Can someone explain to me how schools are safe (30-60+ households mixing with no social distancing especially in Primary) whereas 2 or more households mixing in their own home, or in a pub / restaurant with social distancing in place, is not?
Or how schools are safe in the rest of the UK but not in London?
I'm confused. Or is this just Boris and his “loveable buffoon” act again?
The one major difference that there is a clear scientific consensus on, supported by reliable data collected over a long period, is that kids are less infectious and less likely to get infected than an adult in equivalent circumstances. So comparing adults and children without accounting for that significant difference can only create misleading conclusions. If they weren’t, things would have been much worse than they are, schools or no schools. That is one of the few fortunate things about this virus as many viruses hit the oldest and youngest worst.
The distinction between schools in London and schools everywhere else is the communities they’re coming from and the level and type of virus they’re exposed to. The government have tried to keep schools open at all costs. Closing schools anywhere is a loss to them, so they’re only doing them in the most severe circumstances.
London is in the most severe circumstances because it has a much larger share of the more transmissible strain of the virus, which makes it easier for everyone to get it and everyone to pass it on. So children still get it and pass it less often than adults, but the chances of a child getting it and passing it on in London is substantially higher than in Liverpool. The only way to even that playing field is to have it become the dominant strain all over the country. Which means schools closed in emergencies and much more.
It is not that kids are more likely to get it in London schools, it is that kids are more likely to get it anywhere in London, in large part because their parents and siblings are also more likely to get it and bring it into the household. So higher levels of transmission change the risk calculation. That’s a normal response to that kind of change in circumstances. It isn’t double standards, it’s looking at two different situations through the same lens.