British hopes of summer holidays abroad quashed!

[Kamisiana]

Never mind when there is a massive spike in the Chinese virus in a few weeks you can blame the black lives matter protests in Bristol and all over the UK, not much social distancing going on at them, instead of blaming the government.
Most of the protesters will probably be the ones keeping their kids off school and taking them to the crowded beaches and refusing to go back to work.

[chrissyg]

Bit harsh i think. The majority of people in the UK are keeping up the social distancing and lockdown rules. The media have always tried to hunt out the crowded beaches and beauty spots to make out we are all doing it. People that have not sent their kids back to school are scared it is too soon and care about it. People that have taken risks to demonstrate against the evil of racism also care. There will always be british idiots that flout the rules and are anti-social in many ways but the majority of us are caring and law-abiding.

[Maud]

Friends have already had their flight to Athens cancelled at the end of July Guy. They are desperately searching for another one.

Other friends are booked on the ferry from Bari to Patras on the 16th of this month. They took the last deck space for their vehicle when they booked, but still won’t know for definite if the ship will sail until the 15th! - They plan to take a chance, and if they don’t sail they will holiday in Puglia until they can get on a boat.

There is so much uncertainly for everyone these days, but at least in the case of our friends who are driving out to Greece, they have a home to stay in when they get there. They also don’t need to rush back to the U.K. and would be happy to stay in Greece indefinitely....especially with how things are in the U.K. just now.

I just hope you manage to get your planned stay on Crete Guy. It isn’t so easy to take risks with access to countries when you have children‘s schooling to consider. I also saw John Edmunds on the Andrew Marr show this morning. I think he will be one of many voices speaking out about the lock down over the next couple of weeks!

[Kilkis]

...People that have not sent their kids back to school are scared it is too soon and care about it...

I am sure you are correct that people are scared, Chrissyg, but as far as the children themselves are concerned there really is no significant risk. This web page shows deaths aggregated over 24 European countries that contribute. It's a bit odd in that Germany is treated as federal states, not a single country, and only Berlin and Hesse contribute. Conversely England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are reported separately. Other than that it is a good mix of European countries including those that have had the worst experience and those that have had the best.

In the first graph you can see the huge spike in excess deaths for all age groups around week 14. If you look at the second graph, for 0 to 14 year olds, there is no spike at all in excess deaths. Nothing. Zero. The deaths are completely within the normal range represented by the pale blue band. The third graph is for 15 to 44 year olds and there is a small spike but I think that is entirely due to the 18 to 44 year old section in that group. There is no significant risk for 0 to 18 year old children.

What is unknown is the risk to teachers and the risk of children spreading it amongst themselves and then taking it home to parents.

The really key factor overall can be described in simple steps:

1 If people with the virus interact freely with people who don't have it, the virus will spread with something close to an R of 3 since 90 % of the population have not had it.
2 You can stop this happening by stopping virtually everybody interacting, i.e. lockdown.
3 Alternatively you can stop it happening by preventing those who have the virus interacting with everybody else.
4 To use the method in item 3 you need to be able to reliably and quickly identify everybody who has the virus through test, trace, isolate.
5 Can the government do that when they are getting around 2,000 new cases per day? My guess is no. That is the fundamental problem with easing lockdown now.

I am surprised they keep using the term "track". "Trace" means identifying all contacts of a confirmed case so that you can test them and isolate as necessary. "Track" means something different. In South Korea they use a number of methods to "track" where each identified case has been and at what time. They can then use that data to carry out a range of additional mitigating measures. For example they send out squads to spray everything along that persons route with disinfectant. They can issue alerts to mobile phones of anybody else, who was close to that route in the right time-frame, that they might have been exposed. They publish maps of where cases have been so people can avoid those areas or at least avoid touching anything in those areas. I have not seen any suggestion that the UK is going to do any of this so the term "track" is highly misleading.

Warwick

[chrissyg]

Yes Warwick, i wanted to re-open primary schools earlier but i was just responding to Kam who seemed to infer that parents were keeping kids home so that they could take them to the beach.

[Guy M]

I just hope you manage to get your planned stay on Crete Guy. It isn’t so easy to take risks with access to countries when you have children‘s schooling to consider.

Indeed. On school, elder daughter (15) has one day of meeting teachers at school in a couple of weeks, otherwise it’s all online lessons; younger daughter (13) is definitely not going to school until September (but doing online lessons). Still not clear what will happen in September- the government has no strategy or plan (sounds familiar?) - and speculation schools may not return properly until 2021.

I think the question is: someone’s going to take risks with my children’s future - is it me or the government? I don’t trust the government at all; if there’s a risk, I have the responsibility for taking it.

[Kilkis]

It's not a very complicated plan. To preserve social distancing all they need to do is double the number of classrooms and double the number of teachers by September.

Warwick

PS Oh, sorry. almost forgot. And find the money to pay for it in a country where taxation is sinking faster than the Titanic and expenditure is rising faster than Space X.

[Maud]

I watched a head teacher being interviewed yesterday. He said that if social distancing was reduced to one metre In schools it would only mean an extra three children per class in his school. He felt this would be the case in most schools. Iain Duncan Smith has been on the news again today saying that if it was reduced to one metre all children would be able to return in September.- The man is an idiot! Does he not listen to what the the teachers are saying! Answers on a ‘postage stamp’ please.....don’t bother with a postcard!

You are quite correct Guy. - Make your own decisions for your girls. Don’t put any faith in Johnson and his cronies. How can anyone not grasp that if you have classes of half the normal size, you will have to have twice as many classrooms, and twice as many teachers? The only other option is to take the students back in shifts. - Half the class in a morning and the other half in the afternoon....or one week on and one week off! That will be very disruptive for pupils and parents alike. Half a loaf might be better than none though!

I am not sure what the Government thinks is going to happen with Covid 19 by September, but one certainty is that if social distancing still needs to be enforced to any degree, (which seems will be the case), something is going to need to change in schools.

Somebody needs to tell IDS and his mates!

As for the title of this thread.....how can anyone with children at school plan anything for the future, let alone a holiday?!!!

[Guy M]

I can now understand why people go “off grid” with their families, grown their own vegetables, live self sufficiently and get a shotgun. Only half joking.

[Kilkis]

Some disturbing figures in the 11 June Crete Tip report. So far they have carried out 1,300 tests on incoming travellers and of those 30 were positive, i.e. 2.3 %.

Greece is expecting between 5 and 10 million tourists coming into Greece this summer and very few of them will be tested. If we take the lower figure and assume 2.3 % of them could be positive that implies 115,000 infected and infectious people entering Greece over a period of a few months. Greece has only had around 3,000 confirmed cases throughout the pandemic so far. How will it cope with 40 times that number coming into the country over a comparable period of time and with free movement throughout the country?

If 10 million visitors come that potentially doubles the number and you can't ignore asymptomatic/pre-symptomatic people being amongst those 1,300 tested who gave a negative result but were, or became, infectious during their stay. If you were on holiday and developed a mild cough and a slight fever, which is what would happen to the majority of those coming in with COVID-19, would you present for a test and self isolate or would you take a couple of paracetamol and get on with your holiday?

Warwick

PS Guy, should I be imagining Tom and Barbara Good or Farmer Palmer?

[Tim]

A second wave/spike of infections has been widely predicted by scientists, and I'm sure it's only a case of 'when' and not 'if' as restrictions are gradually eased both in Greece and worldwide. It remains to be seen how bad any second wave would be, and whether it would necessitate another round of restrictions and lockdowns. At some stage there are likely to be some harsh decisions to be made between re-imposition of restrictions to protect public health and prevent widespread deaths, or the possible devastation of both national and global economies that might be the result of another round of shutdowns. GDP has plummeted across the world, and the economic consequences of having to repeat the experience of the last 3 months are difficult to imagine. It seems fashionable at the moment to knock various governments for their handling of the pandemic, but these will be decisions that I'm glad I don't have to make.

Tim

[Clio]

It seems fashionable at the moment to knock various governments for their handling of the pandemic, but these will be decisions that I'm glad I don't have to make.

There is only one government on whose handling of the crisis I feel qualified to speak, and since, when I lived in Crete, I castigated others for making this forum so Anglocentric, I have been staying out of this discussion.

But, Tim, I can’t let that go. It is not “fashionable”, believe me, to knock the UK government’s handling of the pandemic. It is an obligation, a moral imperative, for any responsible British citizen who has been following the deadly doings of the Johnson maladministration to draw attention to what is happening in Britain. It goes far beyond radical chic, beyond political affiliation.

Every country in the world has faced and is facing the huge problem of balancing the health of the economy and the health of its people. It's the toughest call for an administration that can be imagined. But the British government’s deadly failure to do that successfully has had it likened to a banana republic which is probably an insult to banana republics, and exposed the many suspect reasons for that failure.

Like many others I have been watching appalled, noting with mounting disbelief the inadequacy and incompetence, the unrepentant self-justification, the cynical disregard for the common weal compounded by corruption and cronyism, which has resulted in financial and human disaster.

Rant over. I shall now withdraw from the discussion and save my breath to cool my (thankfully Scottish) porage.

[Maud]

Hear hear Clio.

[Kamisiana]

https://labourlist.org/2020/06/lets-dis ... ronavirus/

[eddie foster]

I never cease to be amazed and impressed by the number of contributors to this board who have PhDs in hindsight.