Am I out of step with other pensioners?

Monica
There were many, many more cars on the roads long before the schools restarted. I observed them from my hospital bed. I could see a relatively main road through the window and I noticed how much traffic there was, obviously some of it legitimate making deliveries etc. One of the nurses commented on it to me too. We agreed, it’s nothing like the first lockdown, then you barely saw a car.
Incidentally, I was in hospital 1st January to 12th January. These observations were made about half way through that time when I had started to recover.

growstuff

It largely depends on what you mean by "safe". Carehomes were demonstrably not safe because people were dying in them.

The same does not apply to children, or their teachers, in schools. Added to that is the enormous cost to children of missing out on their education. For some the effects of the last 12 months will cause them problems for years to come. This can't be right.

Which is precisely why it should have been a priority to fund schools to be safe environments and to have had a realistic plan (such as a rota system) so that continuity could have been maintained.

It's not good enough to sound off about how children have lost out, but just to overlook the fact that classrooms provide the worst of environments for the spread of infection.

growstuff

Which is precisely why it should have been a priority to fund schools to be safe environments and to have had a realistic plan (such as a rota system) so that continuity could have been maintained.

It's not good enough to sound off about how children have lost out, but just to overlook the fact that classrooms provide the worst of environments for the spread of infection.

Schools in other parts of the world have been operating for months, if not the entire school year without large jumps in infection. Some type of ball has been dropped in the UK.

Yes, they have ... and they've ensured that schools are relatively safe environments, in a way that the UK hasn't.

By the way, it's not true that all other countries have had schools operating normally. Even Sweden shut down schools and colleges for over 16s. What most other schools have been doing right from the start is taking temperatures and ensuring that all children wear masks. It's also true that many other countries have smaller class sizes and haven't tried to cram pupils in like sardines.

This issue in the UK has been that the government has metaphorically shrugged its shoulders and tried to blame teachers for its own lack of action.

It's also true that school transmission is related to general community transmission and other countries have had better test, trace and isolate systems. The UK has had one of the worst incidence rates in the world, which has partially been caused by a laissez-faire attitude to schools and has also caused the transmission in schools (chicken and egg), which has resulted in loss of education.

I didn’t say all schools in all countries.

Summerlove

I didn’t say all schools in all countries.

I know you didn't, but I couldn't be bothered to do all the research. Most other countries have done far more than the UK to mitigate infection. School closures and lockdowns are a sign that systems in the UK has failed.

The fact is that the UK governments (particularly England) have failed to keep schools open because they tried to play silly political games by blaming teachers and schools. They just closed their eyes to the very real problems and refused to listen to headteachers and unions who made suggestions for providing more continuity. Even now, the catch-up programme is proving to be a failure and, as people predicted, a tick box exercise.

Cases over the last week to ten days in the 11-19 group have risen more quickly than in any other group, which is no surprise. Fortunately, the Easter holidays have now started and, hopefully, cases will flatline again.