Scrapping the 10 days isolation would be the best and easiest way to support schools...

[Warhertisuff]

The disruption this causes is considerable, and massively outweigh the benefits. I'm not really sure what the benefits are actually!

Of course. If you're too ill to be at school for ten days as a pupil or teacher that's fine, but the vast majority would be back within a few days if they even needed to be off at all! We must be losing 10s if not 100s of 1,000s days of schools unnecessarily, whilst not really preventing much infection ultimately (virtually all children will be exposed to it some time this year)

Are you saying that your covid ridden child should go into school to spread it round everyone?

My virologist friend tells me that even those who are asymptomatic are infectious until about day 9, which is why we have a 10 day isolation. Why on earth do you think this is a good idea?

I won't be surprised if this ends up being the situation in 1/2 years but given its the first winter post vaccine the experts are watching and hopefully coming up with a long term plan

I think it would have the opposite effect. All the colleagues I know who've had it have been too poorly to be in school for easily over a week. So if even more kids were in school with Covid and not isolating, more staff would catch it than already are and we'd have to close the school. It's touch and go as it is, with no supply staff available.

@Schulte

This

@dementedpixie

Are you saying that your covid ridden child should go into school to spread it round everyone?

76% of children have been infected according to Cambridge uni...

www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/tackling-covid-19/nowcasting-and-forecasting-of-covid-19/

The sooner Covid passes through a school, the sooner things will be back to normal. Thinking you can dodge Covid by having the 10 days isolation is deluded. And if you can't dodge Covid, what's the point in stringing things out.

How ridiculous...what if a teenager takes it home to their extremely vulnerable family member? We need to be using masks etc again very quickly!"

Considering you can catch it more than once that's an obvious flaw in your idea. Right now I'm thankful it's half term and just over the weekend friends and wider family members have tested positive, we are in an area with really high cases. My DH is vulnerable so if anyone in our household tests positive we will all isolate anyway as it's the right thing to do.

Here is the trophy for the most stupid idea you’ve had today 🏆 you get a trophy if it’s even more stupid and goady than warrants a biscuit.

Ah, ok. So you think they should carry on going to school to get to herd immunity quicker? Well that’s one option I guess. If we get it through all the school kids pre Christmas then January onwards could be totally normal for them.

Fuck all the CEV, right OP?

MMMM - how about the teachers...vulnerable parents or siblings? I don't think you have thought this through....

My Y9 DD has two close friends. Only one of them has had covid. That's 33%, not 76%. If you include her wider circle, 2/8 =25%. Her whole class: 5/32 = 15%. All cases since September.

No sure which school they got their figures from but I'm sure my DD's school isn't the only anomaly.

And fuck the NHS, when greater circulation of covid among pupils means greater circulation of covid among the whole population resulting in more people needing health care and more ill staff. So fuck those wanting treatment for anything else.

The issue would be whether you can get cases high enough in kids before all the teachers go off so that you reach herd immunity at least for this winter.

6 out of 30 on my tutor group can no longer taste or smell. 1 is exhausted 4 weeks after having COVID. 1 is now long term asthmatic.
So crack on. Let's just hope your kid isn't one of those affected long term.

On a purely selfish level, I was relieved to have 10 days where I couldn't go to school as it meant I could actually try to get better. I'd have gone in after about 6 days, when really I wasn't well enough at that point (actually I struggled at the end of the day by 15 days after testing positive).
But I am aware that I am possibly the only person in the world to have felt it was more than "a mild cold" as I keep being told this is what it was. (I've never cried with a cold, I did several times with covid.)

@Bumpinthenight

My Y9 DD has two close friends. Only one of them has had covid. That's 33%, not 76%. If you include her wider circle, 2/8 =25%. Her whole class: 5/32 = 15%. All cases since September.

No sure which school they got their figures from but I'm sure my DD's school isn't the only anomaly.

Apparently 50% of the population are female... Yet 4 out of 5 people in my house are female - that's 80%!... I guess 80% of the population must be female then

You do realise schools need adult staff to run don't you?

So it's all very well allowing it to pass through children thinking it's mild for them but for every teacher that catches it that's 30 kids without a stable education.

In secondary that's about 150 based on 5 lessons a day.

We cannot let kids keep taking it into school to then be taken out and about into the community again.

We don't need lockdowns etc now. But we need sensible mitigation's for this first post vaccine winter.

Yeah, that's a really stupid suggestion.

Another from me.

This just happened in the South West didn't it? People with covid weren't isolating because they were incorrectly told that they didn't have covid.

And now rates there are sky high. Lots more kids missing school than they would have done because they've got covid from a classmate who should have been isolating.

You don’t seem to understand that the only isolation is people with positive PCR tests and that staff and pupils are already on their second round of infection, in many cases.

@mumsneedwine

6 out of 30 on my tutor group can no longer taste or smell. 1 is exhausted 4 weeks after having COVID. 1 is now long term asthmatic. So crack on. Let's just hope your kid isn't one of those affected long term.

Of course I don't want kids to get Covid but the idea that kids won't get it over the coming months is deluded... So, yes, whilst I realise it's all pretty crap, requiring 10 days isolation won't prevent it - at most it will delay things a bit - in the same way you tutor group weren't prevented from getting it.

Oh and at my children’s school I don’t know when we will get the two staff back who ended up very ill in hospital despite neither being over 40 or having any other obvious risk factors.

Maybe it'll delay things until they've had a chance to be vaccinated, which will prevent some of them getting it.