Back to school

[OffTheRock]

LFTs performed at home with little financial support for parents who need to isolate if it is positive is even more stupid. Given the government's previous form, I doubt they will requiring proof of the test result.

[mediocrity511]

LFTs performed at home with little financial support for parents who need to isolate if it is positive is even more stupid. Given the government's previous form, I doubt they will requiring proof of the test result.

They need to make the isolation payment grant available for parents who need to isolate because their kids test positive. And given the tests dodgy accuracy, I can easily see people shrugging off minor symptoms because they've had a negative LFT. We really need to expand the symptom list for accessing PCR testing, particularly because we know children often do not get classic symptoms.

[jimbob]

LFTs performed at home with little financial support for parents who need to isolate if it is positive is even more stupid. Given the government's previous form, I doubt they will requiring proof of the test result.

They need to make the isolation payment grant available for parents who need to isolate because their kids test positive. And given the tests dodgy accuracy, I can easily see people shrugging off minor symptoms because they've had a negative LFT. We really need to expand the symptom list for accessing PCR testing, particularly because we know children often do not get classic symptoms.

Indeed. Disincentivising the right actions is bad policy

[Sciolus]

162. The Government will also expand support for those self-isolating. While self-isolation
is critically important to halting the spread of the disease, it is never easy for those
affected. The Test and Trace Support Payment Scheme will continue into the
summer, and will be expanded to cover parents who are unable to work because
they are caring for a child who is self-isolating, and the funding made available for
local authorities as part of this to make discretionary support payments will be
increased to £20 million per month. There will be more funding too to help local
authorities ensure people self-isolating have access to practical support, such as
food deliveries or help with their caring responsibilities, and support for wellbeing. In
addition, the Medicines Delivery Service that has been established to help clinically
extremely vulnerable people will be extended to provide essential deliveries for self-
isolators without access to alternatives.

So extended to parents of children isolating, but basically more of the same ineffective hard-to-access scheme.

[JQH]

The problem is that the government simply has no concept of how life is for the vast majority of people; and just as employers sickness monitoring is predicated on the assumption that staff are skiving, the benefit system is predicated on the assumption that people are on the fiddle.

[Opti]

The problem is that the government simply has no concept of how life is for the vast majority of people; and just as employers sickness monitoring is predicated on the assumption that staff are skiving, the benefit system is predicated on the assumption that people are on the fiddle.

This, very sadly, is true. It's well past time that social welfare was organised to help, rather than hinder, people.
But that doesn't fit in with the current ideology.

[Little waster]

But that doesn't fit in with the current ideology.

The irony being that ideology is currently very publicly freezing to death on the Plains of Texas.

[Herainestold]

But New York State PTA Executive Director Kyle Belokopitsky, in an interview, said a full return to normal may not be until September of 2022.

"We're still not going to have a child vaccine, and I think it's very positive teachers were in that 1a, 1b category," she said. "But it's still hard to book a vaccine appointment. We're still limited on vaccines."

September 2022

https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/ny ... PGndqvF5yc

[shpalman]

The problem is that the government simply has no concept of how life is for the vast majority of people; and just as employers sickness monitoring is predicated on the assumption that staff are skiving, the benefit system is predicated on the assumption that people are on the fiddle.

This, very sadly, is true. It's well past time that social welfare was organised to help, rather than hinder, people.
But that doesn't fit in with the current ideology.

A Kings College London survey finds that nearly half of people believe those who lost their job during the pandemic were likely to have been underperforming

Until the leopards come to eat their faces, I assume.

[Opti]

I read that this morning and shuddered.

[JQH]

It is pretty depressing. Sometimes I just want pull the duvet over my head and never emerge.

[Martin_B]

It is pretty depressing. Sometimes I just want pull the duvet over my head and never emerge.

Sometimes?

[headshot]

In one of the starkest findings, one in eight Britons (13%) said they think black people are more likely to be unemployed and have lower incomes because they “lack motivation or willpower”.

c.nts, the lot of them.

[Bird on a Fire]

f.cking hell

I'm with Opti. I mean, not literally, but you know.

[jimbob]

f.cking hell

I'm with Opti. I mean, not literally, but you know.

likewise

[mediocrity511]

"Amid evidence of adverse labour market consequences for women in Britain resulting from the crisis, the study found that a third of people would not consider it a problem if inequality between genders got worse because of the crisis."

This was another depressing quote from the article.

[Opti]

A century of struggle has been dismantled in no time at all.

[OffTheRock]

Well that's depressing. Although possibly not completely surprising.

[Millennie Al]

A Kings College London survey finds that nearly half of people believe those who lost their job during the pandemic were likely to have been underperforming

Until the leopards come to eat their faces, I assume.

But what does "underperforming" mean? Below average? If so, at any given time there must be lots of people underperforming who still do well enough. Or if it's relative to some specified level, I expect with so many businesses closed or curtailed, there must be many people underperforming due to a lack of an opportunity to serve customers. If such jobs are lost it's no different to jobs being lost in normal times due to circumstances outside the workers' control. It's hard to see how the question could have been asked in a meningful way.

It is, however, amusing to see that in that article the words "disproportionately affecting" are a link which might be supposed to be the study, but actually link to https://file///Volumes/Downloads/Intern ... P-8898.pdf - not much use!

[Turdly]

A Kings College London survey finds that nearly half of people believe those who lost their job during the pandemic were likely to have been underperforming

Until the leopards come to eat their faces, I assume.

But what does "underperforming" mean? Below average? If so, at any given time there must be lots of people underperforming who still do well enough. Or if it's relative to some specified level, I expect with so many businesses closed or curtailed, there must be many people underperforming due to a lack of an opportunity to serve customers. If such jobs are lost it's no different to jobs being lost in normal times due to circumstances outside the workers' control. It's hard to see how the question could have been asked in a meningful way.

It is, however, amusing to see that in that article the words "disproportionately affecting" are a link which might be supposed to be the study, but actually link to https://file///Volumes/Downloads/Intern ... P-8898.pdf - not much use!

Here you go, it's not the study, it is a government briefing document

Or get it here

[Turdly]

You can download the full report here.

[shpalman]

Don't remember if COVID‐19, children and schools: overlooked and at risk by Zoë Hyde was mentioned on here back when it was published in October but since apparently it turns out that a small group of people tried to get [her] paper on children and schools retracted I thought I'd mention it (again) now.

[Millennie Al]

You can download the full report here.

Thank you. Very enlightening. It is a report on a survey performed by YouGov in November and asked quite a few questions. The one which seems to have inspired the Guardian article is:

And how important do you think how well people are performing at their jobs is in determining whether people lose their jobs at this time?

The results were:
15% Very important
32% Fairly important
28% Fairly unimportant
11% Very unimportant

The word "underperforming" does not appear anywhere. For comparison, the same question was asked about luck and got the answers 8%, 23%, 27%, 27% respectively.

I don't think it should be the least bit controversial to say that people who were performing very badly were at greater risk of losing their jobs than those performing exceptionally well, so performance is a relevant factor. When you ask people how important it is the answer will combine a lot of attitudes including belief in how wide the variation of performance is. But more fundamentally, the Guardian misrepresents the result by making the very common mistake of thinking that the chances of A given B are the same as the chances of B given A. Performance might be a very important criterion for deciding who to keep and who to let go, so a business should try quite hard to keep very good workers and get rid of very bad ones, but that does not mean that the vast majority of decisions were so easy. It's also consistent with a large majority of decisions having to be made arbitrarily as there wasn't a big enough difference in performance to justify it as the sole criterion.

[bob sterman]

So as I mentioned in the general COVID-19 thread the plan at schools is that close contacts of a confirmed COVID-19 case will be allowed to come to school, so long as they have daily lateral flow tests at school.

In any other area of life - a close contact of a confirmed COVID-19 case would be required to isolate at home. But if you're a kid and your contact was at school you can now be exempt from this - and travel to school on the bus, train, whatever - before getting your daily LF test.

Now this would seem to be pretty dangerous - but I've just heard there's a flip side to this which is also going to cause a load of disruption.

All the kids are going to be doing regular LF testing and if a kid has a positive LF test at school - they will NOT be referred for a confirmatory PCR test. They will simply be required to isolate at home along with the rest of their family.

So a kid who is a close contact of an actual PCR confirmed case can keep going to school - but the family of a kid who perhaps got a false positive from routine LF testing have to isolate for 10 days - with no chance of a confirmatory PCR test to get them out of this!

[shpalman]

Schools in Lombardy are now closed, and of course there are complaints about this (and the short notice) but I'm also getting a sense that people think that rapid testing is some sort of solution which would allow things to open up in safety by magic.