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Not Online!!! wrote:
Funny, recently in germany the did actually attempt to find out just how contagious children were and found no difference so far between them and normal virus carriers .

You've gotta look at who is posting this claim, look at that person's previous posts during this topic and look at the source.

That tells you allot.

 ValentineGames wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Funny, recently in germany the did actually attempt to find out just how contagious children were and found no difference so far between them and normal virus carriers .

You've gotta look at who is posting this claim, look at that person's previous posts during this topic and look at the source.

That tells you allot.

I don't judge people, i judge arguments.

Schools beeing an incremental part of future economic growth and of social security in some countries what with food hand outs etc is and has a massive effect.

And whilest i disagree with his urge to open the country his stance on government is quite justifyable in many regards.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
any sources for comparison? I'm hoping that they start to open up the schools and nurseries soon if this is the case.


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 Skinnereal wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-no-child-known-to-have-passed-covid-19-to-adults-global-study-finds-11981111?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter

Looks like closing the schools/nurseries could have been a mistake. Hopefully this might get things rolling again.

If parents take the kids in, they'll hang around the playground or on the walk in, and spread it that way.
The children aren't the problem, as you mention, up to the age of 10, it seems.

they concluded that "young children don't transmit the virus".

What about the older kids though?

Teachers have to be there, along with support staff. They'll have to re-organise the school to be able to work safely.

Not if they socially distance.

In most schools it would be impossible to carry on with the normal number of people and still socially distance. It would probably be impossible even if you halved the number of kids, judging by most of the schools near me. The info about young children not passing on the disease was at the very least suspected before lockdown as there was some evidence to support it. As others have pointed out the closing of the schools was more about maintaining social distancing and reducing transmission between adults and older school children. I think throwing out accusations after the fact about what was the wrong and right approach to take is extremely unhelpful, especially when it relies on evidence that surfaces after decisions were taken. When dealing with a verified deadly and highly infectious disease the correct approach is an abundance of caution.

No, I was referring to his comment about the parents spreading it outside the school.

You made a funny there .. since this is yet another claim made by WHO which then had to be taken out of context by the media to reach the rather tortured conclusion that kids don't spread.

Higher impact on ethnic minorities remains unexplained.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52492662

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
No, I was referring to his comment about the parents spreading it outside the school.

And what about teachers at the school? The environment they do their job in makes it extremely difficult to socially distance especially from the kids, some of whom are old enough to be infectious. Then there's the parents who pick their kids up. School closing time is like a cattle market in most places I know of. Yes, they absolutely could socially distance - possibly - but you're introducing another risk factor. The data they had to work with at the time modelled various scenarios and keeping schools open suggested an increase in infection rate, I suspect due to the difficulties of socially distancing in that environment. That increase is even with the current social distancing in place, probably because the models take into account the likelihood of people not socially distancing as instructed. It may well turn out that data was incorrect but unless it was maliciously misreported in order to further some sort of agenda that's the sort of second-guessing that's really not helpful to anyone. Sadly I think it's the sort of thing we're going to see a lot of from certain sections of the media for quite a long time after this pandemic has passed.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
No, I was referring to his comment about the parents spreading it outside the school.

But how do you achieve that?

Most schools do not have sufficient space outside that parents can spread out across, or sufficient room for every parent to wait in their car.

My youngest son's school has about 300 pupils at the infant school and about 400 at the junior school. The car park has about 50 spaces.

The only way would be staggered start times, which might mean that the school would endup with students perhaps finishing very late in the day. So you spread out the load; but at bigger schools where you're dealing with thousands of students, even staggered would still have a lot of people moving around all at once.


Also what about coaches? A lot of students aren't taken by car, but are collected and bussed in. Again that's another close environment that would need way more coaches to socially distance. Even if the driver is isolated the students are again in a close environment to pass coughs, colds, nits and corona around between themselves.


Heck lets pause and consider that even if students cannot pass corona they can pass loads of other things. There'd be a panic at every cough or cold passed around.

My wife is a teacher. School timetables take enough working out without having to stagger start and end times for everyone.

Crispy78 wrote:
My wife is a teacher. School timetables take enough working out without having to stagger start and end times for everyone.

Yep and that's before you're either cutting classes or trying to factor in which staff can stay longer in the day and which students can too. It would be a nightmare where you'd either have to cut classes or have a huge mess at the end of every day.


Honestly instead of putting money into trying to socially distance schools (and failing); I'd put it into more distance learning. Also lets not forget we are now in May and lockdown won't end till June like as not. That's basically the end of the school year anyway.



I could see them try and reopen just for final GCSE and A level students BUT those are groups that are most likely to spread the virus. So getting them all back in to sit examinations (in nice enclosed rooms.....) is just not sensible either.



No matter which way you look at it its nearly impossible to justify re-opening schools during an epidemic. The only way would be immense testing procedures with accurate tests. However even that snowballs because you'd have to test all students and their families and those families workplaces and their families and then any other work places any else in the family work at. By which point you're required to test most of the population. I can't see the government finding near 70million testing kits and processing all that testing.

Yeah, my eldest son's school (which is the school my wife works at) is doing brilliantly.

The kids have their usual lessons with their usual teachers via Teams. It's been absolutely seamless.

We are lucky though as we're in a pretty affluent area where it's pretty much guaranteed that the average pupil has access to a computer at home. We also have a large IBM campus nearby that employs a lot of the school parents, and I believe they assisted in getting Teams up and running for the school.

I don't know how much the government has assisted in rolling out distance-learning processes / funding / equipment though. My suspicion is not much.

At the risk of stroking my own national ego, If I recall correctly the increase in the Swedish mortality rate compared to the 5-year average was closely aligned with the number of people reported as dead in corona, meaning underreporting is less likely to occur in Sweden compared to elsewhere. This, in turn, potentially means Sweden looks bad comparatively speaking because of reporting practices, not because of actual deaths. Will look for a source once I'm not on my phone.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus-missing-deaths.html

EDIT: Found it.

 Overread wrote:
The only way would be staggered start times, which might mean that the school would endup with students perhaps finishing very late in the day. So you spread out the load; but at bigger schools where you're dealing with thousands of students, even staggered would still have a lot of people moving around all at once.


Also what about coaches? A lot of students aren't taken by car, but are collected and bussed in. Again that's another close environment that would need way more coaches to socially distance. Even if the driver is isolated the students are again in a close environment to pass coughs, colds, nits and corona around between themselves.


Heck lets pause and consider that even if students cannot pass corona they can pass loads of other things. There'd be a panic at every cough or cold passed around.

And there's no evidence they don't carry. Generally kids are super effective at spreading diseases though

Not Online!!! wrote:

 ValentineGames wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Funny, recently in germany the did actually attempt to find out just how contagious children were and found no difference so far between them and normal virus carriers .

You've gotta look at who is posting this claim, look at that person's previous posts during this topic and look at the source.

That tells you allot.

.
I don't judge people, i judge arguments.

Schools beeing an incremental part of future economic growth and of social security in some countries what with food hand outs etc is and has a massive effect.

And whilest i disagree with his urge to open the country his stance on government is quite justifyable in many regards.

No point trying to get that across in here though


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 ValentineGames wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Funny, recently in germany the did actually attempt to find out just how contagious children were and found no difference so far between them and normal virus carriers .

You've gotta look at who is posting this claim, look at that person's previous posts during this topic and look at the source.

That tells you allot.

You could always just engage in debate rather than gakposting. I'd enjoy that judging from the amazing content of your previous posts... You realise your post was just an ad hominem?

In my county in my state, the school board has decided to finish the school year with distance learning.

No actual Graduation, Prom, etc. either.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Gitzbitah wrote:
Matt Swain, that's it. That's the story your grandchildren will never believe.

Exalt for peak social isolation!

Wouldn't that have been matt taking his mate behind the shed as the point of peak Isolation that is.

Btw at Matt, if he allready had fever then he should've gone allready.

Yeah, I said that to them, a few times.

Anyway, they called, fever's down, inflammation is diminishing, looking good. One thing about this guy is he always has a supply of antibiotics stockplied so he's covered on the infection front.

in other corona news, there seem to be a lot of suicides among healthcare workers seeing so many people die around them and being helpless. I feel for these people, really I do. I just can't understands how they don't see killing themselves makes the situation worse for everyone, including the people they could have helped. I'm not judging these peiople, god known what seeing dozens of people die every day while you try to save them does to a person's mind. Obviously it's horrible.

I don't know, do we need to start giving anti depressants to healthcare workers? Should we be offering them free antidepressants, THC, etc? Are any countries doing this already?

 Matt Swain wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Gitzbitah wrote:
Matt Swain, that's it. That's the story your grandchildren will never believe.

Exalt for peak social isolation!

Wouldn't that have been matt taking his mate behind the shed as the point of peak Isolation that is.

Btw at Matt, if he allready had fever then he should've gone allready.

Yeah, I said that to them, a few times.

Anyway, they called, fever's down, inflammation is diminishing, looking good. One thing about this guy is he always has a supply of antibiotics stockplied so he's covered on the infection front.

in other corona news, there seem to be a lot of suicides among healthcare workers seeing so many people die around them and being helpless. I feel for these people, really I do. I just can't understands how they don't see killing themselves makes the situation worse for everyone, including the people they could have helped. I'm not judging these peiople, god known what seeing dozens of people die every day while you try to save them does to a person's mind. Obviously it's horrible.

I don't know, do we need to start giving anti depressants to healthcare workers? Should we be offering them free antidepressants, THC, etc? Are any countries doing this already?

With the risk of sounding like a Commie (allbeit it's just corporatism)
No don't fuel the Healthcare workers with drugs. Give them propper working conditions, acceptable hours, acceptable wages and fix up the systems for security off the patients and the workers.

Anti-depressants are designed to work against chemical imbalances in the mind. The typically only work well when used as part of a combination approach including therapy/counselling and support.

Healthcare workers suffering extreme stress are more likely to need more of the latter than the former. It's not so much a chemical imbalance causing their issue, its an environmental situation which is causing the problem.

That would be my laymans understanding of the situation. Ergo you can't "drug them up", you'd have to remove them from the environment. That would mean effective monitoring and support to spot and identify issues in people before it got to a critical point. Better working hours, pay, reduced stress etc.... would all help significantly as well. Heck its already somewhat insane that we consider 12 hour shifts normal and that many work FAR longer hours in the medical profession even during normal working systems let alone during a pandemic.


I agree, drugs are not the answer and would likely only be a temporary mask at the very best, at the worst they could impede judgement and performance. Sadly one of the biggest benefits would be more healthcare workers to spread the load and you can't just train them up in a weekend.

Anti-depressants also take a while to kick in - and can make symptoms worse as they build up. Speaking from experience here.

The main affect in my experience (everyone is different) is to take the edge off, let you start getting your head straight.

Would they benefit some healthcare workers? I don’t doubt it. But...they’re simply not a cure all. And many should not be prescribed if the patient is having suicidal thoughts (I haven’t, just in case people were wondering).

On the record I am not advocating drugging people up just to keep them working. If you want to believe that, I can't stop you.

The thing here that makes me want to cry and scream is that the people killing themselves are likely the most caring and dedicated people in the field who are having their hearts torn out by seeing so many people dying and not able to stop it.

I'm not about just keeping them working like a Bezos would be, I want to save their lives period.

If something would do it better than anti depressants I'm all for it.

Do we need psychs on the hospital floors watching people for signs of danger? Emergency counseling? I mean we should be trying to do something. We have too few trained healthcare workers as it, everyone who dies from whatever cause is too much of a loss.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Higher impact on ethnic minorities remains unexplained.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52492662

I mean, "African and Indian immigrants fill most of our essential jobs and are thus extremely vulnerable to infection" seems to be a pretty good explanation.

Among the many bad side effects of randomly applied psychiatric antidepressants are psychotic mania, suicide, and weight gain. Its not a good idea to give 100 people antidepressants if you think 3 or 4 o fthem need the stuff. You are quite right about the possibility of them enhancing suicidal ideation into action, that's been a problem with some of them, its also a problem with some other therapies that counter depression in some situations. Its not one size fits all by any means.

Hmmm, having a psychologist observe the healthcare staff might be a good idea. They're trained to notice behavior (and behavior changes) that could indicate depression, and you would immediately have someone qualified around to help.

On the other hand, having someone watch you 24/7 to judge whether or not you're going loopy is very likely to significantly add to the already high levels of stress, so I dunno. Food for thought.

The suicides among nurses and doctors does, aside from make me sad, also make me absolutely furious at the idiots protesting beause they want a haircut or go to a bar.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Anti-depressants also take a while to kick in - and can make symptoms worse as they build up. Speaking from experience here.

This. I started on anti-depressants in January (that month absolutely sucked) and still don't really feel level, even now.


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Bran Dawri wrote:
Hmmm, having a psychologist observe the healthcare staff might be a good idea. They're trained to notice behavior (and behavior changes) that could indicate depression, and you would immediately have someone qualified around to help.

On the other hand, having someone watch you 24/7 to judge whether or not you're going loopy is very likely to significantly add to the already high levels of stress, so I dunno. Food for thought.

The suicides among nurses and doctors does, aside from make me sad, also make me absolutely furious at the idiots protesting beause they want a haircut or go to a bar.

I think having counselors available for the staff to talk to would be great, with regular check ups just to make sure people are coping.

But the problem is that, at least here in the UK, we do not have the numbers to be able to do that. The waiting lists for accessing clinical counselling and therapy, even for severe depression, are very long as there is simply not enough doctors to meet the demand.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Higher impact on ethnic minorities remains unexplained.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52492662

What fantastic clickbait. The article content outlines the answer to the article headline.

 Laughing Man wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Higher impact on ethnic minorities remains unexplained.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52492662

I mean, "African and Indian immigrants fill most of our essential jobs and are thus extremely vulnerable to infection" seems to be a pretty good explanation.

20% of NHS worker deaths are Filipino. They make up less than 2% of the workforce. There's more to it.


UK gov make their 100,000 tests per day target. By counting all the tests they sent out rather than those actually completed.

How distribution of ppe is spread. Maybe that explains

Different experience today. Left work early (yeah, I still have to go to work in the mornings) to go to the Asian grocery stores to pick up a few things that I don't feel like paying twice the price for on Amazon. There are two not far from where I work, and practically across the street from each other. Both of them had signs in front refusing entry to anyone not wearing a mask. Just thought that was interesting, compared to not seeing such requirements anywhere else I've been to.

Also, just a warning to everyone here in the US. Stock up on meat while you can. The panic buying appears to have started from what I've heard over on a BBQ forum I'm a part of. It's been in the news all week about the meat processing plants shutting down, and now stores are putting limits on what people can buy, so people will panic buy and make extra trips to get around those limits.

Heh, nice play, Stores! They should start creating product panics on purpose to make up for lost funds during the pandemic.

Starting today masks are required in public, here in San Diego.