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School Covid Outbreak

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
BT63
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School Covid Outbreak

#463351

Postby BT63 » December 5th, 2021, 9:57 pm

My boy's school has a rapidly deteriorating Covid outbreak.
Currently 9 of the 27 in his class are confirmed Covid PCR positive.
The school still wants the rest of the class (and all other classes) to continue attending school.

It's like they're holding a chicken pox party for Covid.

Am I the only one who finds this crazy? Especially at a time when the NHS is on its knees and we could do with reducing transmission rather than spreading it like wildfire through the class and to their families and friends, plus potentially to any contacts of the family, or even work colleagues of the parents.

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463352

Postby redsturgeon » December 5th, 2021, 10:07 pm

This has being going on for the last few month really.

John

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463353

Postby Midsmartin » December 5th, 2021, 10:15 pm

Locally they even ask children to attend school if their sibling is off sick with covid.

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463354

Postby Sorcery » December 5th, 2021, 10:20 pm

BT63 wrote:My boy's school has a rapidly deteriorating Covid outbreak.
Currently 9 of the 27 in his class are confirmed Covid PCR positive.
The school still wants the rest of the class (and all other classes) to continue attending school.

It's like they're holding a chicken pox party for Covid.

Am I the only one who finds this crazy? Especially at a time when the NHS is on its knees and we could do with reducing transmission rather than spreading it like wildfire through the class and to their families and friends, plus potentially to any contacts of the family, or even work colleagues of the parents.


Luckily children seem far less likely to have adverse effects from catching Covid. Don't know exactly how low the fatality rates are for children but you don't give us an age. I would expect children catching Covid for terrible outcomes to be very low.

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463356

Postby Lootman » December 5th, 2021, 10:30 pm

Sorcery wrote:
BT63 wrote:My boy's school has a rapidly deteriorating Covid outbreak.
Currently 9 of the 27 in his class are confirmed Covid PCR positive.
The school still wants the rest of the class (and all other classes) to continue attending school.

It's like they're holding a chicken pox party for Covid.

Am I the only one who finds this crazy? Especially at a time when the NHS is on its knees and we could do with reducing transmission rather than spreading it like wildfire through the class and to their families and friends, plus potentially to any contacts of the family, or even work colleagues of the parents.

Luckily children seem far less likely to have adverse effects from catching Covid. Don't know exactly how low the fatality rates are for children but you don't give us an age. I would expect children catching Covid for terrible outcomes to be very low.

Yes and ironically it has been pressure from parents which had led to schools staying open no matter what. The alternative is losing all that free childcare.

The average voter/parent seems to accept that their little Johnny will catch the odd cold-type illness at school. Schools have always been breeding grounds for infectious diseases anyway. The little blighters usually pull through just fine. :D

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463387

Postby Midsmartin » December 6th, 2021, 8:20 am

It's often forgotten that adults work in schools too, and are also at risk.

My wife spent more than a year trying her best to avoid covid. Eventually she attended a school trip to an activity centre for 3 days as there wasn't anyone else (she's only paid for mornings and got no extra). There she caught covid and has been off work for 6 weeks now, though managed 1 hour a day last week, and trying 2 hours a day this week.

This is an anecdote of course, not meaningful data about anything.

Sorcery wrote:
BT63 wrote:My boy's school has a rapidly deteriorating Covid outbreak.
Currently 9 of the 27 in his class are confirmed Covid PCR positive.
The school still wants the rest of the class (and all other classes) to continue attending school.

It's like they're holding a chicken pox party for Covid.

Am I the only one who finds this crazy? Especially at a time when the NHS is on its knees and we could do with reducing transmission rather than spreading it like wildfire through the class and to their families and friends, plus potentially to any contacts of the family, or even work colleagues of the parents.


Luckily children seem far less likely to have adverse effects from catching Covid. Don't know exactly how low the fatality rates are for children but you don't give us an age. I would expect children catching Covid for terrible outcomes to be very low.

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463393

Postby Spet0789 » December 6th, 2021, 8:57 am

My children’s school did send the year home after a rush of Covid tests. But they do allow siblings of those who test positive to go to school, with a negative LFT every day.

Although I support keeping schools open, I think that members of school staff should have been prioritised for vaccination throughout.

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463415

Postby Bubblesofearth » December 6th, 2021, 10:31 am

Every class at my local school has Covid cases. It's basically running through the kids pretty much unchecked. In the last couple of months I've gone from knowing only a few anecdotals to now knowing a lot of people, both adults and kids, who have had it. All the adults had been jabbed at least twice and have mostly suffered mild flu-like symptoms for a week or so.

My only surprise is I've not had it myself yet.

BoE

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463421

Postby Alaric » December 6th, 2021, 10:41 am

Midsmartin wrote:It's often forgotten that adults work in schools too, and are also at risk.



Is there a theory that letting children catch Covid can be less dangerous than vaccinating them? In other words for under 18s the small risks of serioius illness or death from vaccination are greater than the presemed risks of Covid.

That's all very well, but says nothing about the increased risks to adults who come into contact with these unvaccinated children.

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463432

Postby scotia » December 6th, 2021, 11:15 am

Alaric wrote:
Midsmartin wrote:It's often forgotten that adults work in schools too, and are also at risk.

That's all very well, but says nothing about the increased risks to adults who come into contact with these unvaccinated children.

Yes - that can be a real problem. We know a family who's child has caught Covid at school - where it is now rampant. The child is behaving as normal - no problems with Covid, but he has passed it on to his (doubly vaccinated) father, who is experiencing heavy-cold symptoms. The mother is immunocompromised, so is attempting to keep separate from the rest of the family.

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463470

Postby Hallucigenia » December 6th, 2021, 12:44 pm

Sorcery wrote:Luckily children seem far less likely to have adverse effects from catching Covid. Don't know exactly how low the fatality rates are for children but you don't give us an age. I would expect children catching Covid for terrible outcomes to be very low.


Depends if you count Long Covid as a "terrible outcome" :
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2157

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463477

Postby dealtn » December 6th, 2021, 1:07 pm

Hallucigenia wrote:
Sorcery wrote:Luckily children seem far less likely to have adverse effects from catching Covid. Don't know exactly how low the fatality rates are for children but you don't give us an age. I would expect children catching Covid for terrible outcomes to be very low.


Depends if you count Long Covid as a "terrible outcome" :
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2157


Long Covid (like all post virals) is far too wide a spectrum to have binary descriptions of "terrible outcome" and " not terrible outcome". One in seven may get long covid, but the number with true terrible outcomes is likely to be a small percentage of those (of course this depends on the definition of "terrible outcome").

(disc. Post viral syndrome sufferer since Oct 2019 - I would label that as non-terrible outcome despite the length)

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463674

Postby servodude » December 6th, 2021, 10:56 pm

dealtn wrote:
Hallucigenia wrote:
Sorcery wrote:Luckily children seem far less likely to have adverse effects from catching Covid. Don't know exactly how low the fatality rates are for children but you don't give us an age. I would expect children catching Covid for terrible outcomes to be very low.


Depends if you count Long Covid as a "terrible outcome" :
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2157


Long Covid (like all post virals) is far too wide a spectrum to have binary descriptions of "terrible outcome" and " not terrible outcome". One in seven may get long covid, but the number with true terrible outcomes is likely to be a small percentage of those (of course this depends on the definition of "terrible outcome").

(disc. Post viral syndrome sufferer since Oct 2019 - I would label that as non-terrible outcome despite the length)


Even a very small percentage of 1 in 7 is going to be a big number of "terrible" cases given how widely this has the opportunity to spread :(

[disc. post viral sufferer since 2005 - (vestibular disturbance, tinnitus & hearing loss) which all sucks but pales in to comparison with a cousin I have who hasn't talked since she was two because of complications suffered with an infection]

I think the risks around this with kids at present fall in to that catagory labelled "unknown"
I'd rather adopt the precautionary principle around the health of kids though than treat them as a case study for an actuary

There are plenty of things that can give children long term issues or complications that we take precautions to avoid; measles being the one that immediately comes to mind. One end of the spectrum of thought on measles would probably come under "didn't do me any harm" and at the other there's the understanding that measles was responsible for over half the childhood deaths from infectious disease. Once we could vaccinate those deaths became unnecessary (obviously death is the extreme result it can damage in a few other ways https://www.healthline.com/health-news/the-long-term-effects-of-surviving-measles) but the "didn't do me any harm" view (and its associated vaccine lethargy) has survived and the bloody virus continues to pop up in places causing problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Samoa_measles_outbreak )

And now it seems from the reports that this Omicron thing is hitting young kids harder than previous variants
- their hospital admissions up 6 fold on earlier waves in Africa (so now about level with folk in their 60s there)

so even the stuff we thought we knew about this bloody virus, who it hit and how badly, needs to be continually revised

I'm assuming we all want to find a balance between social imposition and unnecessary suffering?

I reckon that invloves keeping our eyes open, not being complacent, not believing the pantomine of "Covid's behind us" (Oh no it's not! Oh yes it is!) and allowing those in control the agility to appear to overact in the short term until the (new and evolving) risks are understood

Stay well
- sd

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463719

Postby dealtn » December 7th, 2021, 8:39 am

servodude wrote:
so even the stuff we thought we knew about this bloody virus, who it hit and how badly, needs to be continually revised

I'm assuming we all want to find a balance between social imposition and unnecessary suffering?

I reckon that invloves keeping our eyes open, not being complacent, not believing the pantomine of "Covid's behind us" (Oh no it's not! Oh yes it is!) and allowing those in control the agility to appear to overact in the short term until the (new and evolving) risks are understood

Stay well
- sd


Yes, measles is in many senses a better point of comparison with Covid than flu (and been pointed out before). A truly horrible disease, with the potential for not jut death but some really terrible long term outcomes (long measles?).

Yet we have a well established vaccination programme, and take very few local, and certainly national measures, as a result normally. So much so that it is almost forgotten about. That must be the aim with Covid too, both here and globally. Many argue we are already at that point, many that it is too soon to be thinking like that.

Ultimately it is a political, or societal, issue. How many people (and of what age etc.) is it acceptable to have dying of measles, and Covid "normally"? What is the acceptable trade-off in death, long-illness, suffering etc. against the "necessary" impositions on individuals and society in eradicating it? That question, as applied to measles, didn't really have much visibility, and certainly not among the general public, over much of the last 50 years in the UK. Those arguments are certainly being played out publicly with respect to Covid, if not other diseases, now. Its novelty probably being the main reason, coupled with a large amount of ignorance about both it and risk generally, not aided by the media I would suggest.

At some point the transition to acceptance of Covid (even apathy, sadly), will have completed. The journey is happening. I could argue for most of that journey to date we have been too far to the "something must be done" and "all lives must be saved" side of the spectrum. Towards its end we will be too far the other way to the "it doesn't affect me", "it's not important" end, much like with other preventable deaths such as mental health, suicides, and no doubt many others too.

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463797

Postby redsturgeon » December 7th, 2021, 11:38 am

dealtn wrote:
At some point the transition to acceptance of Covid (even apathy, sadly), will have completed. The journey is happening. I could argue for most of that journey to date we have been too far to the "something must be done" and "all lives must be saved" side of the spectrum. Towards its end we will be too far the other way to the "it doesn't affect me", "it's not important" end, much like with other preventable deaths such as mental health, suicides, and no doubt many others too.



Not sure I can recall anyone here saying "all lives must be saved".

But I agree with the general thrust of your post otherwise.

John

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463803

Postby dealtn » December 7th, 2021, 11:49 am

redsturgeon wrote:
dealtn wrote:
At some point the transition to acceptance of Covid (even apathy, sadly), will have completed. The journey is happening. I could argue for most of that journey to date we have been too far to the "something must be done" and "all lives must be saved" side of the spectrum. Towards its end we will be too far the other way to the "it doesn't affect me", "it's not important" end, much like with other preventable deaths such as mental health, suicides, and no doubt many others too.



Not sure I can recall anyone here saying "all lives must be saved".

But I agree with the general thrust of your post otherwise.

John


I don't disagree. They are "lazy" labels defining the ends of the possible spectrum. I don't think anyone here, hopefully anywhere, literally said and believed that (or the alternative end of the spectrum), and that hopefully applies to the future state too.

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463812

Postby Mike4 » December 7th, 2021, 12:09 pm

How many people a week die of measles?

I've no idea, just testing the comparison. However many it is, UK society seems broadly happy with it.

Quite a lot of effort/money gets expended on saving very few lives. Look at road safety. 2,000 deaths a year approx, IIRC, so that's 38 a week or 6 a day and our politicians consider that too many. Covid deaths are running at about 40 a day currently (again, IIRC) so way higher.

Also look at my own industry. When membership of CORGI was made mandatory in an attempt to reduce the death toll from dodgy gas work, there were about 30 deaths a year and this was considered too many.

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463824

Postby dealtn » December 7th, 2021, 12:30 pm

Mike4 wrote:Quite a lot of effort/money gets expended on saving very few lives. Look at road safety. 2,000 deaths a year approx, IIRC, so that's 38 a week or 6 a day and our politicians consider that too many. Covid deaths are running at about 40 a day currently (again, IIRC) so way higher.

Also look at my own industry. When membership of CORGI was made mandatory in an attempt to reduce the death toll from dodgy gas work, there were about 30 deaths a year and this was considered too many.


Well you need to be careful in your comparisons.

The amount of money spent saving lives isn't reflected in the number dying. It's the numbers dying compared to those that would die if that spending didn't take place.

So very few die of measles in the UK, maybe 1 a year, but many hundreds, or thousands even, if no vaccinations or healthcare provision was made (relatively cheaply).

Similarly there would be many more than 2,000 deaths on the roads without money spent on road safety.

How many deaths are there now in your industry compared to the 30 before the mandatory Corgi. Genuine question.

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463900

Postby Hallucigenia » December 7th, 2021, 3:41 pm

dealtn wrote:Ultimately it is a political, or societal, issue. How many people (and of what age etc.) is it acceptable to have dying of measles, and Covid "normally"? What is the acceptable trade-off in death, long-illness, suffering etc.


Well that's something we have an established framework for - the UK taxpayer (via NICE) is prepared to pay around £25k for medical treatments that give one quality-adjusted life year (QALY) - it's explained in this article :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-28983924

So if you say life expectancy is 80 then NICE would be prepared to pay up to 25k * (80-10) = £1,750k for a treatment that saved the life of a 10 year-old (with no after-effects).

They would pay £175k to save that 10yo from a disease that caused a 10% disability.

But they would only pay £25k to save a 79-year-old from death.

It's more complicated than that, but you get the general idea - "the system" "cares" far more about children, and "cares" more about preventing even mild disabilities in kids than in keeping oldies alive.

There's about 9 million kids 5-18 in the UK. At the moment it seems the policy is to infect them all with Covid. Assume that 1 in 14 gets long Covid, causing 10% disability (which is about how I'd rate my own long Covid, in that it has affected both my professional and personal life without being as bad as some people) for an average of 70 years, then that's 642k kids with 45 million kid-years of 10% disability, so 4.5 million QALY which NICE would pay ~£112 billion to prevent.

The fact that HMG is not prepared to pay £200m or so to put portable HEPA filtration in every classroom should be viewed in that context - they're not even pretending to prevent kids getting Covid.

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Re: School Covid Outbreak

#463946

Postby 9873210 » December 7th, 2021, 6:40 pm

dealtn wrote:
Ultimately it is a political, or societal, issue. How many people (and of what age etc.) is it acceptable to have dying of measles, and Covid "normally"? What is the acceptable trade-off in death, long-illness, suffering etc. against the "necessary" impositions on individuals and society in eradicating it? That question, as applied to measles, didn't really have much visibility, and certainly not among the general public, over much of the last 50 years in the UK. Those arguments are certainly being played out publicly with respect to Covid, if not other diseases, now. Its novelty probably being the main reason, coupled with a large amount of ignorance about both it and risk generally, not aided by the media I would suggest.


While that may be ultimately true it is not currently true.

Even if we have clear answers to "How many people is it acceptable to have dying of Covid?" etc. we do not know what measures to put in place that will have that outcome. Until we know more about Covid it's a rhetorical question that cannot guide policy.

When we learn enough to go from desired results to desired policy we can consider Covid to be endemic and treat it like measles or cholera, by introducing permanent changes to our behaviour such as not dumping chamber pots in the street.


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