Schools and Covid 19 (part 5) **Mod warnings in OP**

Every term the schools couldn’t stop my daughters getting headlice

Covid,not a hope

Compared to staggered starts and curve flattening (wave lengthening) there would be less disruption and greater herd immunity if we pulled medically vulnerable teachers and kids out of school for a couple of weeks, dropped the testing and isolation requirements and let Omicron rip.

That is definitely a strategy that merits discussion at this stage. I'd like to see everyone boosted and kids vaccinated before we consider that going that route though.

I suppose I'm mostly thinking about secondary schools where there are high levels of vaccination.

FWIW I'd be interested in the opinions of people with medically vulnerable kids. How do they see this playing out? Is it important that their child(ren) are treated the same as others? How much exclusion time (if any) would be acceptable?

I honestly don't know what the answer is.

Random anecdote: I have a colleague with a teenage son who is a couple of years out of leukemia who brushed off Omicron, completely asymptomatic, whilst he (late forties) spent Christmas suffering with it. Are the perceived risks the same now for the vulnerable?

Teachers have always needed to show proof if positive test/close contact text as far as I know. Not sure what you're referring to regarding shopping?

That report needs to be read very carefully by everyone including gov. It’s a sad indication of where we are as a society that schools tasked with teaching and learning are now the backbone of support services for children. How any teacher / individual can read that report and not ask - where are CAMHS , Tulsa, OT , S&L , respite , services for children with additional needs ? That report is a damning indictment of how we value and treat children.

100%, it always falls back on schools and everyone forgets there are government backed organisations in place that should be doing the work and aren't!

This is going to be sh1t show.

The measures before Christmas didn’t work, there were lots of Delta outbreaks and Omicron is much more transmissible 

Lots of triple vaxed people have come down with Omicron, they aren’t as sick but they have to isolate so that will cause disruption.

It’s to late to vaccinate 5 to 12s. Firstly they haven’t sold it to parents yet. Secondly it won’t help if they did them all today, they would not have protection till sometime in February and we are in the middle of wave now. Anyway if triple vaxed adults are getting covid so will children.

The keep changing the rules and medical advice to suit the circumstance instead of following the science. That makes me even more reluctant to trust them when they say the vaccine is safe for children. At this stage I think they will say anything to deflect blame and keep people happy.

If a child catches Covid the whole family will get it and they will all be out of action for 10 days to two week, or more as there could be a lag between one family member getting it and the next. If you have 3 kids in school would you prefer to take the hit now or have 3 sets of isolation. 

Lack of PCR tests, before Christmas you could book and have the result in 48 hours not it’ 8 days.

There is no system for including antigen tests in the numbers to offset the lack of PCR tests. Two antigen tests should count as PCR result. Yes there will be fraud calming PUP payment but that should not stop the government from impending it. 

The lack of PCR test and inclusion of Antigen results will cause huge issues with travel down the line as people will still test positive on a PCR some months later.

If it was me I’d delay opening for two weeks, send 10 antigen test for each child, they do 3 test in the 5 days before returning to school and have 7 tests to use over the next 5 weeks with to backups. For younger children you can get tests where you collect saliva in a funnel into the test solution.  

Or else you have to let it rip and write of January/February for work and schools

uk reporting 15% reinfection rate with omicron now something that wasnt really an issue with covid before (the gaurdian)

Or just leave work and schools fully open and let it rip anyway? Anyone too sick to go to school stays at home a few days to get over their sniffle.

Kids will infect their parents and grandparents. One guy where I grew up died he'd a kidney transplant and two young kids he was mid 40's.

In the last 31 days there have been 280,000 cases, if 0.1 percent of them them die that's 280 people, if it's 0.25 it's 700 people, where do you draw the line at stopping this do we lock down everybody over 70 again till spring? it could take 3 months to burn itself out so that 1000 to 2100 people, assuming it does burn itself out? What if cases double, remember the numbers we see aren't the real numbers, there aren't enough PCR tests at the moment.