Schools closed until March/April? (part 4) Mod warning in OP 22/01

19-02-2021 03:00PM

Leo confirms schools reopen in March

https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/0219/1198040-coronavirus-ireland/

Has there been any developments as to what safety precautions unions were looking for have been met?

frank8211 · 19-02-2021 03:00PM

Theboinkmaster wrote: »

There won't be a repeat of December - December was caused by indoor socialising not schools.[/
Schools were a contributory factor, though

wirelessdude01 · 19-02-2021 03:08PM

TheTorment wrote: »

Leo confirms schools reopen in March

https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/0219/1198040-coronavirus-ireland/

Has there been any developments as to what safety precautions unions were looking for have been met?

Not crossing just fingers or toes, we are gonna try crossing both at the same time now!!

byhookorbycrook · 19-02-2021 03:14PM

Bringing children with AEN back when their peers aren’t isn’t going to work. It’s hardly inclusive to bring them in if their classmates aren’t back .They can’t be with the support teacher all day either - even if there sufficient teachers to keep them for the day and the space for them .

jimmytwotimes 2013 · 19-02-2021 03:28PM

daretodream wrote: »

When will 5th years be back, anyone any idea?

Possibly March 15

penny piper · 19-02-2021 03:52PM

Schools are such "safe places though" ....so why not send all back at the same time?

Random sample · 19-02-2021 03:56PM

penny piper wrote: »

Schools are such "safe places though" ....so why not send all back at the same time?

Nphet have explained this a number of times. Because they don’t want 1 million people mobilising all at once.

Theboinkmaster · 19-02-2021 04:19PM

frank8211 wrote: »

Theboinkmaster wrote: »

There won't be a repeat of December - December was caused by indoor socialising not schools.[/
Schools were a contributory factor, though

No they were not - they were closed for a good part of the period. Schools were open in Oct/Nov when numbers were falling.

You can trace the increasing nos in December to when hospitality and home visits re-opened.

JP100 · 19-02-2021 04:27PM

Random sample wrote: »

Nphet have explained this a number of times. Because they don’t want 1 million people mobilising all at once.

That's just another way of saying schools are not these magical safe places that the likes of Norma Foley would have you believe. Otherwise all would be reopening at the same time as happened previously.

Random sample · 19-02-2021 04:29PM

JP100 wrote: »

That's just another way of saying schools are not these magical safe places that the likes of Norma Foley would have you believe. Otherwise all would be reopening at the same time as happened previously.

Nphet have always given the caveat that schools are safe while community transmission is low.

I know Norma used it as a mantra to get herself through difficult interviews, but the official line was always that schools are as safe as the communities they serve.

JP100 · 19-02-2021 04:36PM

Random sample wrote: »

Nphet have always given the caveat that schools are safe while community transmission is low.

I know Norma used it as a mantra to get herself through difficult interviews, but the official line was always that schools are as safe as the communities they serve.

The above illustrates my point as Norma was still trying to bring schools back right up until the 6th of January, then the 11th of January and again on the 22nd of January when quite clearly things were out of control and our communities were quite clearly not safe. Now in February our communities are still not safe and by extension our schools, hence the very cautious and wait and see approach now been adopted to the reopening of schools.

penny piper · 19-02-2021 04:36PM

Random sample wrote: »

Nphet have explained this a number of times. Because they don’t want 1 million people mobilising all at once.

Oh yes but lets face it it's only a matter of weeks holding off the inevitable...surely it would have been better to wait longer until more vaccinations had taken place.....

19-02-2021 04:37PM

JP100 wrote: »

So that's a no to the question then, you're not a parent of a child with Covid in hospital. It's very easy for you to be so dismissive on here when you are not the parent of one of the 37 children under the age of 12 who have been hospitalised with Covid in the past fortnight. Whataboutery doesn't cut it and saying 'ah well, less children will get sick from this than other groups' is no comfort to parents with children hospitalised with Covid presently or indeed unfortunately in the future.

Emotive claptrap. It is an indisputable fact that there would be no lockdown if the effect of this virus on kids was replicated in older people. Yes some kids get hospitalised with it, but are not any more likely to do so than with a range of other viruses the circulate annually.

19-02-2021 04:40PM

JP100 wrote: »

The above illustrates my point as Norma was still trying to bring schools back right up until the 6th of January, then the 11th of January and again on the 22nd of January when quite clearly things were out of control and our communities were quite clearly not safe. Now in February our communities are still not safe and by extension our schools, hence the very cautious and wait and see approach now been adopted to the reopening of schools.

NPHET only issued their guidance not to open schools on the 5th of January.

The 22nd was for LC and special needs only.

Approx 20% of uk children have continued to attend school. Their infection rates are still falling

keoclassic · 19-02-2021 04:41PM

jimmytwotimes 2013 wrote: »

Possibly March 15

Pure speculation.

JP100 · 19-02-2021 04:42PM

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Emotive claptrap. It is an indisputable fact that there would be no lockdown if the effect of this virus on kids was replicated in older people. Yes some kids get hospitalised with it, but are not any more likely to do so than with a range of other viruses the circulate annually.

Well done you, talking about the parents of the 37 children hospitalised with Covid in the last two weeks as emotive claptrap, says it all really. Your posts speak volumes!

Icyseanfitz · 19-02-2021 04:42PM

From what my union has said to its members, no decisions have been made at all, they are waiting for nephets recommendations which will come next week. Only makes all these media reports and loose lipped politicians even more ridiculous.

For the life of me I can't understand why they don't just go, if daily cases are below or at x bring back years groups 1,2,3,4 etc, if cases hit y bring back groups 5,6,7,8. Would give us a finish line and a goal instead of all these bloody rumours and hearsay

JDD · 19-02-2021 04:44PM

JP100 wrote: »

Well done you, talking about the parents of the 37 children hospitalised with Covid in the last two weeks as emotive claptrap, says it all really. Your posts speak volumes!

While i feel the utmost of sympathy for these parents, hard cases make bad law.

You cannot allow edge cases to dictate national policy. Decisions should be made for the body as a whole, not for outliers.

Stateofyou · 19-02-2021 04:48PM

Theboinkmaster wrote: »

frank8211 wrote: »

No they were not - they were closed for a good part of the period. Schools were open in Oct/Nov when numbers were falling.

You can trace the increasing nos in December to when hospitality and home visits re-opened.

Yes they were. Numbers were climbing then, and I remember we kept out our kids on the Monday and Tuesday before end of term on the Wednesday. That brings us up to the 23rd of Dec. Then many of those children in those families went visiting family and friends over the holiday season.

It's obviously false to say that the spread in schools/creches were not feeding back into the home and contributing to community spread at that time.

19-02-2021 04:55PM

JP100 wrote: »

Well done you, talking about the parents of the 37 children hospitalised with Covid in the last two weeks as emotive claptrap, says it all really. Your posts speak volumes!

Why don’t we shutdown for the hundred of children hospital with viruses every year? Because the response would be disproportionate. Why do we do it with Covid. Because the impact on older groups is orders of magnitude greater

JP100 · 19-02-2021 04:56PM

[Deleted User] wrote: »

NPHET only issued their guidance not to open schools on the 5th of January.

The 22nd was for LC and special needs only.

Approx 20% of uk children have continued to attend school. Their infection rates are still falling

NPHET had to intervene on the 5th because we had a minister in denial and still insisting on schools reopening and despite the blatantly obvious and trying to hop from the 6th to the 11th of January on some magical safe reopening that was never going to safely take place. But hey ho, if she got folk back then it would have been great for her ego!!! This then brings us to the 22nd of January and the next botched reopening and the plan to bring 17 and 18 years back into classrooms when community transmission was still very much out of control. So all in all an utter failure and even worse than that utterly wreckless by Foley.

19-02-2021 04:59PM

JP100 wrote: »

NPHET had to intervene on the 5th because we had a minister in denial and still insisting on schools reopening and despite the blatantly obvious and trying to hop from the 6th to the 11th of January on some magical safe reopening that was never going to safely take place. But hey ho, if she got folk back then it would have been great for her ego!!! This then brings us to the 22nd of January and the next botched reopening and the plan to bring 17 and 18 years back into classrooms when community transmission was still very much out of control. So all in all an utter failure and even worse than that utterly wreckless by Foley.

Schools should have been closed when NPHET had not advised doing so?

JP100 · 19-02-2021 04:59PM

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Why don’t we shutdown for the hundred of children hospital with viruses every year? Because the response would be disproportionate. Why do we do it with Covid. Because the impact on older groups is orders of magnitude greater

Calm down, you are now guilty of what you throw at other posters on here - of posting emotive claptrap!

19-02-2021 05:01PM

JP100 wrote: »

Calm down, you are now guilty of what you throw at other posters on here - of posting emotive claptrap!

Where?

JDD · 19-02-2021 05:05PM

Stateofyou wrote: »

Theboinkmaster wrote: »

Yes they were. Numbers were climbing then, and I remember we kept out our kids on the Monday and Tuesday before end of term on the Wednesday. That brings us up to the 23rd of Dec. Then many of those children in those families went visiting family and friends over the holiday season.

It's obviously false to say that the spread in schools/creches were not feeding back into the home and contributing to community spread at that time.

It's a tough one isn't it? My personal view is that schools act as an accelerator of spread once infections get to a critical level within the community. Say what you like about asymptomatic and very mild cases being just as efficient spreaders as symptomatic cases, but I just don't believe it. So I think a group of children are less likely to infect other people than a group of older teenagers or adults are. So there is a certain truth, in my opinion, that schools are not the petri dish of infection some people expect them to be.

BUT...and this is the crucial but...opening schools have much wider ramifications than just 25 kids in a classroom for a few hours a day. It's parents bringing them to school, mingling at the gates, chatting on the way home, stopping at the corner shop or the petrol station, or getting a takeaway coffee, kids and parents taking buses, mingling again at pick up. It's all that extra movement that acts as the accelerator. There's half a million primary school children in Ireland - so that's at least half a million parents/childminders making two trips outside the home practically every day.

Those trips are all fine while infection in the community remains low - when, say, there's nowhere else to go except the school run. But mix all that extra movement of people with restaurants and bars and shops opening and you have a disaster on your hands, as we saw in December. Let all that extra movement go on, but keep shops and hospitality closed? Well, that's something we tried in October/November, and it worked in that cases declined at a fairly swift pace.

It remains to be seen whether that pace of decline will repeat itself in the context of the Kent strain. It may result in us plateauing at 4-600 cases a day, which we can cope with until the effect of the vaccinations kicks in.

Stateofyou · 19-02-2021 05:30PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Why don’t we shutdown for the hundred of children hospital with viruses every year? Because the response would be disproportionate. Why do we do it with Covid. Because the impact on older groups is orders of magnitude greater

Covid is a novel virus. There are some strange reactions in people/children, and some have issues long term. Some haven't "recovered" yet even though they tested negative for the virus. No one knows the effect of this long term. So covid isn't really the same thing as other viruses going. And this virus has caused countries around the world to shut down and begin vaccination programmes. Name another virus in our time that's done that.

19-02-2021 05:31PM

Stateofyou wrote: »

Covid is a novel virus. There are some strange reactions in people/children, and some have issues long term. Some haven't "recovered" yet even though they tested negative for the virus. No one knows the effect of this long term. So covid isn't really the same thing as other viruses going. And this virus has caused countries around the world to shut down and begin vaccination programmes. Name another virus in our time that's done that.

Because of the impact in older people.

Stateofyou · 19-02-2021 05:38PM

JDD wrote: »

Stateofyou wrote: »

It's a tough one isn't it? My personal view is that schools act as an accelerator of spread once infections get to a critical level within the community. Say what you like about asymptomatic and very mild cases being just as efficient spreaders as symptomatic cases, but I just don't believe it. So I think a group of children are less likely to infect other people than a group of older teenagers or adults are. So there is a certain truth, in my opinion, that schools are not the petri dish of infection some people expect them to be.

BUT...and this is the crucial but...opening schools have much wider ramifications than just 25 kids in a classroom for a few hours a day. It's parents bringing them to school, mingling at the gates, chatting on the way home, stopping at the corner shop or the petrol station, or getting a takeaway coffee, kids and parents taking buses, mingling again at pick up. It's all that extra movement that acts as the accelerator. There's half a million primary school children in Ireland - so that's at least half a million parents/childminders making two trips outside the home practically every day.

Those trips are all fine while infection in the community remains low - when, say, there's nowhere else to go except the school run. But mix all that extra movement of people with restaurants and bars and shops opening and you have a disaster on your hands, as we saw in December. Let all that extra movement go on, but keep shops and hospitality closed? Well, that's something we tried in October/November, and it worked in that cases declined at a fairly swift pace.

It remains to be seen whether that pace of decline will repeat itself in the context of the Kent strain. It may result in us plateauing at 4-600 cases a day, which we can cope with until the effect of the vaccinations kicks in.

Yeah, I agree. This strain now hasn't been fully tested here when all the mixing associated with schools as you pointed out above, happens. Will it light another fire?

Well what we know is there is an acknowledgment or belief from those in charge here that this new variant is now 90% dominant I think? It's more contagious, and as we read Dr. Ronan Glenn saying in that RTE article, it seems to make people more sick and for longer.

So the situation has changed, and that's just flat.

So what are the government going to do about increased safety measures? Protecting the school environments right now is in everyone's best interests.

Stateofyou · 19-02-2021 05:45PM

Deleted User wrote: »

Because of the impact in older people.

Like my 27 year old cousin?

It impacts everyone. And older, or more vulnerable people deserve to live a life too. Is this where we're at now? Having to point that out? I hope not. But published data has shown it clearly has big impacts across all age groups. Vulnerable people are particularly at risk, including older people to athsma (or whatever). Not just deaths, but quality of life. Our health experts have come out and publicly stated it can affect anyone and no one should think the restrictions don't apply to them. Who knows what it might do long term.

Have you seen the massive fb support groups for people with long covid? I joined one once to see what it was showing basically. And I had to leave for my own mental health because it was shocking/depressing to see the real impact on a lot of younger people. People my age. And I assure you, I'm not that old.

downthemiddle · 19-02-2021 06:01PM

Some clarity on the situation

https://twitter.com/DonegalPaul9/status/1362778390152044545

Schools closed until March/April? (part 4) **Mod warning in OP 22/01**

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Schools closed until March/April? (part 4) Mod warning in OP 22/01