussion with doctors and the children's school we've all decided that unfortunately at the moment it would be safer for my kids not to be in school until local covid numbers are a lot lower, because they risk catching it at school and bringing it home to me. So we are having to homeschool temporarily despite the additional strain this will place on us all.

Vaccinating teenagers would have a MASSIVE impact on clinically vulnerable families like mine.

Which category to I fit into: "sadly people die but we can't all change our lives for covid" or "dying of cancer when you are 39 is so tragic"?

There are LOADS of clinically vulnerable people my age with kids in school. Many of them with cancer.

@Babamamananarama I'm sorry. That's really hard. Most people on these boards see the logic of some mitigations.

@Babamamananarama

Your situation is absolutely horrendous and of course it’s tragic. You’re right in that you fall in to the vulnerable category due to the cancer treatment, but it wouldn’t only be covid that could be problematic for you would it? If you caught the flu that wouldn’t be great either. As you say, your immune system is shot so any kind of germs could potentially have consequences.

The governing bodies that have all of this information (and how many vulnerable people there are etc) and know far more than anyone on here, have decided that vaccinating all 12-15 year olds isn’t the way forward.

Perhaps they will change their mind but for now they don’t think the benefits outweigh the risks to that age group. That doesn’t help your cause, I completely understand that from your personal level and perspective, but at a population level, they deemed it appropriate.

I hope your treatment is successful and I hope this covid nightmare is over soon for everyone.

Table yes other germs are a risk to me and I am taking prophylaxis to protect me, and avoiding doing things that would expose me. But the main risk to me at the moment isn't flu because that isn't endemic amongst the population, and I will be having a flu jab shortly which should offer me decent protection. The risk is covid. It feels pretty cold hearted to say 'oh but you are at risk from everything anyway so no point trying to protect you' - I feel completely written off when people use that argument. Would you say 'oh but statistically you are more than likely going to die of that metastatic breast cancer anyway so probably no point giving you the last ditch expensive chemotherapy drug?'

There isn't scientific consensus against vaccinating 12-15s. The JVSI came down on balance against it but there are challenges to their evidence base and methodology for this conclusion. Other governments scientific panels have come down on the side of it being in the population's interest to vaccinate teens. It's not cut and dried at all.

@Babamamananarama

Table yes other germs are a risk to me and I am taking prophylaxis to protect me, and avoiding doing things that would expose me. But the main risk to me at the moment isn't flu because that isn't endemic amongst the population, and I will be having a flu jab shortly which should offer me decent protection. The risk is covid. It feels pretty cold hearted to say 'oh but you are at risk from everything anyway so no point trying to protect you' - I feel completely written off when people use that argument. Would you say 'oh but statistically you are more than likely going to die of that metastatic breast cancer anyway so probably no point giving you the last ditch expensive chemotherapy drug?'

There isn't scientific consensus against vaccinating 12-15s. The JVSI came down on balance against it but there are challenges to their evidence base and methodology for this conclusion. Other governments scientific panels have come down on the side of it being in the population's interest to vaccinate teens. It's not cut and dried at all.

I’m sorry you’ve taken it that way, it certainly wasn’t my intent. Though it is a fact that people with zero immune systems are more at risk of things such as the colds and flu and would be more susceptible than anyone else.

This is a genuine question, why would the flu jab give protection against flu but the covid jab doesn’t give protection from covid?

This year isn’t going to be pleasant for germs and bugs because at a population level, flu has been suppressed so will likely come back with avengeance.

Again I do understand your point of view, of course I do and of course it’s better for you the more people have the covid vaccine. I would feel the same if I was you.

In reality though and from a population level, it’s been deemed not appropriate to make 12-15 year olds have it.

I suspect the reason they gave advice against it, is to do with morality and whether or not it’s appropriate to mass vaccinate kids to protect other people. Perhaps they should give people the choice and if they want to get their DC vaccinated then the option is there.

This is a genuine question, why would the flu jab give protection against flu but the covid jab doesn’t give protection from covid?

Particularly as the efficacy of the flu vaccine is pretty low.

Table The JVCI came to the conclusion that the the gains to children were marginally greater when having the vaccine than the potential known harms but that the gains were not great enough to warrant giving it to them. HOWEVER they were basing their conclusions on evidence of illness levels in unvaccinated children last year during a period when the clinically vulnerable children were shielding and weren't attending school and so weren't getting infected and ill. Now that those children are in the mix again the gains to the young might well be larger than calculated.

The governments chief medical officers are now looking at the evidence and recommendations and coming to their own conclusions.

Did they also not look at long covid?

Re flu jab: I will get hopefully some protection from the flu jab though not full coverage. But some coverage might be enough to stop me getting really ill.
Covid jab I will get a booster which hopefully will give me some coverage but not as much coverage as a normal adult who has 2 jabs.

How vaccination works in people with blood cancer is very unpredictable. Immune systems I have learned are extremely complex and there are several factors involved in whether you are able to mount an immune response to a virus.

The main difference in risk is that where I live currently 1/100 has covid. Flu levels are nowhere near that currently. If in the winter lots of children are getting flu I will have to take the same measures re pulling my kids out of school.

In my specific situation I had my 2 covid jabs while undergoing chemo, which might have negated my response to them, and then had a stem cell transplant which wiped my immune system meaning the benefit of previous jabs that I had while undergoing treatment is very questionable.

@TheKeatingFive

Children get the flu jab, that is what would make the difference in @Babamamananarama's situation.

The covid vaccine is only approved for age 12+.

Plus covid is roughly 10× more deadly than flu.

@beentoldcomputersaysno

Did they also not look at long covid?

No.

@Babamamananarama That must be so hard for you all. Im so sorry.

While cases are higher than they have ever been in children I think keeping your kids out of "covid factory" schools is your only reasonable option.

All the best for your recovery.

It's also important to protect children for their own sake.

Child deaths have been rising again.

@MarshaBradyo I’m surprised remote learning is still rearing up on here given the harms and downsides
If you read the thread no-one is advocating for remote education here, quite the opposite. However, we have all experienced how fast the Covid situation can turn to shit (cf. Feb2020, Dec2020.) NHS beds, particulary ICU, can potentially be overwhelmed and we already have 1034 Covid patients on ventilators on 03/09/21

As we don't have a cast iron assurance that the Government won't introduce drastic measures like remote education again of course it remains of concern to parents. As others have pointed out there are none of the other mitigating factors now, only vaccinations to hold Covid in check, and the 'hands, face, space' mantra seems to have been replaced with 'get Covid done' (despite that being impossible!)

@Babamamananarama for the situation you and your family find yourselves in & wishing you a good recovery.

Good to see @PrincessNutNuts spreading her doom and gloom again to all and sundry . I don’t know how you get through the day!

Given the news tonight about preparations for an October lockdown and the extension of Covid powers, not sure @PrincessNutNuts is spreading doom and gloom so much as just stating what the government is considering.

Thanks for the chart @PrincessNutNuts. It's so frustrating that government have got rid of all mitigations.

@lannistunut

Given the news tonight about preparations for an October lockdown and the extension of Covid powers, not sure *@PrincessNutNuts* is spreading doom and gloom so much as just stating what the government is considering.

I’ve been out most of the day so not seen or heard anything about an October lockdown?….

Only a rumour at the moment but wouldn't be surprising given what is happening in Scotland, and the cases today were a bit of a massive jump

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/06/no-10-intent-on-keeping-covid-powers-amid-expected-rise-in-cases

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/october-firebreak-lockdown-could-cards-24922816

Personally I will be really pissed off if we have longer holdiays and more missed schooling when we could have asked people to wear masks in shops etc and kept just a bit of a dampener on things

All these cunts pretend to care about education but they are more bothered about not wearing a mask in Tesco.

@lannistunut

Personally I will be really pissed off if we have longer holdiays and more missed schooling when we could have asked people to wear masks in shops etc and kept just a bit of a dampener on things

All these cunts pretend to care about education but they are more bothered about not wearing a mask in Tesco.

This. Plus the usforthem lot pushing for schools to be opened but fighting against any measly mitigation to keep them that way as want kids to get infected. Seriously, Alison Pearson saying how great it was that so many people got infected at festivals. Sick.