To think I should have a right to know how many cases at school?

[Workinghardeveryday]

I have 3 kids, 2 at Primary and 1 at High School.

I have asked this morning if I can be informed of any cases in my children’s classes and been told no.

I am CEV and there is a good chance the vaccine didn’t work. I homeschooled up until March, realised I need to let my kids get a proper education, after all I am no teacher!

I would however like to be able to weigh up the pros and cons of sending them if a child has tested positive!!

@Remmy123

Do you expect to be given this information for flu / notovirus, etc?

Why do you need to know it may just make you anxious?

Aw, Remmy, you're so sweet and thoughtful.

my sons high school no longer seems to be informing regarding positive cases in the class/ year. My son had sore throat and felt off tested positive on lateral flow which was confirmed by pcr. Track and trace contacted me and it is up to them to liaise with schools now . It is no longer the schools responsibility apparently to decide who was sitting next to who and who needs to isolate its up to track and trace. I know that 11 other kids were off in one of my sons classes and only know that as the teacher emailed work over and didn't blind copy in the others in the email so we saw the names of everyone off . Its spreading round his school like wildfire but nothing been flagged up or mentioned in any of the school correspondence.

@Ugzbugz

The problem I can see is that so many children have zero symptoms and many do no testing so you would never have an accurate figure. My friends primary sons had zero symptoms so unless all kids are LFT testing, chances are there are cases circulating all the time.

Yes I just don’t think any kind of number you would get in primary is remotely reliable. If you are vulnerable and are particularly worried about Covid, I don’t think there being zero cases in the class should be of much comfort really because primary school children have never been asked to test when asymptomatic. If I’m honest, symptomatic is tricky too because children in the first few years tend to be permanently a bit snotty etc. At least half my child’s class seems to have a bit of a cold at the moment and at every toddler rhyme time or similar that I go to there is always at least 25% of the room coughing and sneezing…

Although LFTs aren’t perfect I suppose it helps in the secondary setting a lot. You’re unlikely to have a class outbreak and it not get picked up even if you only ever actually identify 4 cases when there were actually 8 for example.

remmy

FFS.

Why do people label people 'anxious' because they are not particularly ecstatic about an illness spreading like wildfire? An illness that has hospitalised thousands of kids, been linked to organ damage, neurological impacts and who knows what long term impacts? I find it really strange, especially as those using the 'anxious' label are often ones that think their kids mental health might be irreversibly screwed if assemblies were put on hold for a bit.

I think we know why, @beentoldcomputersaysno

Our school (secondary) have said that they’ll tell us numbers twice a week, but so far haven’t done so and there definitely are some cases.

It is a bit of a lottery - some schools have heads that want to protect school communities, keep in-person education open despite the strait jacket the government (and people like us4them etc) have put them in. Other heads don't. As covid is a notifiable illness, does that override DofE guidance?

@ApplesAreTheBaneOfMyLife

Our school (secondary) have said that they’ll tell us numbers twice a week, but so far haven’t done so and there definitely are some cases.

Can you raise with them and find out why they haven't said?

Ugh! I can't be bothered with all the secrecy in schools! I work in one and we're not even told which children have tested positive. It's just a flu virus, nothing to be ashamed of, and knowing how many cases there are and which classes are going down with it helps parents and staff to decide whether to be more vigilant or do lateral flows.

The gov. is publishing cases per local area- what's the difference?

@beentoldcomputersaysno

Why do people label people 'anxious' because they are not particularly ecstatic about an illness spreading like wildfire? An illness that has hospitalised thousands of kids, been linked to organ damage, neurological impacts and who knows what long term impacts? I find it really strange, especially as those using the 'anxious' label are often ones that think their kids mental health might be irreversibly screwed if assemblies were put on hold for a bit.

You are clearly very anxious though. The overwhelming conclusion from actual research is that covid doesn't affect children in a serious way, and you're talking about hospitalisation of thousands, organ damage etc. So something is going on there, where you're looking at a not very serious disease for children and you're very scared and believing the worst.

The point a lot of people are making, which seems to be ignored, is that knowing how many cases there are in school isn't actually a useful piece of information and so there is no justification for know it. A child can have covid, spread it around and not get a test. So knowing the numbers only tells you how many children have tested at the right time to get a positive result. That doesn't actually help anyone who's trying to avoid covid. At all. Does that make sense to you?

So something is going on there, where you're looking at a not very serious disease for children

That something going on appears to be you not reading the OP.

@noblegiraffe

So something is going on there, where you're looking at a not very serious disease for children

That something going on appears to be you not reading the OP.

I was responding to a particular post @noblegiraffe so I think if anyone's not reading, it's you.

So what information do you judge useful?@TheDailyCarbunkle

I don't think the Op sounds "very scared".

So you think no one should be anxious, Carbunkle? Or you agree that it’s ok to be anxious in certain scenarios?

And that if you’re anxious in certain scenarios, like the OP, having extra information might help with that anxiety and not only not telling them not to be anxious but also making them more anxious by saying stuff like ‘you’re probably being exposed to covid without knowing’ is just a bit unhelpful?

@TheDailyCarbunkle do you think schools should randomly stop informing of all notifiable diseases? If OP knows of x number of cases in a class, she may for example steer clear of taking kids to visit a friend with a pregnant parent or seeing her elderly friend. I know not all cases will be known. She can also keep an eye out for symptoms. What makes me most anxious about covid? People pretending it is always benign in kids when it clearly isn't. Yes there have been thousands of kids hospitalised and there are links to neurological impacts and organ damage.

It's Gvmnt policy and guidance to schools that's the problem here. It wouldn't make a difference to you if you knew there were cases in school, but it would make a difference if you could be aware that one of your children was a potential close contact of a positive case, and if positive cases were required to isolate. My schools are doing that much at least.
As a family, we are all doing twice-weekly LFTs, and again if we feel slightly unwell.

You can only do what you can to keep yourself safe within your family bubble, so make sure personal and home covid hygiene is as good as can be, including ventilation, personal space, hand and respiratory hygiene, regular testing.

The thing is the numbers don’t help anymore. Primary kids esp are at more likely to have it with no symptoms and now the kids don’t have to isolate if parents test positive with a test seems silly .

I am anxious too. Today is my due date and
I took the kids out last week so we don’t catch it for the birth. 😭. Hardest decision ever.
You need to do what is right for you xx

@noblegiraffe

So you think no one should be anxious, Carbunkle? Or you agree that it’s ok to be anxious in certain scenarios?

And that if you’re anxious in certain scenarios, like the OP, having extra information might help with that anxiety and not only not telling them not to be anxious but also making them more anxious by saying stuff like ‘you’re probably being exposed to covid without knowing’ is just a bit unhelpful?

I don't really understand what you're saying @noblegiraffe. The OP I was responding to was complaining about being called anxious. I responded saying they were clearly anxious, not that they shouldn't be anxious. Being anxious is understandable but my point was that the person I was responding to seemed to be anxious about things like organ damage, which aren't shown to be a major issues with children who get covid.

How would knowing medical information about other children be helpful when that information doesn't actually tell you anything useful?

@TheDailyCarbunkle
However there are children that have long term issues, there are children that get really poorly and there have been children that have died.
Just because the government tell us not to worry, don’t mean we won’t. It’s a game of roulette. It’s a pandemic.
Sadly the government doesn’t care about people dying from this, it’s more about saving the nhs and making sure it’s not over run, even the vaccines are more about this than saving people. If you have no faith in the government your bound to feel unsafe. They didn’t need to stop all restrictions.

Personally we are looking at all catching this and I don’t think you will get away from not catching it sadly. We just have to hope we are not the ones that get seriously ill 😢

[quote Tinydancer321]@TheDailyCarbunkle
However there are children that have long term issues, there are children that get really poorly and there have been children that have died.
Just because the government tell us not to worry, don’t mean we won’t. It’s a game of roulette. It’s a pandemic.
Sadly the government doesn’t care about people dying from this, it’s more about saving the nhs and making sure it’s not over run, even the vaccines are more about this than saving people. If you have no faith in the government your bound to feel unsafe. They didn’t need to stop all restrictions.[/quote]
Children have long term issues from every type of infection though @Tinydancer321 - in 2017 2.9 million children worldwide died from sepsis, which is caused by infection - those are deaths outside of the ones caused directly by the infection itself. There has always been a risk from infection, quite a big risk, but no one really took any notice of it until covid.

It is absolutely and categorically not a game of roulette and there is no reason for you to think that. Yes some children have worse outcomes than others from covid - as they do with every single other infection out there - but it is not true or helpful to characterise it as a serious gamble when there is zero scientific evidence that that is true.

@Tinydancer321

Personally we are looking at all catching this and I don’t think you will get away from not catching it sadly. We just have to hope we are not the ones that get seriously ill 😢

Yes of course everyone will catch it- or at least come in contact with it. What else did you expect? I think the 'stay safe' narrative has really fucked with people's heads to the extent that they now believe it's somehow possible to avoid being in contact with a highly contagious illness that is present in very high quantities in pretty much the entire world. How would that ever be possible?