Coronavirus: What lessons can rest of UK learn from Scotland's school return? www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-54013125
So...only 37 positive tests out of 30000 on people under 18. That's great. How many of those 37 just had "sniffles", how many people would be infected if they had been pressured not to have testing, how many bubbles would have burst, how many people would have lost wages by isolating unnecessarily, how many people won't test for feeling over-cautious etc etc. I think rather than saying "cautious parents put a strain on testing", it should read "testing capacity puts a strain on containing the virus" , "responsible parents trying to limit virus spread in large bubbles are labelled over cautious".
As for whether the virus is picked up in schools and spread in the community or vice versa, bubbles in schools are huge and measures are v limited, so a few cases can quickly spread like wildfire in schools and the community. Arguably, if someone has different symptoms, or is asymptomatic, it could be more important to get tested as these were the cases that were blamed for some large spreads earlier on in the year.
Testing capacity needs to be increased and it's time for the government to add some more well known symptoms to the testing list - not pretend they don't exist - especially as many of these symptoms are from studies done within the UK. We know how fast this virus can spread. Test test test to help the economy, help schools stay open, help the NHS deal with non-Covid illness, reduce long-term costs to NHS for associated health conditions caused by long term Covid, help keep things open, have less of a second wave....and of course, save lives! Let's not fuck everything up again.
A bit of investment into education to make the bubbles and measures less farcical would have been great too, but that's wishful thinking.