AIBU That we learn to accept COVID is here to stay!

[Jakie7700]

That now a massive number is double vaccinated those who want to be and that teenagers have started to be offered them, it seems so ridiculous that kids are still losing out on school because they are being sent home as they have a minor cold with minor cough. Covid will still be around in years to come, so will children still be sent home then with a mild cough due to colds?

Many missed days of school waiting for PCR results, parents usually mothers missing work over and over. Nobody seemed to care two years back when these same children were spreading flu, chicken pox etc which can all kill or cause serious complications both in adults and children.

Nothing is going to change you can get COVID again like a cold. Just last week I heard of two friends kids being sent home because of mild cough (coughed three/four times the whole day) missed days of school waiting for results only to be negative and then told this will happen every time they have a cough which as most will know in primary children will be alot over winter! These same parents who have nearly lost jobs due to having to juggle childcare through lockdowns. Surely it is just time to accept COVID is isn't going anywhere and stop making kids espeically suffer.

But also something needs to be addressed about how we help with people that have no choice but to send a unwell child to school

No one should be sending ill children to school, covid or otherwise.

• @MrsHerculePoirot You were the one who started throwing stats around of how many children die of chicken pox I simply stated more children die of flu which is true.*

Are you bonkers? YOU brought up chickenpox and flu IN YOUR OP.

YOU asked why no-one cared about these illnesses that can be fatal.

I was answering your question that is because they are not very deadly for children… and then you told me off for comparing to covid. and STILL have not explained why YOU brought them up in your OP, in a thread about covid, if it wasn’t to compare….

I am still interested to hear the point of that part of your OP when you have time to stop changing your mind as to the point of this thread ….

No one should be sending ill children to school, covid or otherwise.

I expect the poster is talking about people with no sick pay provision who can't afford to lose a days wages.

This is ridiculous. OP, you want children who have symptoms of covid to stay in school. But you don't want children with covid in school. Surely you can see how you sound??

Yes, it's frustrating. Yes, it's a rubbish situation and a rubbish time. But seriously, have some common sense!

Yes I think that we should return to normal. This isn't a life for anyone except those who are financially secure or those who love the attention. I am CEV with a reduced lifespan as it is, I've already lost two of those years to this hit show so happy to take my chances now!

[quote cooker321monster]@Abraxan do you have proof that people sending ill children into school were the reason for you catching a virus? nothing to do with faulty test kits, using public spaces, human beings socialising (which is primarily where we obtain joy - at the heart of the reason we enjoy living). Are you suggesting another lock down and further anguish for millions? or do you accept that part of being alive carries risk? That said I hope you are well soon.[/quote]
If course I'm not suggesting another lockdown. No where did I suggest that, never did last year either.

I caught Covid almost certainly at school from a child. We had many children in who subsequently tested positive or their families did. I know I was in close contact with several cases in school but not outside of school. I know for certain one child coughed and sneezed on me, I know for certain the young children I teach often cough, sneeze, and leave evidence of this on their hands, clothes, equipment etc. It's the fun of teaching infants

I don't need to justify where I caught Covid. Everything points towards school. Track and trace, my consultant, the Covid clinic at the hospital I was admitted to, etc all came to the same conclusion.

It wasn't a faulty result. I very clearly had Covid. The children and families clearly had positive results. As shown in this thread, many parents avoid testing their younger children for a range of reasons even if they have a cough or other known symptoms.

I certainly don't blame the child. It was always going to happen when you work in overcrowded classrooms with no social distancing, little ventilation and no real restrictions in schools, where children can be sent in with symptoms and no evidence of a negative test is allowed to be asked for.

And I know that it is hard for parents to need to keep missing a day off work to get and wait for a result.

However I do think we need a culture shift regarding work and school when children and adults are ill. The government plays a huge part into this, as do employers.

@Jakie7700

That now a massive number is double vaccinated those who want to be and that teenagers have started to be offered them, it seems so ridiculous that kids are still losing out on school because they are being sent home as they have a minor cold with minor cough. Covid will still be around in years to come, so will children still be sent home then with a mild cough due to colds?

Many missed days of school waiting for PCR results, parents usually mothers missing work over and over. Nobody seemed to care two years back when these same children were spreading flu, chicken pox etc which can all kill or cause serious complications both in adults and children.

Nothing is going to change you can get COVID again like a cold. Just last week I heard of two friends kids being sent home because of mild cough (coughed three/four times the whole day) missed days of school waiting for results only to be negative and then told this will happen every time they have a cough which as most will know in primary children will be alot over winter! These same parents who have nearly lost jobs due to having to juggle childcare through lockdowns. Surely it is just time to accept COVID is isn't going anywhere and stop making kids espeically suffer.

Yawn

I fail to understand why people need to keep reiterating what is happening anyway. You could not really ignore Covid more than we are at the moment in this country so why post this?

Just last week I heard of two friends kids being sent home because of mild cough (coughed three/four times the whole day)

Yeah and I heard the yeti is real

Even if it did happen ( I'm inclined to think the kids were coughing more than the parents admitted to you) it is hardly the end of the world, parents were called to pick up ill children from school before Covid and will again

I expect the poster is talking about people with no sick pay provision who can't afford to lose a days wages.

Poorly children shouldn't be in school though. This has always been the case. Why should it now be acceptable to send poorly children in to school?

Its a shame that the last couple of years has had no impact whatsoever on the state of our supermarkets and the suppliers. I mean look at a supermarket - aisle after aisle of sugary cereals cakes, crisps, fizzy drinks, alcohol. out of 15 or so aisles only 2 or 3 contain the food groups we actually need. Surely what is important is focusing on individual health and carrying on with life, not bickering over when little johnny takes a test (that have been widely publicised as unreliable) every time he coughs. Tests costing the tax payer Billions.

[quote Jakie7700]@MrsHerculePoirot
Let me ask you then if schools are so concerned pre covid at kids being in school unwell even with minor illnesses, such as a cold and coughs which can spread the flu before the child becomes seriously unwell too unwell to attend school then why do many schools push kids to have 100% attendance.

Even penalizing those who have been unwell and kept of school by not being given a treat day or getting a 100% attendance award.

If schools cared so much pre covid about them being ill in school why do teachers support this and not stand up and say how wrong it is?[/quote]
We haven't had attendance awards for well over a decade. Infact a fair bit longer thinking about the last time we did one.

DD's primary school never did them - she's 19 so that's a fair time ago.

I don't really know if any that did them locally. There was a lot of teacher and parent pressure against them and how unfair they are, so most got rid.

We do have to monitor attendance rates as a school. Not through choice - it's a government requirement. We just don't use that information to reward or sanction the children.

YANBU. Some of us are there already though, have accepted that Covid isn't going anywhere and that "zero covid" was always a pipedream.

Get vaccinated, get your boosters, get on with living.

Yanbu, my son's school is much more sensible - they are happy to have them in school as long as they've done a lateral flow test, which means they can avoid missing school.

The people saying we shouldn't send kids to school with mild colds are being ridiculous! Just look at how bad the colds are this year, having just had one year of minimal exposure. People, and especially children, NEED this exposure to build their immunity to the latest bugs, so they get mild illnesses rather than serious ones. Unless we all lock ourselves away forever permanently, which is unrealistic, it is safer to allow the majority of the population regular exposure to colds.

@Hercisback

I expect the poster is talking about people with no sick pay provision who can't afford to lose a days wages.

Poorly children shouldn't be in school though. This has always been the case. Why should it now be acceptable to send poorly children in to school?

No they shoudn't be in school when poorly, but they are and always have been. I am a primary school teacher and children's attendance would be appauling if they were off for every illness they caught. Parents would never be able to hold down a job. I agree children with covid symptoms shouldn't be in school without a test but I also see parents really struggling. My class have been bombarded with bugs and colds since September and only one has been covid so far

I'm a secondary teacher and agree that kids don't need to be off for every little sniffle. But the symptoms being described above aren't just a little sniffle.

I think acceptance that Covid is here to stay and planning mitigations and healthcare accordingly is perhaps the way forward. Right now this country has its head in the sand and just seems to be firefighting crises all the time rather than strategic planning. The government should have used the summer months to roll out vaccines to teens as other countries did or to improve ventilation in schools but no it was back to normal folks everything's fine. Now the very predictable surge has happened and they are dithering over simple measures like masks and will leave it far too late so eventually more drastic measures may be needed.

@Hercisback
But don't blame the parents which most teachers on here seem to have a fine art for. The nhs website even during covid tells parents that if your child has hfm and are well enough to go to school they can. If they have a cold and are otherwise ok they can go to school. Are you really suggesting kids can never and should never be at school with minor illnesses such as these? If so most EYFS would spend have the winter off school. I am sure you teachers realise how important it is for espeically young primary school children build a robust immune system by being exposed to colds which mainly happens when kids mix at school. So we should keep them at home for every mild illness so teachers don't get a cold?

Kudos to the OP.

She's managed to start a thread with a fairly insupportable premise ('I want to send my unwell, coughing, child/ten into school. Fuck you all.') and keep it going.

I'd have thought it was essentially beating a dead horse and screaming at it to get the fuck back on its feet (the actions of delusion) - but no, the thread is rolling on!

The whole 'We need to learn to live with Covid!' proclamation is pretty useful. Permits the advancement of a lot of selfish, mad ideas.

Of course we need to live as though coronavirus isn't going away!

Everyone can get on board with that!

Only problem here is that 'living with coronavirus' would probably entail things like long-term planning, increases and readjustment of sick pay, development of a caring allowance, readjustment of curriculum (to take account of absence), investment in school buildings ...

Simply allowing sick kids to be dumped in schools is probably the exact opposite of 'learning to live with coronavirus'.

OP was told their opener had all the hallmarks of unreasonable selfishness, so ran to the cupboard labelled 'Things unselfish people think about' & pulled out 'mental health', 'SEND children', 'low-paid workers' & managed to shoehorn them in.

(Inappropriately - but ... whatever.)

I'm impressed.

An essentially unreasonable thread, conducted with hackneyed tropes and fairly disingenuous arguments - but there's life in the old dog yet!

4/10

@ArialAnna you’re saying your kids school DOESN’T follow gov guidance of requiring PCR for coughs? I find that hard to believe - I’d be interested to see that on their risk assessment that will be published on their website….

The other thing about sending in sick kids to school is that viral dose matters - the higher the initial viral dose the worse the disease - this has been proven for covid, there are scientific papers on it dating back to the start of the pandemic. So sending in sick kids is likely to make teachers sicker and more likely to be off for longer - especially if no mitigations like masks or ventilation - and if there are no (or limited) teachers for a long time, the impact on learning would be far worse than keeping a kid off for a day to get a PCR back.

The more covid there is in schools, the worse the likely outcomes for those who catch it there. The risk assessments should include this but of course they don't. Exposure matters and dose matters.

Behaving like we did pre-pandemic with no mitigations in schools is a bit of a silly thing to do in the middle of a pandemic.

I really think people are so unused to nasty illnesses in countries like the UK - because of our very successful vaccination programmes - that they are equating covid, which can be very nasty with lifelong after effects, to mild colds. Not all kids bounce back, why are we inflicting this on them (before you even get to wider society)? We used to have TB, polio, measles - diseases that maimed and killed and kept otherwise healthy kids off school for weeks and weeks.

Plus of course, the more covid there is, the more opportunity for mutations that evade vaccines. I'm never going to understand why people can't see that minor restrictions now will probably shorten the pandemic in the long run. Vaccines for 5-11 just approved in the US. We're getting there, why on earth are people so keen to risk all of that progress?

@surreygirl1987

This is ridiculous. OP, you want children who have symptoms of covid to stay in school. But you don't want children with covid in school. Surely you can see how you sound??

Yes, it's frustrating. Yes, it's a rubbish situation and a rubbish time. But seriously, have some common sense!

I think OP is making it up as she goes along. Like I said before, first she wanted the nation to accept covid is here to stay and we should not have to isolate kids awaiting PCRs, then she realised how ridiculous she sounds and changed it to let the kids into schools with coughs (despite us being in country where we have the highest covid rates and any illness that is “cold” like with a cough is quite possibly covid). Op tried to justify this by comparing to chicken pox and the flu. However, now she has added a new twist and that is that parents are losing their jobs due to their kids having to isolate for a day or 2 whilst awaiting pcr results.

So we should keep them at home for every mild illness so teachers don't get a cold?

Not what I said.

Covid isn't a mild illness for many.

OP, you clearly work hard. You work with SEND children and for your MP.

Why don't you get a nanny?

You can then send them out to the park, to play with the natural world & build their immune system that way.

Schools aren't there primarily fir childcare.

If they're coughing, keep them home.

It's grim as fuck to send them in to splutter all over everyone else.

When I was young, that was considered the height of bad manners.

You wouldn't go to a dinner party and cough all over the main course and other guests, would you?

Have a little self-respect.

Keep your children off school and get a test.

Not only is it actually the way to live with coronavirus, it's also polite.

@ArialAnna

Yanbu, my son's school is much more sensible - they are happy to have them in school as long as they've done a lateral flow test, which means they can avoid missing school.

The people saying we shouldn't send kids to school with mild colds are being ridiculous! Just look at how bad the colds are this year, having just had one year of minimal exposure. People, and especially children, NEED this exposure to build their immunity to the latest bugs, so they get mild illnesses rather than serious ones. Unless we all lock ourselves away forever permanently, which is unrealistic, it is safer to allow the majority of the population regular exposure to colds.

I would love to know which school is this as covid symptoms legally require pcrs NOT lateral flows. I can understand schools accepting lateral flows for colds without the 3 main symptoms, but no chance can they legally ask parents to do a lateral flow if they have covid type symptoms

@thecatfromjapan

OP, you clearly work hard. You work with SEND children and for your MP.

Why don't you get a nanny?

You can then send them out to the park, to play with the natural world & build their immune system that way.

Schools aren't there primarily fir childcare.

If they're coughing, keep them home.

It's grim as fuck to send them in to splutter all over everyone else.

When I was young, that was considered the height of bad manners.

You wouldn't go to a dinner party and cough all over the main course and other guests, would you?

Have a little self-respect.

Keep your children off school and get a test.

Not only is it actually the way to live with coronavirus, it's also polite.

👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

Excellent post, cat, which sums up the thread beautifully.

And we now have people extrapolating to "posters (teachers?) think children should be kept at home with minor colds." Not sure who they think said that, but the point has been that cold symptoms are ALSO Covid symptoms, So... GET THEM TESTED and then we can all get back on the bus.

Is it really so hard?