When will this shit end?

[FestivalJamie]

2 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

There is a backlog I would imagine, but the increase isn't just down to that as some of it will be cases rising.

Patients in hospital (up to 972) and patients in mechanical ventilator beds (up to 106) are both up as well. 

The last bit of this is the most concerning.

[Ozanne]

1 minute ago, FestivalJamie said:

The last bit of this is the most concerning.

Yeah it is, you can read reports round areas of the country that cases are now filtering through to the older generations and Boltons hospital admissions are mostly men over 40 years old. 

[Andre91]

Resident teacher input: 

I can only speak for my school but we are certainly not sending children home willy-nilly. We have, over the last couple of days, sent 6/7 students home with ailments ranging from throwing up to migraines, all normal stuff which happens day in day out. We haven’t sent anyone home because of the sniffles and we haven’t sent anyone home displaying any of the major COVID symptoms. There has, however, been a hell of a lot of kids off with a cold. A few here and there is to be expected at this time of year but the numbers have been far greater the tail end of last week into this week so far. I’ve never known so many kids off with colds, even during peak winter. Our attendance was 88% today, which is far below where it should be for this time of year.
 

Is it a case of parents being overly cautious and keeping them off for fear of it being COVID (even though everyone surely knows the symptoms by now, right?) or is it due to many kids not mixing with such large numbers since March which has seen their immune systems pounced upon by the common cold? I’m not sure but what I do know is, is that the number of children off school with colds doesn’t have anything to do with teachers but everything to do with parents. 

Edited September 15, 2020 by Andre91

[Ozanne]

Maybe it's also partly because people are more aware of passing on germs even a common cold so will keep kids off school to save passing anything on?

[parsonjack]

1 hour ago, FestivalJamie said:

Doesn’t seem high enough to make up for yesterday’s dip in trend to be honest, seems like there is still a potential backlog.

Unusually the daily testing figures have been published up to yesterday (instead of having to wait until Thursday) and rather than a collapse in the testing process they show the highest run of testing figures recorded to date.....200k+ for 6 consecutive days.  Still way short of the quoted capacity but nevertheless not the drop the media would have us believe.  I've graphed these out as a ratio of cases/tests and, other than the peak on 6th Sept, shows a more gradual rise than we maybe feared.

 

[MEGABOWL]

43 minutes ago, Andre91 said:

Resident teacher input: 

I can only speak for my school but we are certainly not sending children home willy-nilly. We have, over the last couple of days, sent 6/7 students home with ailments ranging from throwing up to migraines, all normal stuff which happens day in day out. We haven’t sent anyone home because of the sniffles and we haven’t sent anyone home displaying any of the major COVID symptoms. There has, however, been a hell of a lot of kids off with a cold. A few here and there is to be expected at this time of year but the numbers have been far greater the tail end of last week into this week so far. I’ve never known so many kids off with colds, even during peak winter. Our attendance was 88% today, which is far below where it should be for this time of year.
 

Is it a case of parents being overly cautious and keeping them off for fear of it being COVID (even though everyone surely knows the symptoms by now, right?) or is it due to many kids not mixing with such large numbers since March which has seen their immune systems pounced upon by the common cold? I’m not sure but what I do know is, is that the number of children off school with colds doesn’t have anything to do with teachers but everything to do with parents. 

What’s happening in your School echoes what I’ve seen up here (Glasgow) over the last 5 weeks. Schools haven’t been particularly zealous unless it’s one of the stabilised Covid symptoms. After that it’s down to the parents. Seemed like the vast majority of the kids got a Cold in late August though, being cooped up is not good for them.

[Ozanne]

 

Should be good.

[stuartbert two hats]

FWIW, my daughter had a snotty nose yesterday and a non-persitant, but new cough and on the advice of school, we kept her off school. Last night she developed a mildish temperature (38.2) and ended up having a COVID test this afternoon

There's no way we would have sent her in without consulting with the school. Yes, she is our responsibility, but the school's responsibility is the community. If it turns out she does have COVID, then it's a good job she was kept off as a precautionary measure, since she could have taken the whole class out yesterday.

Given all we know about asymptomatic carriers, especially in children, it seems eminently sensible to err on the side of caution. Especially if we don't want all the schools shut again.

[Ozanne]

8 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

FWIW, my daughter had a snotty nose yesterday and a non-persitant, but new cough and on the advice of school, we kept her off school. Last night she developed a mildish temperature (38.2) and ended up having a COVID test this afternoon

There's no way we would have sent her in without consulting with the school. Yes, she is our responsibility, but the school's responsibility is the community. If it turns out she does have COVID, then it's a good job she was kept off as a precautionary measure, since she could have taken the whole class out yesterday.

Given all we know about asymptomatic carriers, especially in children, it seems eminently sensible to err on the side of caution. Especially if we don't want all the schools shut again.

I hope the results come back negative and she's alright mate.

[stuartbert two hats]

4 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

I hope the results come back negative and she's alright mate.

I'm sure she will, it's clearly a cold. Need to be careful though.

[Toilet Duck]

9 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

FWIW, my daughter had a snotty nose yesterday and a non-persitant, but new cough and on the advice of school, we kept her off school. Last night she developed a mildish temperature (38.2) and ended up having a COVID test this afternoon

There's no way we would have sent her in without consulting with the school. Yes, she is our responsibility, but the school's responsibility is the community. If it turns out she does have COVID, then it's a good job she was kept off as a precautionary measure, since she could have taken the whole class out yesterday.

Given all we know about asymptomatic carriers, especially in children, it seems eminently sensible to err on the side of caution. Especially if we don't want all the schools shut again.

Fingers crossed she’s ok mate, hopefully she didn’t find the test too stressful. There’s a lot of rhinovirus around at the moment though, but with 3 possible symptoms, I think you did the right thing. 

[Crazyfool01]

18 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

FWIW, my daughter had a snotty nose yesterday and a non-persitant, but new cough and on the advice of school, we kept her off school. Last night she developed a mildish temperature (38.2) and ended up having a COVID test this afternoon

There's no way we would have sent her in without consulting with the school. Yes, she is our responsibility, but the school's responsibility is the community. If it turns out she does have COVID, then it's a good job she was kept off as a precautionary measure, since she could have taken the whole class out yesterday.

Given all we know about asymptomatic carriers, especially in children, it seems eminently sensible to err on the side of caution. Especially if we don't want all the schools shut again.

The right shout .... I presume you had no issues with getting a test then ? hope she recovers soon and gets a negative test 

[Mimo]

Hi rarely post just came by whilst procrastinating and thought I'd chip in on the old schools/testing discussion.

My boy will generally have a temp around 4 times over winter months, so when it inevitably happens this year he'll be off for up to 14 days pending a negative test result. Now of course from our POV it'd be great to be able to have a test back within 24 hours so he can get back to school sooner, but ultimately that's not the most important function of the testing. It's not for his benefit (he'll be fine), or even our benefit (we'll probably be fine 😬), but for the benefit of his classmates and their families to ensure that if there has been an outbreak at school it's caught ASAP to try and stop a grandparent or vulnerable relative catching it. 

School advice is that if a kid has symptoms they stay home, and then if they have a positive test the whole bubble stays home for 2 weeks to prevent spread. Hence if kids can't get tested quickly the virus is gonna spread. 

My daughter meanwhile is prone to a cough, and we spent a lot of time back in April agonising over how to interpret the symptom advice. 3 coughing episodes throughout the day is quite vague really, how do we define a coughing 'episode'? Coughing for a minute? 5 minutes? How much coughing is considered to be coughing 'a lot' as measured over an hour? It's open to interpretation, and of course there is no correct answer as the severity of symptoms range from hardly anything at all to being completely unable to breathe. So again if she starts coughing a lot we'll be keeping her home and looking to get her tested just in case.

Now I'm sure there are some parents and/or schools who might be overreacting, but kids get temperatures and coughs alllll the time and I'd suggest that the vast majority of people are being very sensible indeed. The reference table going around that schools have been sending out is a good example of this, clear instructions for the full range of scenarios.

End of the day though it's incredibly disheartening that the community testing system seems to have completely fallen over at the first sign of pressure. It was blindingly obvious that there'd be a large increase in demand when schools went back just from parents acting as responsible citizens, never-mind those overreacting or with frustrations about kids being out of school for another fortnight.

Government opted to let an amount of virus circulate over summer to protect some of the economy, that's understandable. The danger of that approach however is that when numbers do begin to increase it can very quickly get away from you, as we saw in March and to a lesser extent (hopefully) as we're seeing again now. Ergo it would have been prudent of them to ramp up the testing capacity as far as humanly possible throughout July and August. But no.

Procrastination done, back to work, take it easy  

[stuartbert two hats]

22 minutes ago, Toilet Duck said:

Fingers crossed she’s ok mate, hopefully she didn’t find the test too stressful. There’s a lot of rhinovirus around at the moment though, but with 3 possible symptoms, I think you did the right thing. 

Three? I only count temperature and cough. Runny nose doesn't count, does it?

17 minutes ago, crazyfool1 said:

The right shout .... I presume you had no issues with getting a test then ? hope she recovers soon and gets a negative test 

I believe it was quite a palava, her mum sorted it, I'd been working all day and am currently putting the girl to bed, so not sure on the details.

[Toilet Duck]

25 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

Three? I only count temperature and cough. Runny nose doesn't count, does it?

I believe it was quite a palava, her mum sorted it, I'd been working all day and am currently putting the girl to bed, so not sure on the details.

Sorry, mis-counted! 

[JoeyT]

 

[steviewevie]

Sweden

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/15/sweden-records-its-fewest-daily-covid-19-cases-since-march

[Crazyfool01]

2 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Sweden

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/15/sweden-records-its-fewest-daily-covid-19-cases-since-march

that was posted earlier I think .... not much good for us mask / face covering campaigners 

[shoptildrop]

5 hours ago, steviewevie said:

 

Yep they had already reported a rise in Tameside hospital last week, no it's not massive but its enough to sound alarm bells unfortunately

3 Manchester borough's now over 100 case per 100K (I'm Tameside  )

 

[steviewevie]

1 minute ago, crazyfool1 said:

that was posted earlier I think .... not much good for us mask / face covering campaigners 

oh...sorry. I think the main point with Sweden is trust, trust in the govt, and the govt trusting the people...and the fact they have been consistent with a light touch approach so haven't had to keep changing rules and making people more confused and less compliant like here. Shops/pubs/restaurants were kept open, but people were asked to work from home if they can, and keep distance when out, but not told to wear masks.  Schools were kept open except 16+ schools and Unis. At same time, they have had a lot more deaths than other nordic countries, but maybe they will do better this winter, or maybe cases will start to increase there too. 

[shoptildrop]

Schools in Manchester not doing so great either, 110 of them have some sort of bubble quarantine 

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/schools-confirmed-positive-covid-cases-18940427

 

[Crazyfool01]

im not quite sure why but one of our local schools bishop foxes taunton featured in the national news earlier ..... but school bubbles are getting isolated everywhere ... see above 

[sedra]

I think trying to get a test is almost as difficult as getting tickets 🙄 Colleague who is a key worker has been trying since Friday! 

[funkychick2007]

1 hour ago, stuartbert two hats said:

FWIW, my daughter had a snotty nose yesterday and a non-persitant, but new cough and on the advice of school, we kept her off school. Last night she developed a mildish temperature (38.2) and ended up having a COVID test this afternoon

There's no way we would have sent her in without consulting with the school. Yes, she is our responsibility, but the school's responsibility is the community. If it turns out she does have COVID, then it's a good job she was kept off as a precautionary measure, since she could have taken the whole class out yesterday.

Given all we know about asymptomatic carriers, especially in children, it seems eminently sensible to err on the side of caution. Especially if we don't want all the schools shut again.

Upvoted for the response To situation not because she is feeling ill!!! Hope she feels better soon!! 

[steviewevie]

This is great from Rafael Behr...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/sep/15/boris-johnson-brexit-swindle-ireland-eurosceptic-good-friday-agreement