SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

acnumber9 said:
A fraction of the visitors also means a fraction of the risk though.
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And also a fraction of the disruption if those visitors have to visit less.

It’s all a complete shit show but as @Brwned points out, keeping schools open makes sense as a priority for society as a whole. Even if this is detrimental to other sectors.

I would like to see more open discussions about stuff like this. What are the priorities for society? Are we all on the same page about them? I think people will buy into restrictions better if they feel consulted.
 
Brwned said:
Surely the other way to look at that is when community transmission was low and workplaces were less full, the covid secure measures weren't all that important, and when community transmission was high and they were really needed, it became clear that these covid secure measures were full of holes? The premise is that these measures "substantially reduce" the risk of transmission, so even if parents are bringing it back in, it shouldn't spread much. The figures don't seem to support that.
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Yeah I can see that point of view, but the ratio of incidents by institutions remain fairly consistent for the workplace. The big spike in wk39, with the spike of education incidents in wk38, would suggest that transmission has passed from kids to adults into the workplace. The difficulty with the data is that it's never going to be as granular as possible to find out the absolutes, but some broad conclusions can be made. I personally found fig 22 and 23 of the contact data for test and trace interesting.

As for covid secure measures, talking from my own experience in our place we've had cases in our office last week and they're all linked back to education, spread hasn't happened in the office thankfully, but police are checking measures (we had an unannounced visit 2 weeks ago).
 
lynchie said:
Also, year groups and whole schools are being isolated at the first sign of a case. Schools are being controlled much more strictly than most other settings at the moment, because that's fairly easy to do. Trying to trace cases back to a particular pub or restaurant is much more difficult, particularly with the shortcomings of track and trace, so it's almost inevitable that they will have fewer confirmed clusters.
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Indeed.
 
massi83 said:
This is pretty pointless statistic. There are a lot more primary schools than unis and the clusters are smaller. Absolute numbers would be a lot better stat than number of clusters.

Edit: checked it and there are 21.000 primary schools and 142 unis in UK. So 150 times as many.
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Absolute numbers of attendance, 8.9 million in primary and secondary education, 2.4m at university.
 
F-Red said:
Absolute numbers of attendance, 8.9 million in primary and secondary education, 2.4m at university.
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Thanks. I meant more absolute numbers of infections. Just that the numbers of clusters tells pretty much nothing useful.
 
F-Red said:
Absolute numbers of attendance, 8.9 million in primary and secondary education, 2.4m at university.
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The problem with university cases, as opposed to school, is that even if they are proportionate they were entirely avoidable.

Almost all of the cases which we've seen have occurred in halls of residence and it was a ridiculously obvious weak point in the system. No matter what anyone says VC's knew it was inevitable, and (whilst I have little sympathy with them as a class of person) were given little choice but to re-open.

Cynically, I would suggest that the reason support for the sector wasn't forthcoming (which could have prevented case numbers) was because the Conservatives are very happy to use Coronavirus as an excuse to wage ideological warfare on universities. We've seen it happen in Australia, and I doubt we're far behind here.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
And also a fraction of the disruption if those visitors have to visit less.

It’s all a complete shit show but as @Brwned points out, keeping schools open makes sense as a priority for society as a whole. Even if this is detrimental to other sectors.

I would like to see more open discussions about stuff like this. What are the priorities for society? Are we all on the same page about them? I think people will buy into restrictions better if they feel consulted.
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It’s a fraction of disruption for people visiting these places but not for the industry itself.

People with kids will obviously agree that schools are priority but people without? I wouldn’t be so sure. People are naturally selfish as we know. I think it makes sense if it can be done safely providing we aren’t destroying the future of those same kids in the process. Is that what’s currently happening though? Not for me.

But I completely agree that the lack of communication is a big problem. Being told it’s YOUR fault if Granny dies/Christmas is cancelled is having a negative impact now.
 
F-Red said:
Yeah I can see that point of view, but the ratio of incidents by institutions remain fairly consistent for the workplace. The big spike in wk39, with the spike of education incidents in wk38, would suggest that transmission has passed from kids to adults into the workplace. The difficulty with the data is that it's never going to be as granular as possible to find out the absolutes, but some broad conclusions can be made. I personally found fig 22 and 23 of the contact data for test and trace interesting.

As for covid secure measures, talking from my own experience in our place we've had cases in our office last week and they're all linked back to education, spread hasn't happened in the office thankfully, but police are checking measures (we had an unannounced visit 2 weeks ago).
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You can make different conclusions from different datasets, but the one that stands out for me is the geographical spread of cases. There are very high concentrations of cases in University areas and in densely populated towns and cities.

If transmission at schools was a major driver, we'd see much more uniform spread across the country - the adantages of living in a low density area would be lost if sending all your kids to spend all day together in a room was the main factor in driving transmission.

The link to Universities seems obvious, we've just sent hundreds of thousands of young adults to live together in cramped conditions with shared facilities, and in a setting where traditionally they have several weeks of big parties.

The link to dense towns and cities suggests household mixing, but this new strategy seems to be linking that to nightlife. That might be fair enough, particularly where students make up a lot of the people going to those venues, but as a blanket strategy I'm not sure it's got much going for it. Transmission in Bolton didn't significantly come down when they had all their pubs closed.
 
massi83 said:
This is pretty pointless statistic. There are a lot more primary schools than unis and the clusters are smaller. Absolute numbers would be a lot better stat than number of clusters.

Edit: checked it and there are 21.000 primary schools and 142 unis in UK. So 150 times as many.
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Agreed that would be a better stat. I'd imagine that's a data collection issue: schools have to report a cluster, but don't have to report numbers because it's too much of an administrative burden without helping out the parents much. Maybe they'll start extrapolating based on number of classes and class sizes if they track this for longer, which seems likely given the trajectory.

In any case, I wouldn't say they're pointless. The standard deviation in cluster size would have to be enormous for it to be misleading in at least one relative judgment: there are more covid cases in schools than uni. The fact that there are more schools wouldn't matter so much at that point because we don't care about proportions but absolutes. The magnitude of difference seems relatively unimportant given the broader point: we were told schools wouldn't transmit much, while unis have been held up as the villains, when the truth seems to be they are not that far apart.
 
F-Red said:
Some of the ONS data might help identifying age ranges, anything under 17 should be attributable to primary & secondary education.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...nd2october2020#covid-19-infection-survey-data
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Teenagers (secondary school) and young adults the big drivers. Younger kids (primary school) infection rates seem to be flat/declining.

The problem with teens is that it’s impossible to know whether they’re passing the virus round in school or when socialising outside school. I suspect mainly the latter, when they’re not being supervised or wearing masks.

Closing the schools won’t reduce transmission in this age group that occurs outside school (might actually increase it?)
 
Brwned said:
Agreed that would be a better stat. I'd imagine that's a data collection issue: schools have to report a cluster, but don't have to report numbers because it's too much of an administrative burden without helping out the parents much. Maybe they'll start extrapolating based on number of classes and class sizes if they track this for longer, which seems likely given the trajectory.

In any case, I wouldn't say they're pointless. The standard deviation in cluster size would have to be enormous for it to be misleading in at least one relative judgment: there are more covid cases in schools than uni. The fact that there are more schools wouldn't matter so much at that point because we don't care about proportions but absolutes. The magnitude of difference seems relatively unimportant given the broader point: we were told schools wouldn't transmit much, while unis have been held up as the villains, when the truth seems to be they are not that far apart.
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Primary schools have been closed down on the back of a "cluster" of 3 people. There are reports of clusters involving hundreds of kids in University halls. The standard deviation is enormous, and you definitely can't make that relative judgement right now.
 
Brwned said:
Agreed that would be a better stat. I'd imagine that's a data collection issue: schools have to report a cluster, but don't have to report numbers because it's too much of an administrative burden without helping out the parents much. Maybe they'll start extrapolating based on number of classes and class sizes if they track this for longer, which seems likely given the trajectory.

In any case, I wouldn't say they're pointless. The standard deviation in cluster size would have to be enormous for it to be misleading in at least one relative judgment: there are more covid cases in schools than uni. The fact that there are more schools wouldn't matter so much at that point because we don't care about proportions but absolutes. The magnitude of difference seems relatively unimportant given the broader point: we were told schools wouldn't transmit much, while unis have been held up as the villains, when the truth seems to be they are not that far apart.
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Have a look at the ONS data @F-Red linked to. Looks like primary school age children not transmitting much, as predicted. Teenage and uni age infections on the increase. And it was always to be expected that teenagers would behave more like adults when it comes to viral spread.

It’s hard to know whether Uni or secondary schools is a bigger risk but you’d expect that the close supervision secondary school kids get in school would be lower risk than the much more unsupervised interactions in uni (including going on the piss together etc)
 
massi83 said:
Thanks. I meant more absolute numbers of infections. Just that the numbers of clusters tells pretty much nothing useful.
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30,000 school pupils according to ONS figures on October 2nd, according to PHE's COVID-19 epidemiology surveillance summary show that educational settings are attributable for 45% of the positive cases. No surprise really.
 
F-Red said:
Yeah I kinda ignored the domain, but the data of outbreaks seems a little bit more factual.
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But it doesn't tell you anything about the risk of having schools open. Yes, schools have closed because children or staff have tested positive. However, there's no data showing that those people contracted the virus at school, or that having those positive cases have led to further community transmission. All it says is that schools are taking a very cautious approach, with huge disruption to kids education.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Have a look at the ONS data @F-Red linked to. Looks like primary school age children not transmitting much, as predicted. Teenage and uni age infections on the increase. And it was always to be expected that teenagers would behave more like adults when it comes to viral spread.

It’s hard to know whether Uni or secondary schools is a bigger risk but you’d expect that the close supervision secondary school kids get in school would be far lower risk than the much more unsupervised interactions in uni (including going on the piss together etc)
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I assume that a spreader is likely to be someone symptomatic which is why kids are less likely to spread it as they are predominantly asymptomatic? So the chance of being a spreader increases with the chances of being symptomatic which seems to broadly correlate with age?
 
lynchie said:
But it doesn't tell you anything about the risk of having schools open. Yes, schools have closed because children or staff have tested positive. However, there's no data showing that those people contracted the virus at school, or that having those positive cases have led to further community transmission. All it says is that schools are taking a very cautious approach, with huge disruption to kids education.
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Is it just a massive coincidence that cases have exploded since schools have been open?
 
lynchie said:
But it doesn't tell you anything about the risk of having schools open. Yes, schools have closed because children or staff have tested positive. However, there's no data showing that those people contracted the virus at school, or that having those positive cases have led to further community transmission. All it says is that schools are taking a very cautious approach, with huge disruption to kids education.
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Also. See my post above re secondary school age children and whether they are passing the virus on during school, or after school. We’ve no idea but seems likely the risk is much higher when away from prying eyes of teachers.
 
lynchie said:
But it doesn't tell you anything about the risk of having schools open. Yes, schools have closed because children or staff have tested positive. However, there's no data showing that those people contracted the virus at school, or that having those positive cases have led to further community transmission. All it says is that schools are taking a very cautious approach, with huge disruption to kids education.
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No, but your point around whether outbreaks on schools and being linked to more built up areas is supported by the data there is what I'm saying.

No one knows the actual risk of having schools open, you won't get that from the data. The fact that educational settings attribute to 45% of cases in the ONS would suggest it's having a significant impact at the minute, plus also you have the secondary school age group which opens a different discussion on whether it's coming from inside or outside of the school. Either way, contact is the issue. Areas which will increase close contact are higher risks than others, which still puts school at a higher risk bracket for me than areas of hospitality.
 
Pexbo said:
I assume that a spreader is likely to be someone symptomatic which is why kids are less likely to spread it as they are predominantly asymptomatic? So the chance of being a spreader increases with the chances of being symptomatic which seems to broadly correlate with age?
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I’ve no idea. Lots of theories but nobody knows for certain. I can confirm that primary age kids are absolutely rubbish at social distancing so that’s definitely not protecting them.
 
lynchie said:
If transmission at schools was a major driver, we'd see much more uniform spread across the country - the adantages of living in a low density area would be lost if sending all your kids to spend all day together in a room was the main factor in driving transmission.
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I'm really struggling to find the logic behind this reasoning. Schools aren't creating cases they're multiplying what's in the community so density of the area is always a huge factor.

Over a very long period you're probably correct as it would even out but high densisty areas have a quicker rate of increase.
 
Surely the clue is in the number. Bars and household mixing have been allowed since July. Schools have been open since the start of September. It was two weeks after this that cases exploded. Nothing was stopping teenagers mixing before schools opened so why have they increased all of a sudden?
 
F-Red said:
30,000 school pupils according to ONS figures on October 2nd, according to PHE's COVID-19 epidemiology surveillance summary show that educational settings are attributable for 45% of the positive cases. No surprise really.
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Thanks.

In what time frame is that 30.000, and how does it compare to total infections or uni cases.

Also that surveillance report seemed flawed at best, just had a quick look though.

In Finland we know where the infection came from around 40% of the time, and our positivity rate is about 1.5%. So our situation is about 4 times better than in UK, relative to positivity rate and numbers of infection per 100k. And we still don’t know where the infection came from 60% of the time. So I think in UK that number is probably over 80%. So it is not possible to only look at data from the known infections when they are only tiny part of all the infections.
 
lynchie said:
Primary schools have been closed down on the back of a "cluster" of 3 people. There are reports of clusters involving hundreds of kids in University halls. The standard deviation is enormous, and you definitely can't make that relative judgement right now.
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I suspect you know that isn't the standard deviation. It might be the range, if the anecdotal evidence is accurate, but that's it. I figure you have some kind of stake in schools because you're making a very strong argument based on data we don't seem to have. If you think I'm doing the same then you've probably read into my words a bit too much.
 
massi83 said:
Thanks.

In what time frame is that 30.000, and how does it compare to total infections or uni cases.
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A week's worth of data. Don't know university cases specifically.

massi83 said:
Also that surveillance report seemed flawed at best, just had a quick look though.
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How so? Not disputing an opinion, but curious as to why you think it's flawed.
 
F-Red said:
A week's worth of data. Don't know university cases specifically.



How so? Not disputing an opinion, but curious as to why you think it's flawed.
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This? It is easier if you provide a link :) https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...ot/englandwalesandnorthernireland2october2020

And figure 5? It shows the infections from age 2 to school year 6 in going down! And 6-7 times less than school year 12 to 24 years old. So absolutely no evidence to even consider closing schools for under 12 year olds.

Because if most cases are from un-known sources it is very easy to make wrong assumptions by just using known cases. That is of course bigger problem for people using that data, than for the ones that present it. But nonetheless I think the way they presented it was misleading. (Chance I read it wrong, since I didn't use that much time on it)
 
massi83 said:
This? It is easier if you provide a link :) https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...ot/englandwalesandnorthernireland2october2020

And figure 5? It shows the infections from age 2 to school year 6 in going down! And 6-7 times less than school year 12 to 24 years old. So absolutely no evidence to even consider closing schools for under 12 year olds.

Because if most cases are from un-known sources it is very easy to make wrong assumptions by just using known cases. That is of course bigger problem for people using that data, than for the ones that present it. But nonetheless I think the way they presented it was misleading. (Chance I read it wrong, since I didn't use that much time on it)
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The surveillance report is this one - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-covid-19-surveillance-reports
 
F-Red said:
The surveillance report is this one - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-covid-19-surveillance-reports
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All the links you’ve shown give no indicator that primary schools are an issue, based on the age of people getting infected. Secondary schools could be a problem but rise in secondary school age is exactly matched by young adults just past school age, so makes you wonder how much is school and how much is socialising driven indoors now weather has deteriorated (what’s the weather been like in the uk? been miserable in Ireland for the last few weeks)
 
Pogue Mahone said:
All the links you’ve shown give no indicator that primary schools are an issue, based on the age of people getting infected. Secondary schools could be a problem but rise in secondary school age is exactly matched by young adults just past school age, so makes you wonder how much is school and how much is socialising driven indoors now weather has deteriorated (what’s the weather been like in the uk? been miserable in Ireland for the last few weeks)
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Possibly, but the timing of schools going back attributes the rise in cases. The issue I see coming is you can't close one and not the other, if you're a parent with kids at primary and secondary, it brings a whole practical challenge around work. As I said two weeks ago, the reality of this is easier said than done sadly.
 
Really worried about the rapid increase in cases in Germany. Last week was the first time we crossed 3000 daily cases since April, and yesterday we crossed 4000. The rate of increase is going up in recent weeks.

Looking into the stats a bit deeper, it seems Berlin has become a hotspot in the last week and has played a large role in contributing to the increased cases. For Munich (where I am), the daily cases seem to have steadied after an initial increase.
 
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massi83 said:
I know. And where in there is the 30k figure. You are making this harder than it needs to be, which page, which table/figure. You just looked at total in the age groups of 5-19? That doesn't tell the infections happened in school. And grouping of 5-12 year olds with 13-19 year olds is rather pointless.
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You're getting mixed up here, and making it harder for yourself. To clarify, the 30k figure comes from the ONS data.

You commented:
massi83 said:
Also that surveillance report seemed flawed at best, just had a quick look though.
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To which I asked:
F-Red said:
How so? Not disputing an opinion, but curious as to why you think it's flawed.
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I.e - why is the surveillance report flawed?

massi83 said:
This? It is easier if you provide a link :) https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...ot/englandwalesandnorthernireland2october2020
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To which you respond referencing the ONS report is flawed, not the Surveillance report from PHE.

Back to your point:

massi83 said:
You just looked at total in the age groups of 5-19? That doesn't tell the infections happened in school. And grouping of 5-12 year olds with 13-19 year olds is rather pointless.
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If you're looking at the absolute numbers of the data then yes, but the practicality of society having one section of education open, and the other closed, probably causes more challenges to parents than providing a solution. Back to the very original point in this discussion two weeks ago now, it was about educational settings being the elephant in the room at the minute. The government and general public consensus is that pubs/restaurant settings are the challenge for the spread of this virus, and the argument back then was that the elephant in the room that everyone is ignoring and not mentioning is that the education settings are a large contributor to what we're seeing in the UK right now. In reality, which we've seen so far, the 10pm curfew on pubs has done little to reduce case numbers, and has acted as a bit of a window dressing.
 
F-Red said:
Possibly, but the timing of schools going back attributes the rise in cases. The issue I see coming is you can't close one and not the other, if you're a parent with kids at primary and secondary, it brings a whole practical challenge around work. As I said two weeks ago, the reality of this is easier said than done sadly.
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Yeah, the timing is hard to ignore. Plus, as you say, closing secondary schools while leaving primary schools open causes its own problems.
 
11101 said:
How was it?

According to Italy the new rules for UK arrivals aren't in force yet, but according to the UK they are.
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Just on our way from the airport now - the airline said nothing about it, but we were told by the border police to go get a test, which we did. Results came in half an hour (both negative).

I wouldn’t recommend the nasal swab unless you like having something shoved up as far as your eye socket (twice). :lol:

Edit - the police checked your result before you were allowed to leave, they were making sure no-one slipped in and out without the test.
 
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F-Red said:
You're getting mixed up here, and making it harder for yourself. To clarify, the 30k figure comes from the ONS data.

You commented:

To which I asked:


I.e - why is the surveillance report flawed?



To which you respond referencing the ONS report is flawed, not the Surveillance report from PHE.

Back to your point:



If you're looking at the absolute numbers of the data then yes, but the practicality of society having one section of education open, and the other closed, probably causes more challenges to parents than providing a solution. Back to the very original point in this discussion two weeks ago now, it was about educational settings being the elephant in the room at the minute. The government and general public consensus is that pubs/restaurant settings are the challenge for the spread of this virus, and the argument back then was that the elephant in the room that everyone is ignoring and not mentioning is that the education settings are a large contributor to what we're seeing in the UK right now. In reality, which we've seen so far, the 10pm curfew on pubs has done little to reduce case numbers, and has acted as a bit of a window dressing.
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I didn't say ONS was flawed. It was separate paragraph to illustrate I was talking about surveillance report. I could have indeed made it more obvious.

I am still unsure which table or figure that 30k is coming from.

If practicalities dictate that it is impossible to close school just for over 13 years old (or 14/15/16 where ever one wants to put the line) then so be it. I don't have capabilities to comment on it. But the distinction between age groups should be made when others are having that conversation.
 
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