| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January 23:30 - Dec 28 with 5970 views | StokieBlue |
They seem very reluctant to take that advice for various reasons (some of which are definitely valid and need to be considered) but the modelling from SAGE and others pretty much says it's impossible to get the R below 1 with the schools open with the new variant (which adds ~0.4 to the baseline R).
"They found that the only scenario that reduced the peak intensive care burden below the levels of the first wave was to impose the tier 4 system across England after Boxing Day and close schools until the end of January, as well as vaccinating 2 million people a week."
We are doing 0/3 of those things at the moment.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/28/coronavirus-michael-gove-reopening
https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-uk-government-scientists-close-schoo
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| Avatar - IC410 - Tadpoles Nebula |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 23:39 - Dec 28 with 2666 views | J2BLUE |
Could we not close them now for a month and extend the end of term by a fortnight so they only lose two weeks? Might not be popular with kids or teachers but would still give them a month off in the summer and maybe they could fast track exam results etc?
Not sure how feasible it would be. Easy for me to say as I have no kids but we are in critical times and we need to take the hit. |  |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 00:00 - Dec 29 with 2610 views | monytowbray |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 23:39 - Dec 28 by J2BLUE |
Could we not close them now for a month and extend the end of term by a fortnight so they only lose two weeks? Might not be popular with kids or teachers but would still give them a month off in the summer and maybe they could fast track exam results etc?
Not sure how feasible it would be. Easy for me to say as I have no kids but we are in critical times and we need to take the hit. |
Are we still pretending this lot have any idea what they are doing? |  |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 00:25 - Dec 29 with 2581 views | Yallop |
I'll back whatever they decide is the safest option but crack on and decide. Trying to work and plan childcare isn't easy |  | | |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 00:26 - Dec 29 with 2596 views | slaughteredskipper |
I’m the headteacher of a primary school. I have contracted Covid as have 13 of my colleagues. All of those colleagues literally have been in lockdown the whole time apart from attending work to support children and let’s face it the economy. How committed do we want to be to knock this virus on the head once and for all? We need to recognise that large numbers of children are carriers. They may not be symptomatic or (thank god) hugely affected but they continue to carry the virus. My daughter is 14 and tested positive with no symptoms whatsoever. Watch the numbers of children testing positive rise when testing in schools starts. Time for the Government to take control of this, move to online learning for a period of time until vaccination is well under way then consider a serious programme of catch-up to ensure the futures of our children. |  | | |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 08:56 - Dec 29 with 2337 views | mikeybloo88 |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 00:26 - Dec 29 by slaughteredskipper |
I’m the headteacher of a primary school. I have contracted Covid as have 13 of my colleagues. All of those colleagues literally have been in lockdown the whole time apart from attending work to support children and let’s face it the economy. How committed do we want to be to knock this virus on the head once and for all? We need to recognise that large numbers of children are carriers. They may not be symptomatic or (thank god) hugely affected but they continue to carry the virus. My daughter is 14 and tested positive with no symptoms whatsoever. Watch the numbers of children testing positive rise when testing in schools starts. Time for the Government to take control of this, move to online learning for a period of time until vaccination is well under way then consider a serious programme of catch-up to ensure the futures of our children. |
Teachers of course should be vaccinated as a priority, but that doesn't solve the issue of transmission from kids to family to community. It should not be a binary option of all schools open or closed, let the school leaders decide how thy can best provide the safest schooling and don't pillory or threaten them if their conclusion doesn't suit you... |  | | |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 09:11 - Dec 29 with 2289 views | Radlett_blue |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 00:26 - Dec 29 by slaughteredskipper |
I’m the headteacher of a primary school. I have contracted Covid as have 13 of my colleagues. All of those colleagues literally have been in lockdown the whole time apart from attending work to support children and let’s face it the economy. How committed do we want to be to knock this virus on the head once and for all? We need to recognise that large numbers of children are carriers. They may not be symptomatic or (thank god) hugely affected but they continue to carry the virus. My daughter is 14 and tested positive with no symptoms whatsoever. Watch the numbers of children testing positive rise when testing in schools starts. Time for the Government to take control of this, move to online learning for a period of time until vaccination is well under way then consider a serious programme of catch-up to ensure the futures of our children. |
If lockdown would "knock this virus on the head for once and all", then it would be a great idea. Unfortunately, it won't - the virus will re-emerge unless the whole country is put in an authoritarian lock-down where EVERYTHING is shut. That won't be acceptable or enforceable.
I'm glad I don't have to make the decision about schools because there are no policies that don't have some bad consequences. |  |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 09:14 - Dec 29 with 2278 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 00:26 - Dec 29 by slaughteredskipper |
I’m the headteacher of a primary school. I have contracted Covid as have 13 of my colleagues. All of those colleagues literally have been in lockdown the whole time apart from attending work to support children and let’s face it the economy. How committed do we want to be to knock this virus on the head once and for all? We need to recognise that large numbers of children are carriers. They may not be symptomatic or (thank god) hugely affected but they continue to carry the virus. My daughter is 14 and tested positive with no symptoms whatsoever. Watch the numbers of children testing positive rise when testing in schools starts. Time for the Government to take control of this, move to online learning for a period of time until vaccination is well under way then consider a serious programme of catch-up to ensure the futures of our children. |
You can stop worrying now as you can phone one of 1,500 military personnel for advice on administering the lateral flow tests that don't work!
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/dec/29/armed-forces-to-support-covid- |  |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 09:41 - Dec 29 with 2196 views | giant_stow |
Personnally, I was incredibly frustrated by the lack of teaching in the spring, when we had all those long sunny days to make use of, but this feels different. With the vaccine on the way, there's an end in sight, so why not box clever now? It does seem that there's been a real flurry of cases all over my son's primary school, which if repeated everywhere, makes you wonder what's the point of soldering on. |  |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 09:41 - Dec 29 with 2190 views | CBBlue |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 00:25 - Dec 29 by Yallop |
I'll back whatever they decide is the safest option but crack on and decide. Trying to work and plan childcare isn't easy |
The argument that shutting schools will disrupt children's education is looking pretty weak at the moment as so many classes/bubbles are isolating anyway. The kids and teachers (and parents) don't know when their bubble will be sent home next and that's got to be so disrupting if you're trying to teach - if the teachers knew they were planning for 100% online learning in Jan rather than having the likelihood of suddenly switching from in-class to online with an hour's notice it'd have less disruption on the learning. In my child's primary school one bubble was off, returned for a week then had to self-isolate again and I can only see that kind of disruption increasing. |  |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 10:31 - Dec 29 with 2067 views | StokieBlue |
They do work, the issue is they can miss a lot of cases and thus can register false negatives (as much as 40%).
However, the false positive rate is about 0.38% so if you test positive you're supposed to get a PCR test straight away which should confirm that and thus they can catch a lot of asymptomatic cases.
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| Avatar - IC410 - Tadpoles Nebula |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 10:33 - Dec 29 with 2059 views | StokieBlue |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 08:56 - Dec 29 by mikeybloo88 |
Teachers of course should be vaccinated as a priority, but that doesn't solve the issue of transmission from kids to family to community. It should not be a binary option of all schools open or closed, let the school leaders decide how thy can best provide the safest schooling and don't pillory or threaten them if their conclusion doesn't suit you... |
I'm not sure about this.
The decision should really be centralised and linked to tier of the location of the school. Putting all the decision onto the schools themselves really doesn't seem fair or a feasible thing to do, especially as they might not have all the information available to the government (although perhaps they should).
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| Avatar - IC410 - Tadpoles Nebula |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 10:40 - Dec 29 with 2037 views | NthQldITFC |
Not sure if this model https://localcovid.info/ which includes historical and predicted data has been discussed on here before Stokie, but to my inexpert eyes it suggests that it is going to need extreme measures to force the R value back to 1 or below. So yes, schools shut and extended firebreak type national lockdown, just to hold ground until more vaccinations have been done.
Interestingly from hopping around the map, it seems to me empirically that adjacent areas share similar characteristics in terms of timings of spikes in the Rt value. It would be interesting to see how well that correlates with past local lockdowns as opposed to national lockdowns. The people behind the model seem suitably qualified.
EDIT: East Cambridgeshire is a remarkable standout, I wonder why? [Post edited 29 Dec 2020 10:43]
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| # WE ARE STEALING THE FUTURE FROM OUR CHILDREN --- WE MUST CHANGE COURSE # | | Poll: | It's driving me nuts |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 10:47 - Dec 29 with 2009 views | StokieBlue |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 10:40 - Dec 29 by NthQldITFC |
Not sure if this model https://localcovid.info/ which includes historical and predicted data has been discussed on here before Stokie, but to my inexpert eyes it suggests that it is going to need extreme measures to force the R value back to 1 or below. So yes, schools shut and extended firebreak type national lockdown, just to hold ground until more vaccinations have been done.
Interestingly from hopping around the map, it seems to me empirically that adjacent areas share similar characteristics in terms of timings of spikes in the Rt value. It would be interesting to see how well that correlates with past local lockdowns as opposed to national lockdowns. The people behind the model seem suitably qualified.
EDIT: East Cambridgeshire is a remarkable standout, I wonder why? [Post edited 29 Dec 2020 10:43]
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I've not seen that before but it's a great website.
The variant is the issue. Previously a lockdown had a good chance of getting the R below 1 with some things like schools still open but given the new variant adds ~0.4 to the baseline R we actually need measures that would have gotten the R to around 0.6 previously. That is a simplistic take but I think summarises the challenge the new variant poses.
I'll take a proper look at the data later on.
As for bordering regions having similar spike timings that would make sense, the flow of people from one region to the next isn't really stopped by tiering, especially if those tiers are the same.
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| Avatar - IC410 - Tadpoles Nebula |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 10:55 - Dec 29 with 1958 views | Nthsuffolkblue |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 10:40 - Dec 29 by NthQldITFC |
Not sure if this model https://localcovid.info/ which includes historical and predicted data has been discussed on here before Stokie, but to my inexpert eyes it suggests that it is going to need extreme measures to force the R value back to 1 or below. So yes, schools shut and extended firebreak type national lockdown, just to hold ground until more vaccinations have been done.
Interestingly from hopping around the map, it seems to me empirically that adjacent areas share similar characteristics in terms of timings of spikes in the Rt value. It would be interesting to see how well that correlates with past local lockdowns as opposed to national lockdowns. The people behind the model seem suitably qualified.
EDIT: East Cambridgeshire is a remarkable standout, I wonder why? [Post edited 29 Dec 2020 10:43]
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I presume your edit is pointing out that it is remarkably low and you are relating it to the fact it has a high density of scientific qualified people - i.e. ones who might take the advice seriously. |  |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 10:58 - Dec 29 with 1944 views | Pinewoodblue |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 10:40 - Dec 29 by NthQldITFC |
Not sure if this model https://localcovid.info/ which includes historical and predicted data has been discussed on here before Stokie, but to my inexpert eyes it suggests that it is going to need extreme measures to force the R value back to 1 or below. So yes, schools shut and extended firebreak type national lockdown, just to hold ground until more vaccinations have been done.
Interestingly from hopping around the map, it seems to me empirically that adjacent areas share similar characteristics in terms of timings of spikes in the Rt value. It would be interesting to see how well that correlates with past local lockdowns as opposed to national lockdowns. The people behind the model seem suitably qualified.
EDIT: East Cambridgeshire is a remarkable standout, I wonder why? [Post edited 29 Dec 2020 10:43]
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If anything that data would seem to suggest that we should do away with tiers, Herefordshire and Isle of Whight, both in Tier 1 for the period covered, have the highest R rate.
We should be all in this together. |  |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:00 - Dec 29 with 1930 views | NthQldITFC |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 10:55 - Dec 29 by Nthsuffolkblue |
I presume your edit is pointing out that it is remarkably low and you are relating it to the fact it has a high density of scientific qualified people - i.e. ones who might take the advice seriously. |
The thought had crossed my mind. | |
| # WE ARE STEALING THE FUTURE FROM OUR CHILDREN --- WE MUST CHANGE COURSE # | | Poll: | It's driving me nuts |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:06 - Dec 29 with 1902 views | NthQldITFC |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 10:47 - Dec 29 by StokieBlue |
I've not seen that before but it's a great website.
The variant is the issue. Previously a lockdown had a good chance of getting the R below 1 with some things like schools still open but given the new variant adds ~0.4 to the baseline R we actually need measures that would have gotten the R to around 0.6 previously. That is a simplistic take but I think summarises the challenge the new variant poses.
I'll take a proper look at the data later on.
As for bordering regions having similar spike timings that would make sense, the flow of people from one region to the next isn't really stopped by tiering, especially if those tiers are the same.
SB |
I stumbled across it when I was hunting for an animated (wrt time) map at the Upper or preferably Lower Tier Local Authority level, which would show the creeping spread of infection density, and how that had been changing since the new variant took hold. Obviously it's not animated and it's R rate rather than infection density directly, but with the timeline on this map you can achieve a flickbook effect with continuous clicking. | |
| # WE ARE STEALING THE FUTURE FROM OUR CHILDREN --- WE MUST CHANGE COURSE # | | Poll: | It's driving me nuts |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:17 - Dec 29 with 1876 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 10:31 - Dec 29 by StokieBlue |
They do work, the issue is they can miss a lot of cases and thus can register false negatives (as much as 40%).
However, the false positive rate is about 0.38% so if you test positive you're supposed to get a PCR test straight away which should confirm that and thus they can catch a lot of asymptomatic cases.
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Unless I am missing something your first sentence sounds like the definition of something not working! | |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:24 - Dec 29 with 1848 views | StokieBlue |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:17 - Dec 29 by BanksterDebtSlave |
Unless I am missing something your first sentence sounds like the definition of something not working! |
Yes, you're missing something.
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| Avatar - IC410 - Tadpoles Nebula |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:29 - Dec 29 with 1832 views | StokieBlue |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:06 - Dec 29 by NthQldITFC |
I stumbled across it when I was hunting for an animated (wrt time) map at the Upper or preferably Lower Tier Local Authority level, which would show the creeping spread of infection density, and how that had been changing since the new variant took hold. Obviously it's not animated and it's R rate rather than infection density directly, but with the timeline on this map you can achieve a flickbook effect with continuous clicking. |
Unfortunately it doesn't look like they make there data publicly available through an API, otherwise you could have probably put something together if you were willing to spend the time.
A map might have been tricky (there may be a library for it) but you could do an animated timeline using pandas and matplotlib.
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| Avatar - IC410 - Tadpoles Nebula |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:30 - Dec 29 with 1828 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:24 - Dec 29 by StokieBlue |
Yes, you're missing something.
SB |
Help me out....doesn't it mean that out of 100 positive pupils, 40 get missed and stay at school infecting others? | |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:37 - Dec 29 with 1807 views | lowhouseblue |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:30 - Dec 29 by BanksterDebtSlave |
Help me out....doesn't it mean that out of 100 positive pupils, 40 get missed and stay at school infecting others? |
not sure the maths is quite right, but if you take a majority of positive cases out of circulation you will significantly reduced r. taking more out of circulation would of course be even better, but a test which is quick, cheap, and can significantly reduce r is a very good thing. |  |
| And so as the loose-bowelled pigeon of time swoops low over the unsuspecting tourist of destiny, and the flatulent skunk of fate wanders into the air-conditioning system of eternity, I notice it's the end of the show |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:40 - Dec 29 with 1800 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:37 - Dec 29 by lowhouseblue |
not sure the maths is quite right, but if you take a majority of positive cases out of circulation you will significantly reduced r. taking more out of circulation would of course be even better, but a test which is quick, cheap, and can significantly reduce r is a very good thing. |
....but doesn't work very well and gives false reassurance.
Edit...surely the current year group exclusion reduces R far quicker too? [Post edited 29 Dec 2020 11:42]
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:43 - Dec 29 with 1780 views | lowhouseblue |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:40 - Dec 29 by BanksterDebtSlave |
....but doesn't work very well and gives false reassurance.
Edit...surely the current year group exclusion reduces R far quicker too? [Post edited 29 Dec 2020 11:42]
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it works well in reducing r. it is not being used on it's own - you also have all of the tier 4 restrictions, so false reassurance shouldn't lead to risky behaviour. which bit of how the test is to be used do you not follow? | |
| And so as the loose-bowelled pigeon of time swoops low over the unsuspecting tourist of destiny, and the flatulent skunk of fate wanders into the air-conditioning system of eternity, I notice it's the end of the show |
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| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:52 - Dec 29 with 1746 views | BanksterDebtSlave |
| Government being advised that schools should be closed in January on 11:43 - Dec 29 by lowhouseblue |
it works well in reducing r. it is not being used on it's own - you also have all of the tier 4 restrictions, so false reassurance shouldn't lead to risky behaviour. which bit of how the test is to be used do you not follow? |
None of it....just parents and everyone they work with...shops...then. Great! | |
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