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Re: Back to school

Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2021 9:33 am
by OffTheRock
Millennie Al wrote:
Sat Aug 21, 2021 1:07 am
OffTheRock wrote:
Fri Aug 20, 2021 9:01 pm
I think it's the teachers and children that are supposed to be on the school field.
And they won't be given chairs, to ensure the next Ofsted inspection shows that they are all out standing in their field.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... entilation

The government have realised it might be airborne. It’s going to send out 300,000 CO2 monitors to alert staff quickly and ‘provide reassurance that existing ventilation measures are working’. Quite what these existing measures are beyond opening a window (if it opens) I’m not sure.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 8:32 am
by shpalman

Re: Back to school

Posted: Sat Aug 28, 2021 8:42 am
by shpalman

Re: Back to school

Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 8:04 am
by shpalman
WHO and Unicef say schools across Europe must stay open but in some magic way in which they don't cause the spread of covid to anybody.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Mon Aug 30, 2021 9:47 pm
by Herainestold
Duke university in America sees huge surge in Covid cases despite students being 98% vaccinated.
Duke University has set new restrictions to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 as cases are surging on the Durham campus despite its vaccine mandate.

In the first week of classes, 304 undergraduates, 45 graduate students and 15 employees tested positive for COVID-19. All but eight of these individuals were vaccinated, and the vast majority of them are asymptomatic. A small number have minor, cold- and flu-like symptoms, and none have been hospitalized, according to the university.

Read more here: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local ... rylink=cpy
The rules include:

▪ Masks are required on the Duke campus in all indoor and outdoor locations, unless individuals are exercising alone, eating or drinking, or otherwise not around others.

▪ Indoor group seating at campus dining facilities is temporarily suspended. Students and employees have also been advised to eat outdoors as much as possible.

▪ Professors can teach their undergraduate classes remotely for the next two weeks.

▪ Student activities will be limited.
Read more here: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local ... rylink=cpy

They should really lock down and cancel classes for a month if they want to get a handle on this.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 12:19 am
by Herainestold
Sorry meant to put that in the Unis thread.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 3:50 am
by Millennie Al
The headline "Unvaccinated, unmasked teacher infected more than half of students in class with Covid-19, CDC reports" would be rather more honest if it said "Teacher with Covid symptoms infects pupils". We know that vaccination does not prevent infection, so the fact that the teacher was unvaccinated is not a major point. The pupils were wearing masks (or were supposed to be) so we should not assume that if the teacher had worn one it would have made any difference.

The article cites the original source, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/ ... mm7035e2_w which shows a seating plan and says
all desks were separated by 6 ft. Students were seated in five rows; the attack rate in the two rows seated closest to the teacher’s desk was 80% (eight of 10) and was 28% (four of 14) in the three back rows (Fisher’s exact test; p = 0.036) (Figure 1).

On May 22, students in a another classroom, who differed in age by 3 years from the students in the class with the index case and who were also ineligible for vaccination began to experience symptoms. The two classrooms were separated by a large outdoor courtyard with lunch tables that were blocked off from use with yellow tape. All classrooms had portable high-efficiency particulate air filters and doors and windows were left open. Fourteen of 18 students in this separate grade received testing; six tests had positive results.
I think they need to check the airflow. Having open windows and air filtration is useless if the air still goes from teacher to student directly. One of their conclusions seems to miss the correct emphasis:
In addition to vaccination of eligible persons, implementation of and strict adherence to multipronged nonpharmaceutical prevention strategies including proper masking, routine testing, ventilation, and staying home while symptomatic are important to ensure safe school instruction.
The school correctly used three of the four strategies, yet failed. The emphasis should be on the one strategy that was not correctly implemented.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Tue Aug 31, 2021 2:01 pm
by Herainestold
Millennie Al wrote:
Tue Aug 31, 2021 3:50 am

I think they need to check the airflow. Having open windows and air filtration is useless if the air still goes from teacher to student directly. One of their conclusions seems to miss the correct emphasis:
In addition to vaccination of eligible persons, implementation of and strict adherence to multipronged nonpharmaceutical prevention strategies including proper masking, routine testing, ventilation, and staying home while symptomatic are important to ensure safe school instruction.
The school correctly used three of the four strategies, yet failed. The emphasis should be on the one strategy that was not correctly implemented.
I think you have a point, vaccination status of the teacher doesn't really matter, vaccinated can transmit at the same rate as unvaxed, it is no protection against transmission. The key point is the teacher working while symptomatic. Also the efficacy of the masks is likely an issue. Masked people should use FFP2 masks or double masking. Also masks should not be removed inside.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Wed Sep 01, 2021 5:48 pm
by shpalman
It sounds like the first day of the Green Pass being obligatory for schools in Italy went without major problems, although I didn't think there would be anyone at school for the next two weeks.

(Some regions in the far north might start a bit early while in the south they start later but still.)

Re: Back to school

Posted: Mon Sep 06, 2021 8:06 pm
by Woodchopper
Thread with data on risks of children being admitted to hospital.
https://twitter.com/apsmunro/status/143 ... 55840?s=21

Re: Back to school

Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2021 9:46 am
by OffTheRock
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/0 ... estioning/

Nick Gibb threatens schools who put measures in to prevent spread of Covid ‘unnecessarily’. They’ll be getting calls from the regional commissioners for things like still keeping classes/ year groups separate, wearing face masks and insisting on a negative PCR test before coming to school for close or household contacts. Or sending too many kids home.

I assume the answer to the question ‘why’ when you are phoned up is ‘because we’re not complete idiots’.

There’s no plans for exams in 2022 should the unthinkable happen and schooling is disrupted this year. So that’ll be another last minute rush when they realise yr 11 and 13 have had vastly different amounts of time in school in different schools.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:04 am
by Lew Dolby
considering the number of schools in England, that should keep him busy for a few weeks.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:41 pm
by OffTheRock
Lew Dolby wrote:
Thu Sep 09, 2021 10:04 am
considering the number of schools in England, that should keep him busy for a few weeks.
He's going to get the regional schools commissioners to do it. Which should be fine. I'm not sure what they do the rest of the time.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2021 12:00 pm
by OffTheRock
https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronaviru ... ubble?pg=2

The plan to infect all the country’s children seems to be going well so far. At this rate we might not have enough children left in school to be vaccinated next week.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2021 12:37 pm
by lpm
Yes, we'll be running up good scores in both injections and infections during the next few weeks.

But ideally the rate in schools would be a bit quicker to ensure fizzling by the end of October, leaving November to deflate overall numbers ahead of the December flu & Covid surge. We have capacity in the NHS to handle 4x current case rates but it doesn't look like we'll be using it.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2021 6:34 pm
by bob sterman
Any idea what's going on? With schools back in England for over a week - why are new daily case numbers suddenly falling?

From James Annan...

https://twitter.com/jamesannan/status/1 ... 4934482957
september.jpg
september.jpg (34.76 KiB) Viewed 2653 times

Re: Back to school

Posted: Tue Sep 14, 2021 6:56 pm
by lpm
Scotland did what it was supposed to - cases soared around the time schools went back. Doubling in a week, up at the 2.0x line on a James Annan chart which isn't even on the axis above.

Behind the scenes, schools weren't a great answer for Scotland's sudden surge. It started before the return to school and it involved more the >18s than children. So a bit puzzling but directionally OK.

We don't really have an explanation for the mid July halving of cases. So we can't explain this latest UK fall either.

Of course if it's <12s where cases are falling that's bad news. We want more immunity before November, not less.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Wed Sep 15, 2021 7:28 am
by lpm
If I was going to spin a narrative, it would be something to do with increased brownian motion. Classroom distribution of protected children is more flat on 2 Sept than 15 July.

If you were the parent of a 10 year old who'd never had Covid, you'd want her sitting next to a child who had had a previous infection, on a little table grouping where a couple of others have some protection from previous infection, in a classroom where a big chunk of the total had protection. You wouldn't want her in a classroom where every child was on 0 protection points because Covid is going to get in and superspread.

The start of the school year sees a shuffling. A lot of children move schools, from infants to primary, primary to secondary. Or move classes within the school. Or have moved house. And within classrooms children are put into new desk groupings. And over the summer children mixed with different children to usual, a London child playing with a Newcastle child while at a caravan park in Dorset.

In July we might have a class of 30 people with 0 protection points, another class with 20 with previous infection. In Sept the pack is shuffled and it's two classes of 30 with 10 in each having previous infection. Our little RNA friend has less chance of a full-on superspreading event.

This narrative will look silly if cases start heading up again by the end of the week...

Re: Back to school

Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2021 3:34 pm
by sheldrake
It depends on whether or not you had studied the statistics on the actual risk Covid presents to a 10 year old.

If you were really good at being level headed and quantitative when assessing risk, you would be much more scared of driving them to school or letting them eat McDonald's food regularly than you would be of them catching Covid.

You would of course keep them away from Granny or their uncle with HIV if they came home with a dry cough for a couple of weeks, but you would know that protecting people from an airborne disease by trying to keep all the children indoors for months was doomed, and bad for the children.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2021 8:39 pm
by OffTheRock
It's all going fine There's nothing to see here.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2021 9:08 pm
by lpm
That's a pointless article because it provides no context. How many children were off sick on an average 2019 day? How many school days are lost per annum? How many teachers are off sick per term?

Journalists who just chuck in big numbers ("103,000", "930,000") are idiots.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Tue Sep 21, 2021 10:33 pm
by OffTheRock
lpm wrote:
Tue Sep 21, 2021 9:08 pm
That's a pointless article because it provides no context. How many children were off sick on an average 2019 day? How many school days are lost per annum? How many teachers are off sick per term?

Journalists who just chuck in big numbers ("103,000", "930,000") are idiots.
Average absence in school during autumn term is about 4-4.5%. The government only started releasing the weekly data in March 2020 so there isn't a comparable number for week 38 2019.
Week 38 last year had an attendance rate of 87% but that would have included whole classes being isolated as well as any children who were household contacts. This year it seems to be 91% but with almost none of that being isolation of contacts. For context, if your average level of attendance looked anything like that low, you'd be slaughtered by ofsted when they turned up and would spend an uncomfortable section of your inspection trying to demonstrate what you were doing to deal with it. 96% is the acceptable figure, you may get away with 94-96 depending on context, anything around 90 or below and you will be lucky to avoid failing.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 1:01 pm
by shpalman

Re: Back to school

Posted: Tue Sep 28, 2021 7:04 pm
by Herainestold
Those numbers sound low compared to some I have seen. We won't really know the incidence until this wave has passed and we can look at it in retrospect.Of course by then it will be too late to mitigate it. We should really be more concerned at the toll this is taking on our young people.

Re: Back to school

Posted: Mon Oct 25, 2021 11:49 am
by shpalman
English schools struggle to cope as Covid wreaks havoc
Despite the government narrative of a return to normality in classrooms, schools in areas with high coronavirus rates say they have struggled to function, with many staff off sick and problems securing supply teachers because of high demand.

This week, for example, one Devon school was missing a third of its workforce, a school in Wiltshire was forced to send two year groups home early for half-term and a Buckinghamshire junior school closed and moved to online learning. In Northamptonshire, meanwhile, the Guardian has learned that one primary school had almost 50% of pupils off with Covid during a period of about a week between the end of September and 5 October.
“People are on their knees,” said Ben Davis, headteacher at St Ambrose Barlow RC high school in Wardley, Greater Manchester. “There’s never been such a hard half-term as this, during the whole pandemic. Schools have been thrown into this with no measures or restrictions and we’ve been told to deal with it.”

Covid rates have been higher in his school than before, with 80 positive cases and up to 14 staff off at a time. “We’ve reinstated masks in corridors and classrooms on the advice of public health. Achieving cooperation with that is much, much harder than it was as there’s nowhere else in their lives that children are having to wear masks.”

In Cornwall it has been similarly challenging. “We have had school closures and several year group closures across primary and secondary, with a couple having to close early for half-term due to staffing pressures,” said David Barton, executive officer of the Cornwall Association of Secondary School Headteachers. “Our Covid rates have remained high since the summer and are increasing – currently 555 per 100,000 – and half of all cases are in school-aged children.”