SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

golden_blunder

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Of course they are. The evidence the executive here used for the circuit breaker estimated that reduction of the R rate was 5 times greater with school closures than hospitality closures. But we’re going to ignore that and re-open them on Monday.
Because it’s a vote killer. FF mandate down here for example was keeping the schools open above everything else. Now they are hard headed enough to stubbornly stick to that no matter what
 

Pogue Mahone

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Yeah I get the social aspect, I live in a poor area, and there is some merit to it. But, poor areas also have a higher % of people with health issues, who need to be shielded. They don’t seem to be taken into account. I strongly feel that there should be lessons provided remotely as an option that parents can avail off.
Instead we are told that they can’t do it because there’s no resources for it and secondly if we choose to keep our kids off or if they are kept off sick more often (for example if they have sniffles and you’re doing the right thing by not sending them in), this all goes against their school attendance records. There isn’t any leeway given. This means parents are being forced to send kids into school. I feel they should be enabled to make individual choices to keep them off if the country is in lvl5 for example.
I’m cocooning since March. The only time I meet people outside my own bubble is taking or picking kids up at school. Many parents don’t wear masks, they crowd despite signposts and repeated guidance, etc. I’m at risk every time I go. Why aren’t they considering people like me as well rather than just spinning shit that it’s safe.
Honestly, geebs, I know it worries you but the chance of you picking up the virus when you’re picking your kids up from school (outdoors) are so slim it’s not worth stressing about. This virus is being passed on indoors, in poorly ventilated spaces, when people spend a long time in each other’s company. It isn’t jumping from host to host when they briefly stand less than two metres apart outdoors.
 

golden_blunder

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Honestly, geebs, I know it worries you but the chance of you picking up the virus when you’re picking your kids up from school (outdoors) are so slim it’s not worth stressing about. This virus is being passed on indoors, in poorly ventilated spaces, when people spend a long time in each other’s company. It isn’t jumping from host to host when they briefly stand less than two metres apart outdoors.
We’ve all had a stinking cold this week, I’m still not over it. Started with my 8 year old on the last day of school before the break and spread to all of us. We haven’t been anywhere other than school. I’m sorry I just don’t see how they can’t catch and spread Covid as easily as that when we are told it’s more contagious than the flu. I really don’t see the logic of how they don’t spread it
 

golden_blunder

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100% with you on this. Literally 3 days after school started after lockdown, my 6 year old had a cold, which then quickly turned into all of us in the house having a cold for the first time in 5 months. Bit of a coincidence that, eh?
Exactly right!? Many parents saying the same thing but we are led down the path that it’s not possible. We’ve all had a stinking cold this week which started with my eldest boy on last day of school. I know he didn’t catch it anywhere else because he doesn’t go anywhere else
 

Pogue Mahone

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We’ve all had a stinking cold this week, I’m still not over it. Started with my 8 year old on the last day of school before the break and spread to all of us. We haven’t been anywhere other than school. I’m sorry I just don’t see how they can’t catch and spread Covid as easily as that when we are told it’s more contagious than the flu. I really don’t see the logic of how they don’t spread it
You caught the cold from your kid in your own home. You didn’t catch it from another adult during the school run. And not all viruses are the same. There are plenty of viruses that wreck adults but barely affect kids at all because kids have a fundamentally different immune system to adults. It’s possible, maybe even likely, that this is one such virus. There’s a reason that mortality in kids is almost non-existent while it’s extremely dangerous for the elderly. Influenza is different. It’s just as bad for young kids as it is for the elderly.

And once again, I should stress that this definitely is being passed around in schools. But less than you’d think. And not at a rate to justify the downside of excluding all of the children in the country from school. With all the obvious downsides of remote learning.
 

acnumber9

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Because it’s a vote killer. FF mandate down here for example was keeping the schools open above everything else. Now they are hard headed enough to stubbornly stick to that no matter what
Yeah I agree. Same reason they’re keeping places of worship open but closing close contact services despite being twice as likely to spread the virus. We’re being led through this with ulterior motives at play. Until they can show why cases exploded after schools re-opened I’ll take the scientific ‘evidence’ produced with a large grain of salt.
 

Berbaclass

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Whats stopping them closing schools/Universities now for 4-6 weeks and just extending the term in the summer for 4-6 weeks?
 

Pogue Mahone

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Yeah I agree. Same reason they’re keeping places of worship open but closing close contact services despite being twice as likely to spread the virus. We’re being led through this with ulterior motives at play. Until they can show why cases exploded after schools re-opened I’ll take the scientific ‘evidence’ produced with a large grain of salt.
Now that really is nuts. I’m with you there. You do feel for elderly people who need the weekly services for human contact but it’s putting the most at risk group into the riskiest possible scenario (indoors, with singing) Is that Northern Ireland only? Or whole of UK?
 

golden_blunder

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You caught the cold from your kid in your own home. You didn’t catch it from another adult during the school run. And not all viruses are the same. There are plenty of viruses that wreck adults but barely affect kids at all because kids have a fundamentally different immune system to adults. It’s possible, maybe even likely, that this is one such virus. There’s a reason that mortality in kids is almost non-existent while it’s extremely dangerous for the elderly. Influenza is different. It’s just as bad for young kids as it is for the elderly.

And once again, I should stress that this definitely is being passed around in schools. But less than you’d think. And not at a rate to justify the downside of excluding all of the children in the country from school. With all the obvious downsides of remote learning.
Yes that was my point. Where do you think my kid caught it? They don’t go anywhere but school
 

acnumber9

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Now that really is nuts. I’m with you there. You do feel for elderly people who need the weekly services for human contact but it’s putting the most at risk group into the riskiest possible scenario (indoors, with singing) Is that Northern Ireland only? Or whole of UK?
I assume they’re still currently open across the UK. I’m specifically talking about the circuit breaker in Northern Ireland mind you. Only in Northern Ireland would something like that be a priority in this day and age.
 

Pogue Mahone

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Yes that was my point. Where do you think my kid caught it? They don’t go anywhere but school
They caught it in school. Hence my point about not all viruses being the same.

But what happened to you fits with my point about adults not being a risk to other adults during a school run. If that had happened in your household then one of the adults would have been the first to get sick.
 

Eugenius

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Great idea. How do we do it exactly? Seems it's not that easy, as the vast majority of the world is finding.

Re your first point, I disagree. Some people won't want to go out, others will. Although I don't know why you're specifically mentioning pubs and restaurants, since I didn't. The economy is more than hospitality.

I didn't think my point was that controversial. Balance may be hard to find but that has to be the aim. A collapsed economy damages public health.
SAGE's advice to the government has been very hawkish for the last six weeks. They have been providing clear policy suggestions as part of this. Instead of a circuit break, we got the rule of six and a tier system which did not reduce prevalence and barely slowed the R. Looks like we'll now get some form of circuit breaker, but longer & not after six weeks of continued exponential spread.

I'm not saying there isn't some trade off between economy and health. But when the prevalence and spread of virus is high the trade off becomes less relevant. The countries who are doing best economically are those with virtual eradication strategies. If you don't do anything further from here we are heading for deaths measured in the hundreds of thousands & an overwhelmed health service. Yes we can keep the economy open but individuals and corporates will self regulate themselves ultimately.
 

Pogue Mahone

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I assume they’re still currently open across the UK. I’m specifically talking about the circuit breaker in Northern Ireland mind you. Only in Northern Ireland would something like that be a priority in this day and age.
I’m actually kind surprised the same didn’t happen down south. Ten or twenty years ago there’s every chance that church lobbying would have kept their doors open. There’s been a big change over the course of my lifetime.
 

Berbaclass

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If they announce it for Monday/Tuesday just imagine the carnage in pubs/streets tonight, just look at Nottingham the other night,
 

Eugenius

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Now that really is nuts. I’m with you there. You do feel for elderly people who need the weekly services for human contact but it’s putting the most at risk group into the riskiest possible scenario (indoors, with singing) Is that Northern Ireland only? Or whole of UK?
Singing has been banned in places of worship, at least in England.
 

golden_blunder

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They caught it in school. Hence my point about not all viruses being the same.

But what happened to you fits with my point about adults not being a risk to other adults during a school run. If that had happened in your household then one of the adults would have been the first to get sick.
I know they aren’t the same but they are passed the same way

anyway I think we will have to agree to disagree for now until data 100% proves the point either way.
 

Brwned

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Because when school starts my kids catch every cold, flu, tummy bug, etc going around without fail. I really don’t trust these bits of evidence based on data from a few months, which doesn’t take into account parents in the situation either. Seriously how could Covid NOT spread at schools?
The thing is, these scientists and medical professionals that are saying they don't think there's much risk of kids passing on corona, are the same ones who say that kids are one of the biggest transmitters of the common cold. They're not mutually inclusive. Everything we knew about coronaviruses - the common cold, SARS - suggested that kids would be a huge spreader, because they do spread those a lot. Many of the medical professionals that are saying they think kids are relatively low risk for passing on corona are ones who predicted they would be a huge spreader before. They agreed on the same set of assumptions you've offered up - me too. The thing is, the evidence so far contradicts it from multiple angles.

Viruses just spread differently, and while we know very little about this one, it spreading less among kids is one of the elements of transmission they're most confident of. At a point surely we have to hold our hands up and say we don't have a clue about the biological processes in corona transmission, these guys have studied it a lot while operating from the same basic assumptions we did, and they've surprisingly but consistently found it doesn't behave the way we expected it to. They can be wrong, we shouldn't just trust "scientists", but we can still recognise they have more to evaluate it from than we do, and even anecdotally we don't have a lot of evidence to contest them.

I think the thousands of schools being forced to close around Europe proves that kids do spread it, and spread it quite a lot. Maybe not the very young, but teenagers are physically adults for the most part.

Dont forget scientists are learning as they go. Many things we thought we knew about this virus have turned out to be wrong, how it spreads being a major one.
I wouldn't agree with that as proof at all. Schools are forced to close because of the procedures we established, which are built on the assumption schools are high risks for super spreader events. They're closed because of an abundance of caution rather than because they have repeatedly caused the events we worried about. I think that was entirely sensible but I wouldn't think that is a particularly strong indicator of anything other than they're following the procedures established.

The scientists have drawn the same distinction you have - specifically they think people that are 16, 17 and 18 are as likely as anyone else to spread it. Everyone below that age spreads is significantly less, and young kids particularly so. They still spread it, but much less than we expected when we designed those precautionary measures. One of the better indicators of schools not being an especially big transmission zone has been a kind of natural experiment, where some countries have taken a lot of precautionary measures while others haven't, and they've had similar outcomes. The virus gets in there, in many cases from outside the school, but once it gets in it doesn't really spread in the way you'd expect it to. There's proportionately many fewer events

As it still is a place where transmission can happen, it does help to close them down. It just contributes a lot less than we'd expected, or in similar social settings where adults congregate. Agreed there's still plenty to learn but we started from the assumption that kids would spread a lot and the evidence has consistently (albeit not entirely) pointed in the opposite direction, across a wide range of studies from a wide range of locations.
 
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Don't Kill Bill

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There are a few different theories about why kids seem a) less likely to get infected and/or b) less likely to infect others. Good explanation in this article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/parenting/coronavirus-children-spread-covid-19.html

Obviously “less likely “ doesn’t mean they won’t spread the virus at all but there seems to be enough of a difference to justify prioritising keeping schools open. And keeping kids (including poor/vulnerable kids) in school makes sense as a priority for society. One example of this being Rashford’s campaigning to keep school meals going during holidays.
When you think about what happened in universities its hard to imagine 14-16 year olds not being responsible for spreading the disease. I can understand that it may be different for primary aged children but there wont be a clear cut off at 16 or 18.
 

Pogue Mahone

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When you think about what happened in universities its hard to imagine 14-16 year olds not being responsible for spreading the disease. I can understand that it may be different for primary aged children but there wont be a clear cut off at 16 or 18.
Yeah, agreed. I don’t think we can consider primary and secondary schools the same. Although, theoretically, the older kids should be better at complying with social distancing when in school. Which might help.
 

11101

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@Brwned im referring to a couple of different things with schools. In this country there have been hundreds of schools closed as there have been clusters found there. Then, the government has just totally closed all senior schools as they know they are big spreaders.

I have come to the conclusion by now to just ignore whatever the UK government and advisors say. Other European governments are far more reliable.
 

Wumminator

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Yeah, agreed. I don’t think we can consider primary and secondary schools the same. Although, theoretically, the older kids should be better at complying with social distancing when in school. Which might help.
There is no way that 14-16 year olds are socially distancing more than primary school kids.
 

Brwned

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@Brwned im referring to a couple of different things with schools. In this country there have been hundreds of schools closed as there have been clusters found there. Then, the government has just totally closed all senior schools as they know they are big spreaders.

I have come to the conclusion by now to just ignore whatever the UK government and advisors say. Other European governments are far more reliable.
Fair enough about the UK. I certainly don't pay any more attention to their advisors than other government advisors - the studies about children came from multiple countries outside the UK. I don't pay much attention to what any of the politicians from any country say about children in schools as that's a very difficult political challenge.

I can share the findings from other countries if you think it's a UK centric view, led by uk scientific advisors?

Many clusters have been found in the UK too but they have been notably smaller than clusters among adults under similar conditions, and in the countries that have been less strict about responding to clusters, they haven't seen a greater degree of spread than those that have responded strictly. Hard to explain why that is beyond the general notion that a classroom of kids under 16 doesn't spread the virus as much as a classroom of kids 16 and over, or a bunch of adults in a similarly confined space.
 

acnumber9

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The thing is, these scientists and medical professionals that are saying they don't think there's much risk of kids passing on corona, are the same ones who say that kids are one of the biggest transmitters of the common cold. They're not mutually inclusive. Everything we knew about coronaviruses - the common cold, SARS - suggested that kids would be a huge spreader, because they do spread those a lot. Many of the medical professionals that are saying they think kids are relatively low risk for passing on corona are ones who predicted they would be a huge spreader before. They agreed on the same set of assumptions you've offered up - me too. The thing is, the evidence so far contradicts it from multiple angles.

Viruses just spread differently, and while we know very little about this one, it spreading less among kids is one of the elements of transmission they're most confident of. At a point surely we have to hold our hands up and say we don't have a clue about the biological processes in corona transmission, these guys have studied it a lot while operating from the same basic assumptions we did, and they've surprisingly but consistently found it doesn't behave the way we expected it to. They can be wrong, we shouldn't just trust "scientists", but we can still recognise they have more to evaluate it from than we do, and even anecdotally we don't have a lot of evidence to contest them.



I wouldn't agree with that as proof at all. Schools are forced to close because of the procedures we established, which are built on the assumption schools are high risks for super spreader events. They're closed because of an abundance of caution rather than because they have repeatedly caused the events we worried about. I think that was entirely sensible but I wouldn't think that is a particularly strong indicator of anything other than they're following the procedures established.

The scientists have drawn the same distinction you have - specifically they think people that are 16, 17 and 18 are as likely as anyone else to spread it. Everyone below that age spreads is significantly less, and young kids particularly so. They still spread it, but much less than we expected when we designed those precautionary measures. One of the better indicators of schools not being an especially big transmission zone has been a kind of natural experiment, where some countries have taken a lot of precautionary measures while others haven't, and they've had similar outcomes. The virus gets in there, in many cases from outside the school, but once it gets in it doesn't really spread in the way you'd expect it to. There's proportionately many fewer events

As it still is a place where transmission can happen, it does help to close them down. It just contributes a lot less than we'd expected, or in similar social settings where adults congregate. Agreed there's still plenty to learn but we started from the assumption that kids would spread a lot and the evidence has consistently (albeit not entirely) pointed in the opposite direction, across a wide range of studies from a wide range of locations.
And yet the scientific evidence used in Northern Ireland showed that closing schools would reduce the R rate by 0.5. How is the science explaining the explosion in cases two weeks after schools opened?
 

Don't Kill Bill

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Yeah, agreed. I don’t think we can consider primary and secondary schools the same. Although, theoretically, the older kids should be better at complying with social distancing when in school. Which might help.
Except for the kissing and canoodling.(lucky devils).
 

acnumber9

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Yeah, exactly. And that begs the question as to how much more kissing and canoodling they’d get up to if they didn’t spend 8.30am to 3.30pm every day being forcibly socially distanced?
The same amount they were doing all summer when they weren’t forced to spend 6-7 hours indoors together?
 

Brwned

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And yet the scientific evidence used in Northern Ireland showed that closing schools would reduce the R rate by 0.5. How is the science explaining the explosion in cases two weeks after schools opened?
It's explaining it by demonstrating similar explosions in cases have happened independently of schools re-opening, in many many places. That doesn't mean that schools are not the cause of the explosion, but it does mean we know that those things can happen even without the sudden rush back to schools. The factors that explain that explosion could also explain that one. But then science is better at disproving things than proving things, especially in complex situations in high pressure environments in a rapidly evolving crisis.
 

sullydnl

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I wish kissing and canoodling had been considered so likely in my teens that people were worried I would be a national health threat if given more free time.

In reality the only danger would be that I would literally wank myself into a coma.
 

acnumber9

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It's explaining it by demonstrating similar explosions in cases have happened independently of schools re-opening, in many many places. That doesn't mean that schools are not the cause of the explosion, but it does mean we know that those things can happen even without the sudden rush back to schools. The factors that explain that explosion could also explain that one. But then science is better at disproving things than proving things, especially in complex situations in high pressure environments in a rapidly evolving crisis.
What countries are they?
 

golden_blunder

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And yet the scientific evidence used in Northern Ireland showed that closing schools would reduce the R rate by 0.5. How is the science explaining the explosion in cases two weeks after schools opened?
The annoying thing is that scientists and researchers are always contradicting each other constantly. It’s hard to know really who is right and who is wrong. On that basis I have a small amount of empathy for governments.
 

acnumber9

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The annoying thing is that scientists and researchers are always contradicting each other constantly. It’s hard to know really who is right and who is wrong. On that basis I have a small amount of empathy for governments.
In those circumstances you have to apply common sense. Full lockdown worked, their tier restrictions haven’t. The one thing they haven’t tried again is closing schools.
 

Smores

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Clearly my neighbour has heard the news so has decided to have lots of people round today. People's inclination to try and beat restrictions rather than use common sense astounds me.

We're in a tier 2 area as well so I'm fairly sure it isn't even allowed under current measures.
 

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Clearly my neighbour has heard the news so has decided to have lots of people round today. People's inclination to try and beat restrictions rather than use common sense astounds me.

We're in a tier 2 area as well so I'm fairly sure it isn't even allowed under current measures.
Are you gonna grass them up?