Schools to close again.. Covid

You'd better get in quick so and book the Computer room if the once a week email from home option is ruled out for you this January.

So you think there should be a level 5 lockdown if schools are short-staffed?

Where did you pull those figures out of? They are completely innacurate.

There was 682 in hospital on Nov 28.

By mid December it was still over 400.

The lowest number on xmas eve occured as the hospitals thmeselves had reduced overall occupancy for the festive period by finishing up electives. With fewer patients on site there is a lower chance of in house infection. In the last 24 bours discharges of covid patients were twice that of new arrivals, however hosipatal detected (ie patients in for something else) meant that a potential fall of over 60 in total was reduced to 10.

What is telling though is that ICU case numbers are down about 20% from about a month ago despite the tsunami of Omicron cases.

Between boosters/vaccines and natural immunity along with Omicron as opposed to Alpha & Delta we are nowhere near where we were 12 months ago. We need to go back to school and get on with teaching.

Icu is down. That really is the only important figure going forward. We are told that we are probably at 40k cases a day and hospital icu's are really being impacted. Schools will open. I don't think there is any doubt about that.

I’m baffled that anyone can find certainty in these times. I think there is doubt about everything at the minute in relation to schools. As someone above said, I’ll believe I’m back when I’m standing in my classroom on Thursday morning.

Yeah. The best teaching is not firing off one email a week you'd surely agree?

Regardless of the effects of covid on children and anyone they come in contact with, if the basic premise that you are to isolate if you test postive from PCR/antigen test, there will be a proportion of those 20K+ cases a day who are teachers. If there are enough teachers absent in a school next week where the school cannot stay open due to sub shortages, schools will send year groups home or close. It will be largely irrelevant how many children attend, if there aren't enough teachers present to teach/supervise, then the school will shut regardless of what NPHET/Dept of Health/Dept of Education say.

My school was spread very thin in December for cover with teachers out. All extra curricular activities were cancelled as we couldn't provide cover for those teachers and those that were absent due to covid. We have a number of student teachers and they are flat to the mat covering classes.

I'd be certain you will be. There is no logical reason for any further restrictions or closure to happen. The government and nphet created uncertainty earlier in the pandemic with mixed messages and closures. But those variants of covid were a different ball game. It has to be said that they were really mild for school going children to though. Omicron over the last 2-3 weeks has proven to be the end game. We are almost there now. Let the kids back and we will see this out. Anything else is just delaying a full reopening of our economy and a full return of our liberties. I think it's to much of a political suicide not to ooen up now. Omicron will not impact anyone including teachers in the schools. I assume teachers are vaxxed.

You don't seem to grasp the statistics.

Yes you are more likely to die from a road crash... But road deaths aren't transmitted through the air in enclosed spaces or on surfaces!

As I said above, it's not about you or pupils or the general population who aren't that disrupted by COVID (I had it myself and wasn't too bad). It's about keeping our health service ticking over. When they get overrun it'll be cancelled operations, cancer treatments postponed and decisions about who lives and dies in ICU .

Consider the possibility of health system is crashing and not only that but yet another variant Comes through !!

Pot kettle black springs to mind.

Probably really off topic but i think we actually need to stop with the PCR testing. It should only be done now for hospital admissions. Thay would help us moce on quicker. And put nphet out of the picture too.

Yeah I do understand all that.

What do you suggest we do now considering we probably have as high a vaccination rate as possible.

I'm convinced we'll open, I'm not sure if it's the right call or not to be honest, but I do think it's what will happen. At least at second level. Thwre is probably an argument to be made about delaying the reopening of primary to allow the vaccine rollout to happen, I haven't really seen many people call for that though, so maybe not.

?? Yes stop PCR testing. it's the only way to end the mas hysteria about the daily numbers. Which aren't even accurate. NPHET are telling us this. So whats the benefit to doing them? None. Lets get on with life.

Actually I won't look at any more data. If the CMO says that hospitalisations are increasing that'll do me. That's an English sentence with actual words. We don't need Isaac Newton to explain it, or Dr Goebbels to give us an acceptable interpretation of it for us.

Thanks be to God these boards are anonymous - hopefully in 10 years time nobody will be able to trace the fact that I was discussing hospitalisations with a teacher like you who won't even do their own job never mind organising the Health Service.

Tit for tat. That's exactly what you're aiming to do. You can't guarantee everyone will be in your workplace on Monday. We are told to stay home if we have covid. Plenty of places of employment are struggling because of staff being out for covid. Schools are not unique in this regard, only students cannot be left unsupervised if a teacher is absent. To imply that teachers should just go to work if they have covid is irresponsible.

A lot of talking into the mirror in that house by the sounds of things!