The Autumn Spike?

A friend's 13 year old granddaughter had a positive PCR test over a week ago and has been off school since then. She is still quite poorly and it's unlikely she will be back at school for at least another week. She's not in any fit state to do school work.

JenniferEccles

I was going to say much the same GG13
It was widely reported that the government was sensibly waiting to hear before making a decision about children.

Can you imagine the outcry if the vaccination of children had gone ahead before the JCVI report was completed ?

So much anger on various threads lately, a lot of which is unjustified.

And some which most certainly is justified.

MayBee70

GrannyGravy13

The Government were waiting for the JCVI decision on whether or not it was beneficial for 12 and overs to be vaccinated. They were waiting for results of trials, it would have been irresponsible to go ahead without knowing the trial results or without the backing of CMO.

So how come other countries vaccinated their over 12’s before they returned to school?

Maybe it had something to do with the arrival of millions of doses of Pfizer vaccine at the beginning of September. Before then, the country didn't have enough doses to vaccinate young people.

I didn’t realise that.

Grandsons school have now reintroduced masks, alternating which year groups can go in. Vaccination day was next week but half the children won’t be there to have. Teachers are off sick. This is now out of control…..

Must be something in my make-up, the way I'm made. When I see the phrases "out of control" or "hopelessly disorganised" or "shambles", my hackles rise.

So, those "out of control" rates in schools. They've started to go down, all ages up to age 19.

They are high, they are higher than we would all like them to be, but saying "they're out of control" is just going to increase worry and panic.

They didn’t mandate masks. They didn’t ask children to stay at home if siblings had covid. They didn’t vaccinate children before they returned to school. So in my opinion that shows a lack of control over the situation and, given that they have now suddenly introduced them (too little too late) shows that they had let the situation get out of control.

Also people are no longer being informed of what are the current covid symptoms. I just spoke to a neighbour that told me that lateral flow tests are a waste of time because someone he knew tested negative twice but had covid. People aren’t aware that a false positive is unlikely but false negative is quite common. Again that, to me shows a government not controlling the current situation.

I think there needs to be more emphasis on the fact that lateral flow tests are to pick up asymptomatic cases who could be inadvertently spreading the virus. Anyone with possible covid symptoms shouldn’t be doing a lateral flow test. They need to have a PCR.

By the time the incubating virus is at the stage of producing symptoms the LF test is less reliable. Then we have the possible scenario of someone with a cough/fever/runny nose testing negative with the LF and assuming it’s a heavy cold when it could be covid. I’ve heard this explained several times by doctors on radio and tv but I think the government need to revisit it and make it clear to everyone.

Lateral flow tests have never been perfect I suppose any test in only as good as the person taking the swab
The symptoms of Covid do vary especially with the vacinnated
I think we have had enough experience now to use our own common sense and there are people who are not interested and no matter what information is given out they will take little notice.
We have quite a bit of Covid here but is mainly in secondary schools not heard of any in primary They are vaccinating but not all young people will take it up Our hospitals do not have a surge recording 3 patients this week and deaths are low as in 0

Our local primary school tested a whole class and quite a few of the children tested positive. I can’t remember the exact figure I was told.

That's where I think Covid is so different from any illness we have experienced it's variance where on one hand it can do immense damage to some but to some especially the younger ones little or no obvious symptoms.

Put this into the mix alongside all the seasonal viruses like flu and it is clear that we are in for a very nasty winter.

If only someone could think of a really simple, but effective way of protecting people from flu….

Just read BBC news this morning. Apparently some LFTs are showing positive, whilst PCR is coming back negative. This has been reported in Bristol and Stroud. Those testing positive via LTF feel certain they have Covid. The medical profession have no idea why this is happening.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-58841259

A close friend who has been the most cautious person I know throughout the pandemic & is double jabbed tested positive on Monday, she isn’t feeling too bad but has had to cancel her holiday, her husband is clear so far. I then heard last night that my cousin, who is younger, in his late 50’s is in ICU with Covid, very worrying & we are just hoping he is going to be ok. There seems to be an awful lot of cases around here, especially in schools. Luckily most people’s symptoms aren’t too bad but you just don’t know to what extreme you’d be affected. I think having to isolate is the worst part for many.
I still wear masks in shops and use the trolley wipes and hand sanitiser at the supermarket. Even though most shops have signs recommending this a lot of people just aren't bothering now. On recent train journeys first up to Leeds and then to London very few people wore masks, same on the underground. It is so good to have some normality back after all the lockdowns and restrictions but we all still need to be very careful. Vaccinating the secondary school children should help, my two eldest GC had it done in school last week, like others, I do have some concerns about vaccinating the kids but it seems like the only way to stop the spread of this awful virus now.

All the 'sanitising' is irrelevant to preventing covid. It is highly unlikely that covid can be caught from infected surfaces even though this was believed at the start and the official advice concentrated very heavily on it. (Though the sanitising is certainly useful in preventing contact spread illnesses)

Our problem in the UK is that the truth about how covid actually :-):-)spreads, by aerosols, wasn't really established until after the government got bored with the whole pandemic 'thing' and couldn't be bothered to correct their earlier advice. If mask wearing, good ventilation and air filtering had been pushed as hard as 'sanitising' we could be in a better place now.

Please ignore those silly :-):-) My tablet puts them in when I'm not looking...

MayBee70
At the start of the pandemic last year ( and beyond) you hung onto every word and utterance that the expert’s uttered.
If the virus is out of control where are they now? Why aren’t they telling us what terrible danger we’re in.

The medical profession have no idea why this is happening.

Another one of my least favourite phrases. I think you mean The few doctors they spoke to and one director of public health don't know why this is happening because they are not experts in the field.

Here's some ideas for them:
1 in 200 LFTs give you a false positive anyway
A cluster of false positives, entirely explicable by the statistical distribution of testing
The people aren't doing the test properly
There's a batch of faulty tests in that geographical area.
Local anecodotal data being over emphasised and bringing out other examples that otherwise would have been ignored.

But never mind, Indy SAGE are on the case. So expect to hear PCR tests are notoriously unreliable and we're all doomed.

I never understood the obsession with wiping and washing in the house.

Wash your hands as soon as you come in from anywhere outside the home and there should be no infection in the home anyway, if you and a partner are the only people there and they do the same constant wiping of surfaces, especially with disinfectants, just ends up with you ingesting the disinfectant chemicals with your food.

We know that the disease is transferred through infected material in the air, so all this obsessive wiping and washing is a waste of time.

The figures this week say that 1 in 14 secondary age children are infected. This is being passed on to fully vaccinated parents who are not able to work as normal. In my GDs Year 11, one hundred students have it.
This is not happening in countries where secondary age children were vaccinated in the summer holidays, masks are worn and restrictions are in place. The rates of infection in other European countries are between seven and ten times lower, children are in school, parents are at work.
On here I see excuses about too much testing, waiting for vaccination data which were already available from other countries, other countries don't test as much and the government is doing its best.
If children are unwell and missing school, parents are unwell and unable to work, how can this be good enough?

MerylStreep

MayBee70
At the start of the pandemic last year ( and beyond) you hung onto every word and utterance that the expert’s uttered.
If the virus is out of control where are they now? Why aren’t they telling us what terrible danger we’re in.

I hung onto every word that DrJohn Campbell uttered. I still do. He was advocating mask wearing at a time when the WHO and even JVT were saying masks didn’t help. I still do everything possible to not catch it: hands face space ventilate.

MerylStreep

MayBee70
At the start of the pandemic last year ( and beyond) you hung onto every word and utterance that the expert’s uttered.
If the virus is out of control where are they now? Why aren’t they telling us what terrible danger we’re in.

Do I detect a note of sarcasm about the fact that me and my family have done everything possible to protect ourselves from the virus? Does it amuse you ?

I’ve actually spent a couple of days pondering on posts I’ve made where I’ve been hanging onto every word issued by ‘the scientists’ and, apart from Dr John (who I admit listening to and whose advice I take), I can’t remember doing so. I’d be really grateful if someone could dig up something I’ve written to that effect. I do know I was trying to purchase face masks at a time when the WHO and even JVT were saying they didn’t work so I certainly wasn’t agreeing with the scientists then and I was angry with Witty for stopping testing and tracing last spring because it was ‘already in the community’. And I did listen to the alternative SAGE group.