Battling corona, Boris Johnson style: the UK has just recenlty discarded the face mask duty in schools. So far the development looked promising, if not that pesky Indian variation would have had occured. If Bojo now reintroduces face mask duty in school it would look like that the battle is not over yet. And that's he does not want to do!
But now the new Indian mutant is on its rise. A mutant which has caused Singapore to close schools entirely. Teachers and unions are worried about it, and want to get informed in official reports about it more.
So how to solve that problem? Simple: just don't publish any information about that mutant! A mutant which is know to especially infect children a lot.
Jon Richards, head of education for Unison, said the union has repeatedly asked for this data for weeks. “We were told it would be in the report last Thursday but it wasn’t. We were then told it would be published this week but that report has simply not appeared. In the meantime, the government has gone and lifted the rule on face coverings.”
Christina Pagel, professor of operational research at University College London, said the situation was very troubling. “It feels like bad news that we’re not being told.
“There is a narrative that schools are safe but the data clearly shows this variant can and does spread in schools. Two weeks ago, the Singaporean health minister closed schools because of the risk of greater spread in children of this variant.
“Parents, teachers and children just need this information in order to take steps to keep themselves and their communities safe. The new variant is the biggest threat to the roadmap according to Sage, but the data is just not coming out in a transparent and timely manner. I just feel like PHE is letting us down at a crucial time.”
Scientists, unions and teachers concerned after data cut from Public Health England report ahead of shift on face masks
www.theguardian.com
BoJo seems to care more about making a fake impression than about the life of the children under his care.
Yes, but you have to remember that we wear masks to primarily to protect others, not ourselves. That's why I continue to be very careful to wear a mask even though I'm probably as immune as I'm ever going to be, since it's now three weeks since my second shot of AstraZeneca.
So, much as I despise Boris Johnson and his government, of whom the Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, is one of the worst members (the joke is, I am told, that he's unsackable while Priti Patel is still Home Secretary, because that's too senior to be held the least competent member of the Cabinet), I'm not completely sure about your take on this.
Unison represent
educational support staff (everyone but teachers, really), and they are rightly very concerned about the health and welfare of their members, who, as adults, are far more at risk from any known variant of Covid-19 than are the pupils, whom Unison want to wear masks to protect the teaching support stuff, the cooks, cleaners, maintenance workers, secretarial staff, and so on, whom they represent from being infected by asymptomatic pupils.
Similarly, there are apparently very real concerns that pupils may well become infected at school and, on their return home, infect older members of their families, who will then themselves spread the infection now that social distancing and the lockdown are at last being relaxed here.
So while caution about relaxing the requirement on school students to wear masks (a requirement which as apparently proved unpopular and difficult to enforce) is fully justified, we should remember that the requirement is there primarily to protect adults, not the students themselves.
See also
Pupils’s relief at being free of face coverings is mixed with teachers’ and parents’ concerns over spread of Indian Covid variant
www.theguardian.com
It really shouldn't be a case of "Won't somebody please think of the children" so much as "Won't somebody please think of the school support staff and the children's older relatives and contacts?"
