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!!

@EarlGreywithLemon

Exactly. I just don't know what it'll take for it to be widely criticised as a bad or negligent approach? Probably a lot more deaths, unfortunately.

@duffeldaisy honestly, I don’t even think that will do it. As you rightly say, people have become completely desensitised to the deaths. I think 50 years down the line people will look at this more like the insanity it is.

And apologies to the OP for detailing your thread!

*derailing

@EarlGreywithLemon I’m so glad to see you write that. I started a thread on here asking if it was okay we were just letting ours kids get infected now and pretty much unanimously been told that ‘we have to get on with it now’
German is a good example I think of a government that actually cares about humans at an individual level. Johnson gives no shits and as we know this was always his plan but he was forced to change tac.
There has been several times this government has been so wrong and then had to change. I’m struggling to know whether this is like that or not!

*Germany

@EarlGreywithLemon it’s totally that, people are desensitised. It’s actually to the stage I feel people dispice others from dying of/from Covid because it could later effect them with lockdowns. How many celebrities have sadly passed and thousands of people Send condolences but on the post about Covid deaths it’s all “for god sake “ “how many people died from cancer/suicide”, or “give it a rest we are free now”.
I’m not at all saying people who have died from other things isn’t sad. However if someone posted “100 people a day die of a certain cancer” then there would be compassion.
To become a Covid death statistic seems awful. 😢.

@Moonopoly that’s a massive issue for me, I don’t trust Boris at all! The whole way through this pandemic I have disagreed with some of his steps (I don’t want to be in lockdown forever, I agree with class bubbles not self isolating any more, but disagree with households not, I’m not extreme). I don’t even trust that fact most people in hospital
Are people that have not been double jabbed when 90% of the country has been.
I know some can sit back and trust him, but sadly I don’t feel safe doing so.

@Tinydancer321 my instinct is not to trust Boris Johnson. Nothing that's happened in the last 18 months tells me I'm wrong. Everything has been too little, too late, too optimistic.

Signing up to the idea that there's nothing that can be done and to hell with the consequences is government policy. Numerous scientists advised them of alternative ways to keep things open in a safer way. This way wasn't simply incompetence, it wasn't prevarication, it was a deliberate policy choice.

@monopoly I don’t get why people want (or say they want) to expose their kids to a new virus with unknown long term consequences. There is clear factual evidence of long covid in children, which makes perfect sense, since long covid is linked with mild covid just as much as severe. That’s in addition to children who were hospitalised, died etc. I almost think people prefer to pretend children are safe, because it would be too unthinkable otherwise. This head in the sand approach has been encouraged by the government, who were still swearing blind that schools were safe the day before admitting they were vectors of infection and closing them in January.

@ beentoldcomputersaysno yep. They’ve been itching to go for herd immunity since this started.

…even though herd immunity might not even be possible given re-infections, and how ridiculously contagious Delta is.

I agree with you op.
Its bonkers neither my primary or seniors admitted postives cases although hear parents and pupils there has been.
My sons teachers been off that seems suss Infant any absence right now makes me wonder..
3 if my kids all had coughs, cols and sore throat.
Lft negative but just precaution kept 2 senior kids off and pcr tested and waited until negative to send them back.
Primary head saying will only inform if 5 or more cases and this is direction local council/, public health set

@Workinghardeveryday you could pop your postcode in this and give a general idea of how many cases are in your locality

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map/cases

[quote EarlGreywithLemon]@monopoly I don’t get why people want (or say they want) to expose their kids to a new virus with unknown long term consequences. There is clear factual evidence of long covid in children, which makes perfect sense, since long covid is linked with mild covid just as much as severe. That’s in addition to children who were hospitalised, died etc. I almost think people prefer to pretend children are safe, because it would be too unthinkable otherwise. This head in the sand approach has been encouraged by the government, who were still swearing blind that schools were safe the day before admitting they were vectors of infection and closing them in January.[/quote]
You genuinely don't seem to be understanding.

I don't want to expose my kids to a new virus. No one wants that. Why would they? But covid is literally everywhere. So unless you put your child in a box for their whole life there is absolutely no way whatsoever for them to avoid exposure. Given that that is true, the only option is to carry on with life. There's no way to turn back time and make covid not exist, and there are other things that are important in children's lives besides avoiding illness, such as education, friends, activities, seeing relatives, so as far as I'm concerned the sensible choice is not to focus on the one thing you can't control - the spread of a contagious virus - and focus on the things you can have an effect on, like making sure your child has fun for the few years of childhood that they have. Wasting years and years worrying about one threat is not healthy or effective. It is just pointless.

My child could get covid and suffer. They could also get a severe kidney infection and suffer. Or get hit by a car, or get cancer, or eat something poisonous or fall off something. As I mentioned earlier, 2.7 million children died of sepsis in 2017. Did you worry about that back in 2017? Did you even know about it?

Why are you so intent on persuading people to your view, @TheDailyCarbunkle ?

People on this thread have outlined their reasons for their views.

You don't agree, but that is surely the end of it?

Why are you so massively invested in this? Us more cautious folk are not going to change your views, but neither are you going to change ours. Discussion is helpful, but your frustration and inability to sympathise radiate from your posts.

I can completely see why people think as you do, but I have my own solid reasons for making different choices. A bit of respect would be nice.

@TheDailyCarbunkle I have tried to explain in the past why sepsis and COVID are not comparable and it’s got me nowhere, so I won’t bother this time. But I will say that yes, I am very aware of the signs of sepsis and do worry about it when appropriate. Hence when my daughter developed cold hands and feet with a high temperature I whisked her straight to the GP as fast as my legs could carry us.
Also you know full well that no one is talking about putting children in a box, but just about sensible mitigations like masks, good ventilation, trying to meet people outside more than inside, isolation of household contacts, testing etc. The virus can be controlled - see again Germany.
Polio is very comparable with covid in terms of the proportion of people who are seriously affected. If this was a polio outbreak, would you be happy to take no measures to control it?

Agree Miles. There's also the fact that a lot of us are trying to follow advice from medical professionals. The opinion of an Internet random is not going to carry more weight than theirs.

Wanting to put children "in a box for their whole lives" is exactly the same as wanting to know approximate numbers of cases of an easily transmitted virus (and notifiable disease) in a child's school.

It's like you can't really argue the point without amping it up to ridiculous levels.

Don't be silly. Do you think you have a right to know how many people have a cold, flu or sickness and diarrhoea bugs? It is completely none of your business who is sick and who is not. Take your own precautions and that's all you can do.

Why does everyone think people who are worried about Covid, want to hide away for ever and want life to stop and to socially isolate always.
It can’t be that we want a strategies and mild restrictions 🤦🏼‍♀️

@Moonopoly

‘It is not the case, as some reps have been told, that data protection legislation prevents schools from disclosing the name, class and/or year group of a pupil or staff member with Covid-19 or symptoms of the virus.

Although there is an automatic prohibition against the sharing of health data under the GDPR, the legislation also provides for circumstances in which that prohibition may be overridden. One of these is where a school directly or indirectly identifies an individual under the direction of a health authority, such as the local health protection team (if supervised by a medical professional), or the NHS Test and Trace team. Health data may also be shared if the data subject, or in the case of pupils under 13 years of age, the data subject’s legal guardian, has explicitly consented to such sharing. Explicit consent should not be relied on as the basis for sharing information, however, particularly about staff, because the imbalance of power between the data controller and the data subject (for example, employer and employee) will always give rise to the issue of whether consent has been freely given.

Furthermore, data controllers, i.e., head teachers on behalf of school governing bodies, are obliged to weigh the privacy rights of the person whose data is to be disclosed against the interests of the school community in knowing of the potential risk to their health and the health of those with whom they may have been in close contact.’

From the NEU website

This post explains what is expected.

@wasthataburp

Don't be silly. Do you think you have a right to know how many people have a cold, flu or sickness and diarrhoea bugs? It is completely none of your business who is sick and who is not. Take your own precautions and that's all you can do.

Please stop pretending that COVID is comparable to colds, flu or norovirus. As medical professionals have repeatedly been explaining. And incidentally our nursery does notify us if there are cases of norovirus, and how many, and recently even of cases of hand foot and mouth.

Sorry for your circumstances OP. Yes our school inform us of a positive case within the class (primary). Not sure why the approach differs so much.
Tbh I didn’t want to get my DC a PCR every time someone tested positive but then they said there was a child in the school undergoing chemo and I felt like an utter arsehole.

Maybe ask the school for homework and keep the Dc at home for a couple of weeks while the number of cases fall?