Those lovely people at the Daily Mail (Daily Heil) certainly think that we should:
There are one or two problems with this newspaper story. Well, there are dozens but I have to summarise to make this post readable. Let's start with the Mail's lying. The vast majority of teachers are against opening the schools at this time. Nobody thinks its a good idea. Everybody thinks its a terrible idea. The unions are doing merely what you would expect in trying to protect their members. The newspapers here heavily support our Conservative government and have seen their physical sales and advertising revenues collapse during the pandemic, so they are pro easing the lockdown.
As I've said many times, easing the lockdown before you have proper test-trace-isolate procedures puts you at risk of losing control of the virus. France has fewer cases than us and better (well... less inadequate) testing procedures and even they are having problems trying to open up.
Schools are a particular issue too. Even the limited re-opening which the government are bringing in will create massive virus spreading centres. The lower end of Primary school is due to be one of the first back. Yes, these young kids are very low risk in terms of dying but they are very high risk in terms of spreading the disease. I work as a primary school teacher myself and let me tell you that the zero chance of getting children between four and six years of age to social distance effectively. Anyone with any experience of a primary setting thinks that this is nuts, which it is.
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Actually, almost everybody thinks it’s a good idea except teachers, and some “scientists“, both of which groups have axes to grind. It’s interesting that one of the political side effects of the virus has been the reopening of the traditional divide between producers and consumers. Producers - teachers, public transport workers, sports teams and many others - tend to be very reluctant about returning to work because they fear they might contract the virus, despite the overwhelming evidence that if they are under 60 and don’t have a heart or lung condition they have nothing to fear. Consumers - schoolchildren and their parents, students, people trying to get to work, sports fans etc - tend to have a different view. You and I would probably be on different sides of this divide, even were you not a teacher and I not retired!
@MartinII Most people in the UK support keeping the lockkdown and im predicting that will increase when the easing of the lockdown means a second wave.
Consumers and producers are often the same people and everyone is at risk.
@MartinII One would think - the way most people feel about their children - that the schools would be the last thing to re-open.
Our children are the most important thing in the world - aren’t they? Most people and organizations bend over backwards to protect children. Why is this different?
@Burnley123 I’m not sure about that. Up till now most people, myself included, have been inclined to support whatever the government said was necessary. I detect a big divide developing over the last fortnight. As to your statement “everyone is at risk” you know perfectly well that is not true, as all the statistics demonstrate.
@Burnley123 Hardly, or certainly no more than from ordinary flu. The death rate from Covid-19 among healthy people under 60 is negligible. I think I’m right in saying that there’s no recorded case of a child dying from Covid-19 anywhere in the world. It is of course true that people who are infected or carrying the virus are a potential danger to those in vulnerable categories. On the other hand, there has been a considerable increase in the death rate from other causes as a result of measures taken to prioritise treatment and prevention of Covid-19, and this is likely to continue for a considerable time as people who have, for example, been denied cancer treatment die earlier than they otherwise would have done. Indeed, this increase in the general death rate would be regarded as a scandal in other circumstances.
@MartinII I believe the death rate has gone down because of the lockdown due to less traffic and workplace accidents. Camcer patients may struggle to get treatment but they will struggle more if the lockdown liftes because Convid cases will inxrease.
@Burnley123 I don't know if it's true or if you have heard South Korea have had increase in virus and now shutting some schools, have you heard about this
@Burnley123 No. There have been 55,000 excess deaths in the UK this year (figure from today’s Times). The current total for coronavirus-related deaths is just over 36,000. So there have been about 19,000 extra deaths from other causes. In the absence of any known specific explanation for this, one must assume that most of these are indirectly related to Covid-19, in particular the result of treatment for other serious illnesses being withdrawn or delayed. (The true figure will be somewhat greater than 19,000, because some of the deaths attributed to Covid-19 will have been of elderly or ill people who would have died anyway.)
@Burnley123 See today’s Times, headline “Covid-19: Britain has higher rate of excess deaths than anywhere in Europe.”
As to whether there would have been many more deaths without the lockdown, we simply don’t know. Instinct, circumstantial evidence and scientific orthodoxy all suggest it is likely, but there is no counterfactual, so no hard evidence. Everyone affected has had lockdowns. Even Sweden, which claims not to have had a lockdown, actually has, but more permissive than most.
