Carefully thought through plans combined with diligent execution - something entirely beyond a UK government busy crowing about Brexit with an indolent dilettante in charge:mad:

Mongolia was brought up by Rolfe a couple of weeks ago in another thread:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com...&postcount=819

How many Mongolians can afford to go abroad and get infected? Not very many. How many foreigners travel to Mongolia? Very few. Had they experienced the same initial case load as one of the European countries that experience significant outbreaks this would not have been possible.

Note that the majority of people who live in Ulaanbaatar never receive any regular healthcare checkups or treatments, elderly care or otherwise endure the usual risks of infection. The people who live in the slums are basically forced to fend for themselves, which ironically reduces the risk of being infected with this virus compared with more developed countries that actually offer things like care for the elderly. In other words, the lack of access to regular healthcare checkups and treatments is protective against the spread of the virus.

He's giving dilettantes a bad name.

By the end of this week, the five countries with most Covid cases will be:

USA
Brazil
Russia
UK
India

I wonder if those countries have anything in common.

Yeah! We still push beyond our weight!

We can't even be world beating in the negative sense, it seems that we are mediocre at best.

Yes but per capita numbers clean up the discussion. Of course testing numbers matter too, and excess deaths by population may be the lasting political legacy.

Still in denial I see. After denial comes anger.

I know, I know!

Is the answer "They all have complete ******** for leaders?"

How many Chinese go to and from Mongolia?


The point was they stopped that from happening by locking down and quarantining travellers months before the UK did.

The virus spreads by contact, which is primarily determined by how many contacts someone has, not by what you suggest. The Mongolian capital was at risk due to its population density.

If everywhere had done what Mongolia did, when Mongolia did it, we would be talking about COVID-19 in the past tense by now, with few people having died.

Far too easy, really.

It's an amazing thing to think that these clowns pretending to be president/PM have been shown up so badly by a bad cold/little 'flu.

While China sits at 18th and falling on both cases and deaths.

Stop being so smug.

Your whole country’s attempts could have failed by your government’s rash actions of exempting certain key workers from the lockdown, all it would have took would have been for the tooth fairy to have been a super spreader and you’d be up **** creek right now! And why did your PM exempt the fairy - For nothing more than political gain, can I remind you she not only exempted the tooth fairy but the bloody Easter bunny as well.

Hopefully you will come to your senses and vote this populist who was willing to cause millions of deaths for a bit of political capital out of office as soon as possible!

Narcissistic right-wing megalomaniacs for heads of state.

The UK government has once again demonstrated its masterful management of the Coronavirus crisis by abandoning plans to open all primary schools:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-52969679

It's hardly rocket surgery to figure out that if classes need to half to a third of their current size and the number of rooms and teachers is limited, then opening schools to all pupils isn't a practical proposition - something that those with any knowledge have been saying all along:

But of course we don't listen to so-called experts any more :mad:

Ah, but they both practised correct distancing. Easter Eggs were left in the letterbox, and teeth were dangled outside on the string they were pulled out with.

You certainly have to hand it to her - nothing like convincing the kids to love her to get mummy and daddy's votes in September.

She will win by the biggest margin in NZ history. Your boy Keir Starmer should be posting Zooms with her - that stuff rubs off and he already looks pretty good to me. I still can't get my head around "Sir" and "Keir" as a couplet, though.

Hole in one.

(Was pretty easy!)

I just hope the world learns a lesson from that.

Labour's fault for having such large classes - remember they have only been in power since December so they are having to deal with the terrible state of the nation the previous government left!

That's how Priti Patel counts-:

2007
2008
2009
2020
2021

Scathing article about the educational secretary


https://www.theguardian.com/politics...t-count-to-two

The British electorate voted for indolent dilettantes. :mad:

They aren't the only ones.

Social distancing in schools is going to be impossible. Instead of trying to figure out a way to do it any sensible government is going to try to work around the problem.

Austria has a solid solution, half the pupils attend one week, the other half the other week. When at home they watch the lecture online. It's not ideal but with half the class size it's possible to ensure some social distancing and because the class can be disinfected in between groups any outbreak is going to be limited to half a class.

There's another layer you could do. Inexpensive immunological molecular tests that work on saliva can be used to test the hell out of pupils.

There are three big words there to explain, but you can probably guess what "inexpensive" stands for (they're < 10€ when bought in small quantities, cheaper when purchased in bulk). Immunological means they use antibodies in detection, it's the molecular that makes the difference - these tests look for virus antigen, not for antibodies against the virus. That means they can pick up an infection before the regular antibody test would. They aren't as sensitive as the RT PCR test but they're way better than nothing.

Saliva also seems to be as good as or sometimes a better donor than the swab so the sampling is quicker and easier too.

You could, in principle, test every student at the start of his week, without too much hassle. Any infection you pick up is one potential outbreak less.

Do that and you need to worry far less about the distance between pupils in classes. Keep them in the single classroom without mingling with other classes sure, but within the classroom at least you don't need to worry too much about distancing. Outbreaks, if any, will be extremely limited.

McHrozni

More unintended consequences of lockdown: 'Like a Stephen King movie': feral chickens return to plague New Zealand village

That's a great approach if your objective is to maximise the educational opportunities for pupils, you have a working testing, tracking and tracing programme and cost isn't a primary constraint.

Unfortunately, in the UK the objective is to get all children back to school so that their parents can go back to work and the furlough scheme can be wound up as quickly as possible; our testing, tracking and tracing system is a complete shambles and cost is a major consideration.

That the UK government is also utterly incompetent is just the cherry on top of the ****-cake :mad:

If parents staying at home to watch the kids is a major consideration you can also get children into two separate classrooms, in different buildings if possible. One group gets the live teacher, the other gets the video feed and someone to keep them in order.

It is not ideal. But it's entirely doable and gets the parents back to work, costs are managable. You only need that for grades 1-4, roughly. Older children can watch the video from home.

McHrozni

That would be a great solution if schools had the space.

Private schools with big fees will be fine with an approach like that. Ordinary schools won't.

I don't know how much it's changed in the decades since I was at school, but every school I attended had at least one portacabin set up on a field somewhere that was used as a classroom because there wasn't enough space in the school itself. They were a living hell in the summer.

Class sizes being too big and space too small has been known problems for literal decades. The problems aren't going to magically go away just because it now affects a pandemic (that the government doesn't really care about) rather than just the education of the majority of children (which the government also doesn't really care about).

Apart from the lack of space and the lack of people, that's a workable solution. Class sizes in many UK schools are such that double the number of rooms won't be enough, it's more like 2.2 - 2.5 times the number.

UK state schools simply don't have the space. The classrooms are typically 90%-100% occupied and the only additional spaces are likely to be a gym, dining room and assembly hall but in many cases these spaces are already doing double or triple duty.

As regards the people, it simply isn't a matter of recruiting them off the street. Not only would every candidate have to successfully pass a police records check but they would also have to receive many hours of specific safeguarding. There are currently around 7 million school children in the UK. Assuming that around 3 million can be looked after by the existing teachers and teaching assistants, a further 350,000* "zookeepers" would have to be recruited, cleared and trained - a Herculean task.

* - actually likely closer to 500,000 if you want to provide for sickness cover and 600,000 if there's going to be some kind of management oversight.

The Austrians have it right, alternate weeks and the parents have to look after their kids the other weeks.

The kids who get to watch the video feed need not be in an actual school building. Any room that can house 12 students behind desks and a screen with internet connection can be used. If push comes to shove this can include buses.

It is NOT ideal, but better than trying to figure out how to fit a square with the base a into a circle with the diameter b, where b < a.

This is a very valid complaint that should be looked at, perhaps as a result of the epidemic. But throwing your hands up in frustration because the task is just so difficult isn't going to do any good either.

Solutions to the problem exist, I named a few. Just because the UK was royally screwed up before the epidemic doesn't mean the epidemic should be used to screw it up to Imperial levels.

McHrozni

'kay.

Nowadays it is possible to set up housing based on shipping containers within hours. Many countries have those in stock for emergencies and natural disasters. You don't need to fit half a class inside, a quarter might do. You'll need more people but it's a workable solution.

Retired teachers and PE teachers who don't currently have a suitable task anyway are the first two groups of recruits of zookeepers (I love the term by the way). After that things do get complicated, but solutions exist all over the place.
Before we start with the obvious recruiting there's a possibility of reconstructing the classes in such a way as to remove children where a parent, grandparent or similar provider (older sibling, classmates' parent) is available from the improvised class and have them follow classes from home (on days when they are not scheduled to attend school in person, I need to stress this, they still attend school half the time), to make room for those who don't have that opportunity. That cuts down on personnel needs further.

It is not ideal, but it is doable.

Yes. But you only need to take care in this way of about 1/3 of those (the lowest three grades). The older kids can stay at home and watch the video from home.

That alone cuts down the requirement from 600,000 zookeepers to perhaps 200,000 - many of whom could be met with (recently) retired teachers and other such cadres, or older siblings, parents, grandparents, etcetera.

Obviously, but we already stated this was not a suitable solution.

There's another, simpler option. Dispense with social distancing between classes, but make damn sure classes don't mingle. All this separating and video feed really only improves this by a factor of 2, whereas quarantening classes already cuts down the number of interactions from hundreds into dosens, an improvement by a factor of 10 or more.

McHrozni

Utter rubbish. Even if 350,000 such containers existed, had power, could be moved into some position somewhere there'd still be the issue of ensuring that 4 million displaced students could get to and from those containers.

Just admit that providing alternative space for 4 million students at short notice is, without fantastical expenditure, impossible.


AFAIK most PE teachers are also subject teachers in the UK - it's not like the US where it's a specialist position.

There may be some retired teachers who might be prepared to but their heath at risk and return to the classroom but the four I know/knew best (my parents and Mrs Don's parents) wouldn't be among them.


It's not ideal and it's not even doable, it's pure fantasy on your part to support your earlier ridiculous assertions.

The first significant problem is that it's currently illegal to be inside someone else's house (for very good reasons) so unless children are going to be left outside (good luck with that on a 12th floor flat), it's another non-starter. Individual arrangements like this for 7 million children are insane.



Eight year old children left unsupervised ? Now I know you're just having us on.


Rubbish.

And individualising arrangements to each child is creating an administrative, and more importantly safeguarding nightmare.


How do you maintain inter-class quarantining at home ?

You've really not thought this through at all....

Maybe. Providing alternative space for 1.2 million is far more doable though. Containers are just one such solution, historically railway cars were also used for the task. It's not like you need the solutions to be the same everywhere either.

Good? No. Better than saying "it's impossible, let's all die instead"? Yes.

I can think of a solution or two. Passing a law that amends the legislation to be in someone else's house for the purpose of alternative classrooom seems a fairly simple possibility.

This cuts down the requirement for 7 million individual arrangements to one line of legislation. That's not bad for 6.5 seconds of work, I think.

If you think it inappropriate add more greades until you reach the age you're comfortable with. I think it's appropriate, but if not the solution is simple enough. It complicates everything else down the line, but the solution itself is easy.

There are about three possible options to choose from. If you need a form tick the appropriate and you're done. It's not like there would be an essay-length piece about each child.

The exact same way it's being done now.

It is being done now, right? Because if not you might as well reopen schools and go for Brazilian option anyway.

McHrozni

Where do you magic 1.2 million from ?

In any case, the alternative to providing enough suitable space and properly qualified individuals to allow all 7 million UK school children to return to school while observing social distancing is not "let's all die" :confused:

You already described one perfectly acceptable alternative upthread, one that has been adopted by many other countries, to allow a proportion of students to return all the time and/or all students to return a proportion of the time. If the primary objective of the UK government was education then these would be the options being considered.

Another alternative is to be honest with the British (or more accurately English - because devolved governments are making their own plans) people and say that that the primary objective is childcare and that education and public health are secondary or tertiary considerations. Under this plan, all children can return to schools and the government crosses its fingers and hopes that a combination of enough parents keeping their kids at home and making alternative arrangements, low transmission among children and sheer luck means that there isn't a resultant increase in infection.

A third would be to just continue to wait it out until an effective vaccine and/or treatment is available and it's safe for children to go back to school. The economic shortcomings of this approach means that IMO it's unlikely to gain traction.

My own view is, based on their actions to date, the UK government will pick option 2 and blame local authorities, parents and children themselves for failing to "be alert" if the return to schools results in an increase in infection.

One line of legislation which completely fails to take account of the wider concerns of public health and of safeguarding the children. Such a piece of legislation would be typical of the UK government - proposing a simple solution which creates more problems than it solves.

The answer is all years must be in school

Even if it were that simple, and even if all parents actually bothered to fill out and return those forms you'd still need to record and manage the results so that you know where Timmy Smith should be and who should be looking after him so that you could check that was indeed happening and groups of children weren't just being left unsupervised while their parents have to go out to work (because the furlough scheme has been wound up)



No, it's not being done right now because people from different households have significant restrictions on how they can meet and they must maintain social distancing.

If entire classes are able to mix then as soon as those children go home they are mixing with their siblings and all concept of inter-class quarantine is lost.

More evidence that government dithering and incompetence has exacerbated the problem of Coronavirus in the UK

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/worl...ost_type=share

Good to see that it "only" took another 4 or 5 months for the government to act :rolleyes:

Off the wall thought, but there are a lot of pubs sitting empty, desperate for any income. They all have tables and chairs and most of them have big TV's or projectors that could be used for the video feed.


ETA: Of course the other issues raised by The Don regarding staffing would still apply.

Number one again!

Can’t think of any way that could go wrong...... :D

I noticed today that the government are giving numbers of tests “carried out or posted out” for the day. What exactly does this mean? Is it going to include any double counting?

I am assuming supervision!

We could send over our local foxes, they'd take care of the chicken and rat problems.
After all it's not like they're emus....