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Coronavirus - the new strain XXIII

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chartz said:
A whopping 1,700,000 tested positive this week (Monday to today) in France.
But my guess is that many were kids. I’ve just heard on the news that about 5,000 out of 100,000 kids tested positive on average over a week.
Any similar numbers in the UK?
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Here's the ONS survey by age up to Jan 15th.

6bU4JUK.png
 
Cav said:
I watch BBC news once a day. I have never heard a presenter say that. What I do note is that the graph of cases, admissions and deaths always has, in small print at the bottom left, the phrase "died within 28 days of a positive Covid test".
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You watch the news, perhaps it's unique to BBC radio and not on TV.
 
Orwellian red-underlined command from the govt's latest HE guidance. Even if this is assessed as too risky, based on best evidence & analysis, we must pretend that everything is now as it was before the pandemic. Ignorance is strength.

'Risk assessments should never be used to prevent providers delivering the full programme of face to face teaching and learning that they were providing before the pandemic'


https://twitter.com/MikeOtsuka/status/1484466338034864128/photo/1
 
clivem2 said:
It’s just been said again on the beeb…”although some people will not have died from Covid”.
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What isn’t said, of course is that there will also be people who die from COVID >28 days after a positive test. These don’t make the stats, and the view had always been that the non-COVID deaths counted would in broad terms offset the uncounted COVID deaths.
 
gavreid said:
Orwellian red-underlined command from the govt's latest HE guidance. Even if this is assessed as too risky, based on best evidence & analysis, we must pretend that everything is now as it was before the pandemic. Ignorance is strength.

'Risk assessments should never be used to prevent providers delivering the full programme of face to face teaching and learning that they were providing before the pandemic'


https://twitter.com/MikeOtsuka/status/1484466338034864128/photo/1
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FFS!!! It’s a real life dystopian nightmare. Mind you this batshit crazy nonsense seems to have the support from some educators.
 
gavreid said:
Orwellian red-underlined command from the govt's latest HE guidance. Even if this is assessed as too risky, based on best evidence & analysis, we must pretend that everything is now as it was before the pandemic. Ignorance is strength.

'Risk assessments should never be used to prevent providers delivering the full programme of face to face teaching and learning that they were providing before the pandemic'


https://twitter.com/MikeOtsuka/status/1484466338034864128/photo/1
Click to expand...
I would be interested to hear what PFM posters who are directly involved in education think. When school risk assessments w.r.t. Covid were last discussed on here, based on a small sample, it looked like they were based on government guidance. Which itself was quite weak and only addressed the ventilation problem in vague terms. Since then I have read a union report which was clearer:

https://www.unison.org.uk/content/uploads/2022/01/Checklist-Final-PDF.pdf

Ventilation
† All settings should by now have access to CO2 monitors and ventilation measures should keep CO2 below 800ppm in all occupied classrooms.

† The CO2 monitoring results should feed into a risk assessment, and if the levels are consistently above 800ppm, and ventilation cannot be improved, naturally or mechanically, then options include reducing the number of people in the room, reducing the length of time groups spend in the room, or temporarily vacating the room. Any areas identified as having levels of CO2 consistently above 800ppm should be provided with supplemental ventilation, such as a HEPA filtration unit. The Department for Education (DfE) is rolling out a very limited number of these units, but most schools will not be able to benefit from this scheme. We cannot recommend particular models, but this list does offer a wider range of options than the two expensive models recommended by the DfE.


Unions calling for a much better response from the government:

https://www.unitetheunion.org/news-...-for-urgent-action-on-ventilation-in-schools/


And a general complaint about the poor state of ventilation in schools as the government does little to nothing to help:

https://www.cypnow.co.uk/news/article/government-failing-on-classroom-ventilation-union-claims


And how should schools protect pupils and staff who are more vulnerable to Covid through weakened immune systems etc?

Whilst balancing all this with the need to educate efficiently and effectively and try to recover teaching time that has been lost due to Covid (schols shut, online lessons, pupil absences, staff absences, MPIs making teaching more difficult etc).
 
IanW said:
I would be interested to hear what PFM posters who are directly involved in education think.
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This was for HE of course. I don't see UCU falling for that, risk assessments are required for any activity. Students were allowed 45cm each of linear bench space in the lecture rooms where I worked and the ventilation was minimal - if the advice is unlawful then it has no standing. We know that Johnson overrode the DoE guidance to schools already
 
gavreid said:
This was for HE of course. I don't see UCU falling for that, risk assessments are required for any activity. If the advice is unlawful then it has no standing. We know that Johnson overrode the DoE guidance to schools already
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My mistake, I read it as applying across education.

Nonetheless my questions are still valid as if the government is happy to over ride risk assessments in HE it seems likely it will be happy to over ride risk assessments in schools, and my wider questions are just looking at the overall situation.
 
IanW said:
Nonetheless my questions are still valid as if the government is happy to over ride risk assessments in HE it seems likely it will be happy to over ride risk assessments in schools, and my wider questions are just looking at the overall situation.
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It can't do - hs@w act, they're just trying it on.
 
IanW said:
I would be interested to hear what PFM posters who are directly involved in education think. When school risk assessments w.r.t. Covid were last discussed on here, based on a small sample, it looked like they were based on government guidance. Which itself was quite weak and only addressed the ventilation problem in vague terms. Since then I have read a union report which was clearer:

https://www.unison.org.uk/content/uploads/2022/01/Checklist-Final-PDF.pdf

Ventilation
† All settings should by now have access to CO2 monitors and ventilation measures should keep CO2 below 800ppm in all occupied classrooms.

† The CO2 monitoring results should feed into a risk assessment, and if the levels are consistently above 800ppm, and ventilation cannot be improved, naturally or mechanically, then options include reducing the number of people in the room, reducing the length of time groups spend in the room, or temporarily vacating the room. Any areas identified as having levels of CO2 consistently above 800ppm should be provided with supplemental ventilation, such as a HEPA filtration unit. The Department for Education (DfE) is rolling out a very limited number of these units, but most schools will not be able to benefit from this scheme. We cannot recommend particular models, but this list does offer a wider range of options than the two expensive models recommended by the DfE.


Unions calling for a much better response from the government:

https://www.unitetheunion.org/news-...-for-urgent-action-on-ventilation-in-schools/


And a general complaint about the poor state of ventilation in schools as the government does little to nothing to help:

https://www.cypnow.co.uk/news/article/government-failing-on-classroom-ventilation-union-claims


And how should schools protect pupils and staff who are more vulnerable to Covid through weakened immune systems etc?

Whilst balancing all this with the need to educate efficiently and effectively and try to recover teaching time that has been lost due to Covid (schols shut, online lessons, pupil absences, staff absences, MPIs making teaching more difficult etc).
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Has to be seen as part of the government’s war on universities: it’s just shoring up a bit of ammo. How it plays out will be different in each institution, I’d have thought, depending on strength of union branch, militancy of management, other factors such as availability of space, bolshiness of students.
 
IanW said:
I would certainly hope that they cannot just over ride healthy and safety guidance.
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In effect they're telling the institutions that if they need to limit numbers then they need to repeat classes as necessary. That's just pie in the sky, HE has been a bums on seats enterprise for many years.
 
gavreid said:
Orwellian red-underlined command from the govt's latest HE guidance. Even if this is assessed as too risky, based on best evidence & analysis, we must pretend that everything is now as it was before the pandemic. Ignorance is strength.

'Risk assessments should never be used to prevent providers delivering the full programme of face to face teaching and learning that they were providing before the pandemic'


https://twitter.com/MikeOtsuka/status/1484466338034864128/photo/1
Click to expand...

If anyone gets seriously ill from COVID-19 as a result of this could they not sue under the Health & Safety At Work Act? This seems to fly in the face of the Act's requirements.
 
flatpopely said:
Dr Campbell on Australia:-

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The interesting thing here for me was what's happening in Israel, which I was completely unaware of and I can't explain off the top of my head. Maybe it's to do with the % with third doses of vaccine there, or more worryingly for us, booster wane.

Also it's slightly disturbing when anyone mentions the possibility of a UK flu epidemic in 2022. But there's kind of no point in thinking about it, if it happens it happens.
 
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