Scottish Schools - Face masks now "obligatory"

[WeAllHaveWings]

Regardless of whether anyone agrees or not these are now "obligatory" on buses, in corridors, and communal areas (not sure exactly what that means, some classrooms, but guess school will clarify?)

So ds(16) will need a mask for:

Bus/entering school to well-being/registration class
Going to periods 1 - 7
Goingwil to break/lunch
Bus home

So does he use the same mask all day, taking it on/off 11 times, or should he have several masks for the day and a dirty mask bag?

What will you be doing?

I am thinking maybe 2-3 masks per day......one for before morning break, after morning break and after lunch.....as I doubt ds would take/use 11 masks totally hygienically!

@Lweji,
Adding that when masks were introduced in the UK, and elsewhere, it was to allow less isolation.
That applies to England, where they reduced the distancing from 2 to 1 m, NOT to Scotland. Masks have been added on, there was NO trade off, and this is one of my biggest gripes. NS said she ordered a review in the matter (she couldn't get the info from BJ it seems...), but that has been long forgotten.
At the time she was saying something like: numbers are going down, yada, yada, and now we introduce masks. WTF!!! There is a lengthy thread on the matter.
Later on (last week), all doom and gloom, numbers going up, yada, yada, but BTW, I am going to open gyms and pools 2 weeks before I had planned to (there is a thread in this too): WTF #2!!!

Also, I have been too lazy to attach a graph, but numbers in Scotland have been going slowly up masks or no masks. The trend has remained the same: up. The slope is pretty much constant too. Would have they gone up further without masks? Perhaps, but the fact that there has been no discernible change does make you wonder, unless we have been so damn unlucky to introduce them just when there was going to be an uptick that has then been masked.

NS clearly doesn't have a clue, and nor does anyone else (in government or elsewhere). However, the extensive testing does give room for manoeuvre, so that you can take action when is sensible, without having to panic at the first infection. What is troubling is that NS must have been taught with the CfE as she does seem singularly innumerate (does this word exist?) as her interpretation of the daily data is questionable at best.
Where are we on the curve now? Probably where we were in December-January, only now we have all this testing going on, but it is not being used to make our life easier, but to instill more and more nervousness in the public. A positive message now and again from the SG wouldn't be that unwelcome, and might help with compliance. Instead it is constant doom and gloom, and when things will get worse in winter (as they indeed will) what will be there for her (assuming she is still there) to do?
I have been very compliant up until school fiasco #1, when I pretty much lost faith in the SG. Then Boris followed suit shortly after on a similar self-destruct behaviour, so no joy there either.
I am very pessimistic indeed thinking about what lies ahead.

It’s a total shot show and people are becoming disillusioned.

They should start to think about positive messages as the fear instilled will be hard to undo and is disputed to the actual threat.

*Disproportionate

@Lweji - you are very patient.

Could I just remind everyone of Introduction to Statistics 101 - Just because two things are positively correlated doesn't imply a causal Relationship.

Eg masks are compulsory AND cases go up. One doesn’t cause the other - they are both caused by another factor, which is changes to the lockdown rules.

Apart from the use of abbreviations that can become confusing, at least to me, it seems that you have a lot of anger going on.

I'm not familiar enough with Scotland to discuss it specifically.
All I can say is that, overall, the evidence is in favour of masks.
And that I really don't know of a single government that hasn't screwed up in some way. We're all learning as we go. Governments, scientists and people in general.
My own government has done some things well and others not at all.
What I can say is that I wouldn't want to be in their shoes.

Around me, most people just wear the masks. Some barely. Others better. But we can adapt and often use humour to make better of what is indeed a bad situation.

But I'm confident we'll get over this through a combination of factors.
It helps if we don't dwell on the negatives.

NS is Nicola Sturgeon, who @Arkadia hates.

CfE is Curriculum for Excellence, the curriculum used in most Scottish secondary schools.

Some people are desperate to make political points over the fact that the scientific advice changes.

@Lweji,
It helps if we don't dwell on the negatives.
You should pass this message onto the Scottish Government, they need it BIG TIME :D
BJ Boris Johnson
CfE: curriculum for excellence, which is the way Scottish schools have been run for 10 years or so. Nothing good can be said about it.
NS Nicola Sturgeon
I think that is all ;)
@Allis0N, indeed, but you would expect a causal effect of masks on numbers, instead it seems missing. Do masks make cases go up? Who knows. But the important bit is that it is not showing that it is making cases go DOWN.

SG Scottish Government, I'm guessing?

Well you might want to let the Welsh government know as they're in the process of implementing the CfE...
Anyway what science degree do you have out if interest?

@Arkadia - there’s no evidence that wearing masks makes case numbers go up.

To assess if it makes numbers go down, we would have to keep other factors constant. RL isn’t a clinical trial.

@Scotslassie1, electronic engineering (laser technology).
However, I don't see how that matters...
Re: NS and the CfE, I was clearly talking in jest. Needs to me mansplained, it seems...
@ALLIS0N, well to me the SNP is a scourge, but that shouldn't bar me from pointing out inconsistencies. The proclaimed changes in "the Science" are pretty much fictitious. As I said up-thread, public health policies are being drawn up to appease pressure groups (and the SNP base). Alas, that is true in England too now (less the SNP bit).
That is NOT a recipe for good policies.

We do know that masks help prevent transmission of respiratory diseases.
And masks are used in clinical settings.
We can argue about medical vs cloth masks. I'm not a fan of any cloth masks. But they can indeed help in reducing touches to the mouth and larger droplets at worst.
They will not reduce numbers by themselves. But, it does seem that most transmissions occur in enclosed spaces when people don't wear masks and don't distance.
There have been cases studied in restaurants where masked waiters didn't get infected, but face shield waiters did.
The case of an infected hairdresser who didn't pass it on to any of her clients. Just from memory.

They're mandatory for secondary schools in Ireland, in class, on bus or if car sharing. My plan is 3 masks a day, have taught ds how to take it off safely and place in a ziploc. Will he do it properly if I'm not watching- not sure. They start back in next week so we'll see how this goes.

The proclaimed changes in "the Science" are pretty much fictitious.

I can assure you they are not.
Data are being gathered, and interpreted, and evaluated as a whole.

One key element was that this virus is transmitted by asymptomatic and pre symptomatic people. We do now know who's infective.
Even with good test and tracing, we still get transmission. That was not expected.
A recent paper described for the first time the isolation of viable viral particles from the air.
We're still learning.

True that some authorities have taken up the new evidence more slowly, but this has been a tollercoaster of "I did not expect that".

Hatred of NS is clearly colouring the judgement of one or two people on this thread. It won't hurt the kids to wear a mask and it may well protect them and their teachers. Why on earth shouldn't secondary aged pupils take responsibility for helping everyone stay safe? We are in an unprecedented crisis. Let the kids to step up, as I'm sure they will, and stop making a daft fuss about it.

@Lweji, I am not disputing that our understanding changes over time. My point is that "the Science" is not being used to drive policy. Instead, quite often policy has been used to further one's political agenda (not just in Scotland, but for example in Italy).
The whole covid affair has become so toxic throughout Europe and the States that it is impossible to have even a polite conversation about it.
To me it is Brexit all over again.

I believe it is recommended to wear a mask for 4 hours and then it needs to be changed. Washable masks need to be placed in sealed bags and disposable ones, out in appropriate rubbish bins.

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Timefor45 I felt safe this time last year because there wasn’t a bloody great pandemic with no vaccine 🧐

I have the annual flu jab, but no I didn’t feel safe in February because I could see what was coming. I don’t live in Scotland though, so I don’t know why there being cases there was relevant!
It’s not the children’s job to keep me safe, true, it’s my employer’s. In order to keep me (and others) safe, they need to keep us socially distanced from students, and this isn’t possible.
But sure, kill me off - and then see how you feel when your kids don’t have specialist teachers in shortage subjects.

The bottom line is we WANT the schools to stay open - would you rather they were closed because of local outbreaks?

@Bessica1970 you’d posted on a Scotsnet discussion, so I referenced Scotland? Masks aren’t mandatory in English schools- quite sensibly they’re being implemented there only when there’s a local breakout. Not so in Scotland.
As for being clinically vulnerable as a teacher, working in a school anytime (pre covid too) comes with personal risk, but your risk will only increase if there’s covid in your community, so you should generally feel safe in the corridors if you’re wearing a mask/face shield. You can protect yourself as an adult in your workplace. If your employer doesn’t support you with that, you leave the teaching profession to protect yourself, I assume?

A lack of teachers in specialist subjects in Scottish Education is not- and will not in future- be due to deaths from Covid, believe me🙄

Prevention is always better than cure. Just saying...

That’s when I was i supermarkets without a mask.
That was your choice. We've been wearing masks since March. The WM position on not recommending masks was because they didn't have enough PPE for the NHS and didn't want the public trying to buy it. It wasn't because the science didn't exist regarding masks. They haven't hidden that fact. It just seems some of you didn't notice what they were saying. Perhaps you were too busy supporting the US anti-mask protests

FWIW making jokes about people dying, using sarcasm and hyperbole won't win any lurkers to your cause. It just makes you look like insensitive arses.

Prevention is always better than cure. Just saying...

But it's a balance. It's not just all about Covid. We have to consider mental health, education and millions of other factors. And at the moment it's all covid, covid, covid with no emphasis on anything else.

Women just on telly saying that breast cancer referrals are way down because people "don't want to bother" their doctor. This is what the covid, covid, covid, constant coverage has done, and is doing. It's so harmful and the long-term effects for all those families who will lose someone from all the other illnesses are devastating.

We aren’t exactly preventing a mental health crisis are we? Or a crisis relating to cancer delays or even dental treatment being delayed.

The world is mad.