Petition link to close schools

[Awkward1]

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/300403

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I think it was bloody irresponsible of the govt to allow non essential international travel over half term. This had exploded here because every fucker and their dog went skiing over the school holidays!

There was no major reports of the Italy outbreak until the last weekend of half term so people were not aware when they travelled. The difference is now we are aware so any unnecessary travel or holidays to places over the coming weeks with known outbreaks is deeply irresponsible. Ditto for cruise holidays. Government really need to update travel advice but people also need to start to take some responsibility for themselves.

No, the foreign office need to advise against travel so that insurance claims can be made. If it's a general 'dont travel' without being able to claim on insurances, people will take their chances and go anyway.

My dc won't be in a day care center.

The company I work for has closed the offices down for 3 weeks because we have had 12 deaths in the same city. It’s ridiculous.

I don't understand. Do you think thr virus will just die down on its own. No further action needed?

How many more deaths will there be in a week? A month? A few months?

This isn't going away and lives are going to have to change.

Honestly, it’s only because people feel that “essential” services will be available to them that they can insist that schools be closed and their children be kept at home.

But if you’re going to close schools then it has to be all or nothing, thus risking the nhs/police/fire services/utility companies be short staffed and in some instances unavailable.

If schools close then so should nurseries, work childcare facilities, anywhere where there are groups of children.

How keen are people going to be on all schools closing when they have to live through power cuts, water shortages, lack of NHS care, no supermarkets?

People are very much taking the approach that it’ll be fine because they’ll get supermarket deliveries, (which they won’t because either the delivery drivers won’t be available or there will be fuel shortages,) they can play games/watch television (but the internet will be down and besides, you might not have electricity).

This is of course worst case scenario, but this is what it could come to if people insist all schools close as this could have a knock-on effect which is far worse than the coronavirus

Offs

I disagree that it has to be all or nothing. The aim in closing schools for two weeks (plus usual holidays) is to delay a peak of the virus coming all at once. Why would you think the internet would necessarily be down if schools were to close?

Ridiculous!!!

Op are you going to have my kids instead then? No! Then DFOD

Alternative.

The way I see it is do it now, so people struggle a bit but healthy and well... Or wait until we are all sick, no beds, and we all struggle but very ill?

A huge amount of us will b ill.

Op are you going to have my kids instead then? No! Then DFOD

As a teacher, if it helped I actually would.

Internet could be down because if it goes down and there are no employees to fix it because their kids are off school then it doesn’t come back up.

And suggesting that everyone is going to be ill is just hysterical speculation. No-one actually knows what is going to happen. As things currently stand the vast majority of people who catch it have mild symptoms.

In truth the more people who catch it the more people build up immunity, until there will come a point where we have herd immunity which will protect the more vulnerable. And in time there will be a vaccine. Although it’s also possible that the virus will just run a natural course.

As things currently stand the vast majority of people who catch it have mild symptoms.

People are mistaking what 'mild' cv and 'moderate' cv means I think. Tge wording must be throwing people off.

80% of people who catch it will not have a mild cold.

40% 'Moderate' means pnemonia, just that you will probably survive without medical attention (though I'm not sure what is happening with all the young people on ventilation in Italian hospitals atm)

You will still want to curl up and die for quite some time.

And it is possible that many people will try to get hospital attention as a ridiculous amount seem to think 'flu like' symtoms means a bit of a cold. The NHS will be up shit creek.

Where are those statistics coming from? Because that’s not what official sources are saying.

Most people who catch the flu don’t have mild symptoms either. But the vast majority do survive, and I speak as someone who has a heart condition as a result of the flu 3.5 years ago.

As far as I know from reading the different health org sites 80% of acses are 'mild' but this ranges from hardly there to proper flu which does make you wish for death. Well, if you had any capacity to actually form a thought you would!

However,
Most people who catch the flu don’t have mild symptoms either. But the vast majority do survive.

You really can't compare this to flu. We still have too many fatalities from flu but far far less than if we didn't have any immunity at a population level, vaccines for the most affected etc.

This is a novel virus. We have no population immunity, zero. No vaccine in sight for at least over a year.

While we shouldn't all be running around panicking CV should still be taken very seriously.

I am not the most qualified person to comment. But my personal opinion is that if you closed schools you would increase the spread of coronaflu.

I have read that children are super spreaders without being particularly affected themselves. If you dump them on vulnerable grandparents and let them wander around with nothing else to do they will likely spread it faster than if they were all contained together.

Also, who’s going to look after them? Most parents have jobs - at best the economy will suffer. At worst doctors and nurses will be unavailable to treat people

From the WHO China Join mission:

Most people infected with COVID-19 virus have mild disease and recover. Approximately
80% of laboratory confirmed patients have had mild to moderate disease, which includes
non-pneumonia and pneumonia cases, 13.8% have severe disease (dyspnea, respiratory
frequency ≥30/minute, blood oxygen saturation ≤93%, PaO2/FiO2 ratio 50% of the lung field within 24-48 hours) and 6.1% are critical (respiratory
failure, septic shock, and/or multiple organ dysfunction/failure).

If you can see the little diagram, it says:

Note: the relative size of the boxes for disease severity and outcome reflect the proportion of cases reported as of 20
February 2020. The size of the arrows indicates the proportion of cases who recovered or died. Disease definitions are
described above. Moderate cases have a mild form of pneumonia.

I believe this must be where the 40% of all cases have a mild form of pneumonia (from that diagram I'd say it's close to 40% but maybe looks a tiny bit less).

Reading some of these posts about having to do without things reminds me of a childhood growing up in the 70's, that went on for years.
As younger people have no concept of this, I think many are going to be surprised how dire it will become for them.
They'll be a huge cry of "Why didn't we do something sooner" and the same cries of "we tried to tell you".
80% will catch this at the severity described by Nicepud
People can't see past childcare, what a society.

Sorry, that should be WHO China Joint mission.

@Devlesko it's all very well saying "people can't see past childcare". I asked this already. I work for the NHS in the front line. Most of my team have school age children. Just in practical terms, how do we all manage childcare if schools close? I can't ask my DP's as they are elderly. What do we do?

How are you going to manage when they do close?
Do you think they won't?
Surely you of all people can see how this could have been managed better. There has been no precaution at all, schools are still taking kids on trips.
You and your colleagues are going to have to cope with a worst case scenario, because we didn't do what was right.
I really don't mean sarcy because I think you do a fantastic job, but I feel so sorry for you in the coming months and at the peak.

Medics in China, Italy, Japan have kids. They have childcare worries. Money worries. Like all of us. But Their schools were still closed because their countries & health services were pushed into crisis by the exponential growth of a virus that hospitalised a significant minority of patients, of whom a proportion require specialist care for a lengthy period of time.
You halt the exponential growth by closing centres of transmission - schools, places of worship, mass gatherings. It’s a question of how far & how fast up that curve you want to travel before you make the inevitable decision. Only every day now the outcomes Are less favourable.

I think we really need to be looking at Italy right now. They were too slow to act and today they had 12 times more new cases than the whole of China. I know they’ve now shut schools (3 days ago) but clearly the virus was spreading widely just before the schools were shut, if estimates of an average incubation period of about 5 days are correct.

@Devlesko thanks. The bottom line though, is if schools close, then I can't go to work. Nothing I can do about that.
I accept there is a good chance of it happening. But we have to understand people's concerns about that and the inevitable impact on the provision of healthcare and all other services. Children cannot look after themselves.

School is not child care, as parents of children with special needs who regularly get called in to collect them unfortunately already know.
A short school closure of a few weeks is far better and less disruptive than the alternative.
This is really serious yet so many 'im alright jacks' are walking round with their heads in the sand.
If school close children should not be allowed out to socialise in a similar way to excluded children.