If a bird flu pandemic hits the UK will it still be illegal to take your child out of school for fear they will pick up the illness?

[pepsi]

I watched Panorama last night and one of the parents said they would take their child out of school if a pandemic strikes in order to protect them. I would imagine lots of parents might do this. Schools may even close for a time but what if I as a parent made the decision to keep my children at home...they are 5 and 3. In this situation will I be within my rights to do so or would I run the risk of big fines or prison. Im going to ask the school this week if they have had any information on what might happen etc.

It is an opinion rather like the microbiolist who was always big on food scares, Lacey?

The 1918 flu epidemic lasted TWO YEARS.

Is it really beneficial to keep yourself and your kids locked inside for 2 years? Even supposing internet grocery shopping is still available and people still want the job of delivering...

I'm in the "cross that bridge when we get there" camp, tbh.

Message withdrawn

It wouldnt be 2 years though would it because a vaccine would have been available long before then. I cant say i would be thrilled at the prospect of taking my children out of school, it would be like the school hols when you were going out nice places and stuff would it, but if there was a real risk I certainly would. I know it cant jump from humans to human yet and sincerely hope it never does.

Sounds like we'd all better brush up on home schooling technques then!

I know it would be really really tough wouldnt it trying to teach them yourself when they were used to a "real teacher".

W/drawing them from school is one thing, but w/drawing them from life is another. I mean, this is a respiratory virus that travels on microscopic air droplets. Someone has to go out to work, buy food, etc. The virus has a long incubation period - a person can appear healthy and transmit the virus, similarly, some people will be 'carriers' who can infect, but never fall ill.

That's assuming that a) the vaccine is 100% effective and b) the strain doesn't mutate again.

Current flu vaccine is 3 strains and what ... about 75% effective?

Exactly expat. Can you imagine 3 months inside the house (even assuming you can afford to) without ANY contact with the outside world?!

No internet shopping - postmen would want to be inside too! No food delivery - that's one hell of a food store you have to build up...

My PCT recently sent out the latest DoH guidance, and you can read it (if you want!){http://www.dh.gov.uk/PolicyAndGuidance/EmergencyPlanning/PandemicFlu/fs/en\here}. At the moment experts are thinking in "when" rather than "if" terms, but they have been saying this for the last ten years, and it is an epidemiological prediction (because of the pattern of outbreaks over the last few centuries). Any outbreak of bird or swine flu will get plenty of publicity, because it is this jumping across species that has triggered past epidemics. Most of the advice is about general infection control (handwashing etc) although if there is an outbreak I think that schools will be affected. I imagine that as this will be nation wide some sort of provision for schooling would be made (maybe lots of educational TV programmes?)

dh has gone full-on hysteria about this - he's not the only one, my friend's dh is a secondary school science teacher and is also insisting on getting in large amount of tinned food etc and is planning a 12 week lockup for all of them should a pandemic happen (he's convinced it will).
We've even ordered some state-of-the-art masks!
And every week I get told off for not buying more tins for our emergency supply.
I must say though - if this thing does mutate, and it continues to have a high mortality rate, then yes, we would barricade ourselves at home until it's over. We could live off the land for a good while (and those tins I should be buying! ).

Weird - that link worked on the preview! I'll try again .

My gran lost her first husband, age 21 years, and her first child, a daughter, age 2 years, to the Spanish Flu Pandemic in the winter of 1919. She herself caught the virus, but survived. She was just 17 years old.

The virus reached them in their small Mayan village in a remote part of Mexico.

NOWHERE is safe in such pandemics. NO ONE is safe - these villagers were all people who'd been breastfed - normally till about 2 years of age - were fit and healthy working manual jobs, didn't smoke or drink, and ate a reasonably balanced diet.

But we're not really at any more risk than we were last year, or the year before, or the year before that... it's just that science's understanding of how flu pandemics work has drastically increased over the last couple of years. I suspect that it'll increase again over the next few years.

The world is not the same as it was in 1918 - there have been medical and technological advances - some might help, some might hinder... but it all really is speculation at this point.

I think in a previous thread someone mentioned that even with the worst case scenarios scientists mention, that our dhs' are at far greater risk of getting testicular cancer than they are of dying of bird flu. Are we all panicking about losing our dhs' to cancer at the moment?

Exactly, Georgina. It's one of those things. It could go pandemic. It could not. I could be blown up in a terrorist attack whilst riding the bus. I could not.

Can't say I'm going to let 'could/could nots' control my life.

As my father always says, 'At one point, something is going to kill us all.'

Fact is - I could be in a car crash tomorrow, with or without the kids. I don't have any control over whether we all come down with a supposed flu pandemic - so why worry about something I can do nothing about?

I'd rather make sure that we (as a family) all live life to the full, however long that life is that we're granted...

LOL expat - duplicate cross post

'Every man dies. Not every man really lives.'

this is starting to remind me of early eighties tv programmes with rabid dogs or maybe it's waterworld

Oh gawd, zippiti, NOT that pants film w/Kevin Costner?! LOL! THAT was a real razzie, wasn't it?