How will schools be able to go back in September?

s1ippy wrote: »

My brother works for the HSE (consultant) and was reassigned from his usual work to do swabs, in the height of this in April. He moved out of home for two months to protect his family. He messaged this evening "There's no way we'll be putting [child] into an environment where people are under pressure to send their children, under threat of investigation by TÚSLA."

Depressing to see that some parents will be jeopardising their kids educations and futures due to their own hysteria.

Queried wrote: »

All very good points, then education system is such an important part of our society and provisions need to be made to support families financially should a child display symptoms and need to be tested. Children catch colds and viruses so easily, wiping up snots is a large part of the job for 6 months of the year for many infant teachers Given that it would appear children are incredibly low risk (thank God) it's understandable that many wouldn't be too concerned about cold-like symptoms. However, as alrigghtythen mentioned, schools have a duty of care not only to other pupils but to society. Hopefully provisions will be put in place to encourage people to do the right thing and not be afraid of struggling financially as a result.

I can't believe people still believe this. It was never more than wishful thinking at best, deliberate misinformation at worst.

Recent extensive studies of over 60,000 contacts in South Korea have shown over 10s are as likely to catch and transmit CoViD-19 as adults, if not more likely.¹

The outbreak in a Georgia,US camp² which infected 260 children and teens shows younger children to actually be at more likely to catch CoViD-19 than older children.

"The overall attack rate was 44% (260 of 597), 51% among those aged 6–10 years, 44% among those aged 11–17 years, and 33% among those aged 18–21 years"

¹ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-children-schools.html
² https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6931e1.htm

The one thing I dont understand is why the dept of education seems to be looking to have a universal plan that rural schools in areas that never had a case, and are not likely to see many if any in the future, are lumped in with (party loving) Dublin and the Pale which has 90%+ of cases nowadays.

It seems to me that Dublin/ Kildare/ Laois need a cautious return to school as theres a distinct risk of someone having the virus and causing spread. Down in rural ireland especially in primary schools where students really come from a limited catchment area, theres little chance of an infection in the first place so whats all the fuss about?

As an example of how its progressing elsewhere, the first regions have gone back to school in Germany yesterday (indeed, early finish to summer holidays) and gone back with full classes with little change to normal, so no distancing, no masks, just more ventilation than normal, lots of hand washing etc.

I was somewhat shocked to hear what they are doing, but the one thing to note they have VERY low infection rates, probably eqivalent to rural Cork/ Galway/ Mayo etc. . The chance of anything happening is minimal, and theres a 4 level plan in place for alternating days etc should the situation in the community get worse, and thats implementable at a town / district level, all schools in whole state wouldn't be affected by a local cluster.
In other states who will be going back over the next weeks, there's unfortunately higher infection rate so they'll likely have more stringent conditions, staggered starts and whatnot.

it seems like a sensible enough strategy to recognise that in places of little risk, theres little risk and little need for full blown emergency measures, and places with low/ medium risk you need to be more careful if not much more careful.

Mod: Thread was coming close to the 10k limit so I've locked it.
Continued here:

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2058101870