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!

I was talking about masks, not lockdown.

But you have helped my point.
If we wait for outbreaks, when we notice them, it may be too late and affect several other services.
Better to go around in masks than have to close schools or reduce health services, don't you think?
Lockdown would be the cure here, but nobody wants any again.

No Lweji - I don’t think it. Maybe masks in shops. That’s it. The risk assessment here is utterly out of proportion. You sound hysterical

@Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow

No Lweji - I don’t think it. Maybe masks in shops. That’s it. The risk assessment here is utterly out of proportion. You sound hysterical

Do I? As far as I'm concerned anyone using the word hysterical has run out of arguments. I'm about to open the door to my weekly cleaner. All I'll do is open all windows and stay in different parts of the house. I suppose that's hysterical.

Denying there's a serious pandemic going on doesn’t make it go away.
Sure. There's too much media coverage and some degree of scaremongering, but that's a common feature of the media.

Using a piece of PPE to allow people to go about their business and to keep numbers down so that doctors can have time for all patients is the least we can do.

And, quite frankly, people in shops don't spend hours inside the same room breathing each other's air. Pupils at school do. Office workers do. Shop assistants do. These are the people who should be wearing masks.
Education will suffer if there's an oubreak in a school.
We're not talking New Zealand here. Numbers may be low, but the virus is in circulation and outbreaks WILL occur. That's just reality. It has been happening elsewhere.

Masks are not some magical panacea.

@WouldBeGood

Masks are not some magical panacea.

Indeed. They are a tool to be used in a wider strategy. Your point is?

I agree with @Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow.

There’s a lot more to worry about than Covid and some responses are just so OTT.

(And yes, I’ve obeyed the rules, and am not an anti vaccination Covid denier out to force my sick child into school to murder teachers with his disease vector germs.)

And by using adequate preventative strategies we are able to deal with everything, instead of worrying about all those people at home or in intensive care.
Isn't that great?

It’s fab! 😁

twitter.com/trishgreenhalgh/status/1298515337537900544?s=19

@Lweji, the key is in the definition of adequate, just like one should understand what the WHO means when they say that masks should be used where there is widespread transmission.
Now in Scotland it is estimated that between 150 and 400 people are infected IN TOTAL, out of 5000000 people. That means you have 1/20,000 chances of coming across someone infected (if you take the median value to be 250 for simplicity).
Moreover, in my LA and the two neighbouring ones there are about 350,000 people and in the past seven days there have been 7 cases (the trend is the same if you look at previous weeks for some months).
One LA has had 0 for some time.
Given these numbers, is the virus widespread? Do masks help in way in reducing the spread of the virus? Indeed, does any preventing measure you like help in any way?

The thing bothering me most in this thread is the reference to hand cleansing in conjunction with masks without any apparent concern about face cleanliness. If you wear a mask it is your face not your hands which will be dirtiest when you take it off. In a school setting children will be wandering around corridors in masks getting their faces nice and filthy before going into the classroom and projecting the accumulated filth from your face all over the place surely. Same applies if you wear a mask to enter a restaurant and then take it off to eat.

If the answer to this is to wear the mask continuously then that requires a giant leap to assume that the accumulated detritus on the mask / face won't simply seep out throughout the day.

@Lweji I want to thank you for your posts which have been reasoned and factual despite provocation from posters who are neither.

Same here Lweji. 👌

What @BottomOfMyPencilCase and @Scotslassie1 said.

The thing bothering me most in this thread is the reference to hand cleansing in conjunction with masks without any apparent concern about face cleanliness.

Indeed it is a worry.
However, the latest data seems to suggest aerosol transmission is more important than what we call fomites (surfaces, hands, etc). This is not to say that we shouldn't disinfect hands and surfaces. We should.
But yes, I'd argue that the safest option is to wear masks continuously, even at school and inside classrooms.
The option of removing then inside classrooms was done in Berlin schools where several outbreaks occurred within the first week of opening.

Regarding the WHO advice, tbh, most of us have been ahead of them. Mask availability is still a concern in many areas.

We do need to evaluate where masks are used. I'd say high risk settings, regardless of numbers in the community. High risk, as in the table I posted earlier is indoors and with many people. That means classrooms and corridors. Not so much outside play areas for example. Still, if it is possible to open windows in classrooms, then the risk is much lower. If not, then it's a good idea to wear masks.
We need some flexibility and risk assessment according to circumstances.
But if there needs to be one blanket rule, then I'd go for masks indoors all the time. People will break or won't be able to follow the rules, so that's the safest option, IMO.

Lweji - I’m both amazed and appalled at it anyone could thinking masking children in a classroom setting is a good idea. Perhaps if it was the black death and the risks were huge. Maybe that would be a sensible risk assessment. But for covid? Are you kidding me? More people are currently dying of cancer due to delays in treatment! My dad’s neighbour killed herself last week through depression and that wasn’t being treated properly as facilities closed.

Am I mad?! Am I the only person literally thinking “what the fuck is happening?!”

My elderly dad is back to work (chooses to work late 70s). He is gobsmacked.

When did we become so risk averse that we destroyed a generation of children’s education, sport, music and dare I say -joy - and thought this was a “good thing” for a virus that is killing fewer people than flu now?!

@Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow it’s not just you. The world has gone completely mad.

I must say that I personally know two people who have been undergoing treatment at the Beatson's and the staff and care received has been fantastic throughout.

Music is still listened to and enjoyed in the classroom, sport is also done (outside). No one is being denied an education.

The problem with Covid versus the flu is that it can and has killed young, healthy people. Children have lost their mums/ dads, parents have lost their sons and daughters. The case of the poor family who met for a birthday dinner in Glasgow and all but one were killed by Covid, shows it is not the flu.

Remember the UK had one of the highest death rates in the world. Let's not go back there again. I'd like to see my children grow up.

@Scotslassie1 that’s simply untrue. Three older people with underlying health conditions died and describing that as you did is just scaremongering.

It is true that young people with no health problems have died. There was the poor teenager in London who was only 13.

A young mum in her 30s (my age) leaving two girls behind. Obviously many more but those cases stick in my mind.

No-one is going to think I'll ignore the WHO, the CDC, health services and governments across the world because some anonymous posters on MN say 'this is all nonsense'.

@Scotslassie1 you referred to a family being killed by a birthday party in Glasgow.

No one is denying that the occasional young person dies but the vast vast majority are elderly with underlying health problems. That’s simply a fact.

Am I mad?! Am I the only person literally thinking “what the fuck is happening?!

You're not.

As pointed out upthread, the upper estimate of contagious people in Scotland is about 400 people. All along, the police and government have said that compliance is high. Most people are doing the right thing by staying at home if they know they have it, or if they're told to do so by a contact tracer. Another quantity of the infectious will be in hospital.

So that really leave very, very low levels everywhere else. if you have a child in a school in Coupar Angus then perhaps yes, additional precautions. In my area which has had 6 cases in the last week out of however many hundred thousand people, it's a fucking joke.

You can go and dig up as many anecdotes as you want about outlying cases but the figures clearly show that risks from covid for people who are not seriously ill with something else are very low in the under 55s. No deaths AT ALL in Scotland in the under 25s, 1 in the 25 to 29 age group, 2 in the 30 to 34. 893 deaths in the 85 to 89 year age group.

It's blindingly clear which groups are at most risk, and it's not our kids.

Obviously in an ideal world nobody would get ill, ever, of anything. But that's cloud-cuckoo thinking. We need to learn to live with Covid just as we live with flu, and TB, and Lyme disease, and rabies, and all the other nasties. Wear masks in areas where you are in close, prolonged, face to face contact with someone outside your family group.

Not in schools. And probably not in shops either.

2020 will go down in history as the year which proved your average woman in the street has no idea about science or statistics. Or how to read a fucking graph and make a sensible evaluation of risk.

Oh and I do listen to the WHO. They have said masks when community transmission is widespread.

Transmission in Scotland is not widespread so it's clear that the Scot gov are not listening to the WHO.

scots “I would like to see my children grown up”.

Is this a joke? You aren’t seriously worried about this virus affecting your kids are you? There really is so much more to worry about for them than this.

I am in utter despair at my fellow Scots. The whole thing is ludicrous.