Coronavirus Pandemic Information- Local and Worldwide

First post of 2022 so may as well make it count.

PCR came back a few minutes ago, negative.

It came into the extended family from a school, herself is a teacher and so is her sister. The sister got a call Christmas night from a Covid+ student.

Prior to that, locally, schools have been rampant with Covid.

There is zero chance, regardless of how careful we are, that my family will avoid Covid if schools reopen.

Learning can continue online, but this bullshit peddled by Government that schools are safe and controlled environments is just that, bullshit, and cowardice to boot.

Lots of teachers are out with covid, or as close contacts. Subs aren't to be got, they don't want to go in, who'd blame them. More often than not, those subs teaching aren't qualified in the subjects they're teaching.

Deflection aside. It has been rampant in schools, that's no state secret. One person in the school has it and it spreads to other, then it spreads to the families that didn't have it.

The school situation has been a nonsense from the get-go, a magical Narnia like place where Covid cannot be transmitted, yet in.every.other.situation involving human beings there are restrictions, closures etc.

No, they're not safe. For example, had schools closed on the Friday, my partners sister wouldn't have contracted Covid, and we wouldn't have been close contacts.

You're actually contradicting yourself. The origin of the initial infection isn't the point, it's the transmission in the school setting infecting other families that's the problem.

There's no controls available bar a Chinese style lock down on "personal responsibilities". The fact of that is demonstrated again and again in our society, where a % don't want to be responsible, or see it as a mess someone else will clean up.

For example, maybe a month or six weeks ago parents that had acted irresponsibly sent their kids into school, as it turned out with Covid. The follow on was my mate and his family, and concurrently a lot of local families received the gift of Covid. Their school wasn't the only local school where this occurred.

Covid doesn't spontaneously appear from behind the blackboard, the infection obviously originates somewhere and is brought into the school, but it is further transmitted there to other families. So regardless of how careful one is, it's that link that screws up all the effort of masks, hand washing, social distancing etc.

If that weren't the case, we wouldn't have a problem in most social settings. However even today, I see a local business closing because of "the numbers" with respect to their staff and clientele. They can refuse entry, or ask people to leave, yet they don't feel that's enough to prevent transmission.

Kids and people who work in schools? ****'em seems to be the policy.

Not the story I'm hearing here at all. IMV one of two things will happen.

Nurmal will announce the day/evening before the schools are to open, that they're not opening. No preparation seems to be the specialty. IMV, this would be the correct thing to do. The reason why, is it would reduce case numbers and prevent a shortage of teachers.

Option two is a rehash of Christmas 2020, where action wasn't taken when it should have been and the situation spirals out of control. Result being more drastic action having to be taken after the fact. The question will be, for what point will parents be sending kids to school if there's a shortage in teaching staff due to close contact or positive cases?

The alternative is, yeah, shut the schools for a period and teach online.