Schoolkids know the score: reopening all schools in England will infect the nation with Covid-19
“Perfectly safe”: this photo was taken on a school staircase after Boris Johnson ruled that it was “perfectly safe” for children to go back there in September – no social distancing, no PPE… not safe at all. Now he is planning to do it all again, with infection rates nearly seven times higher than when this image was made.
Boris Johnson loves announcing big plans without giving us the facts and figures behind them, and he has done it again with school reopening.
How humiliating for him that it has been up to school pupil Jamal Elaheebocus to explain that when schools were recklessly reopened in June last year, one in 1,100 people were infected with Covid-19. When they were recklessly reopened in September, this had fallen to one in 2,000.
In mid-February, the infection rate was one in 115 people. It is hoped this will have fallen to one in 300 but that is nearly seven times more than in September last year – and look how that turned out!
Jamal reminds us of a few more uncomfortable truths:
the prevalence of the virus in communities remains high. As Johnson himself admitted on January 4, schools are vectors of transmission.
To any of us working or studying in schools, the reasons why schools are hotspots for infection are obvious.
Fitting thirty students and a teacher in a classroom makes social distancing impossible, overcrowded buildings means that several year groups who are separate bubbles then mix together.
Students are then packed on buses and trains to get home, spreading infection not only among themselves but among the wider public as well.
The latest data from Imperial’s React programme showed that 5 to 12 year olds had the second highest infection rate of any age group. Given this, there is no doubt that schools will increase the infection rate again. The difference this time is that infection rates will be much higher.
While the vaccine may help limit the rise in infection to an extent, infection rates will undoubtedly increase. This is a reckless gamble just to get children into schools for three weeks before Easter holidays.
Yes.
So why is Johnson doing it?
This was inevitable, thanks to the pressure from the mainstream media and Keir Starmer.
How low Labour has sunk! Its leader is now counted among those responsible for inflicting an inevitable increase in Covid-19 infections on the UK – yet again. People will die because Starmer did this.
Yes, some of the arguments in favour of re-opening schools have influence – but only because prolonged closures have placed pupils at the mercy of the Tories’ neoliberal system – one that Starmer wholeheartedly supports.
The combined incompetence of the government and the cruelty of the neoliberal system has meant many kids have missed out on free school meals, families are struggling to cope in overcrowded homes and kids have not been able to access online learning because of lack of access to a laptop or good broadband.
Lockdown has been made so difficult for school pupils because of the government’s decision to continue to punish the poorest in society. It is a disgrace that the Tories and the right-wing media are attempting to manipulate the stress and hardship and use it to back up their reckless campaign to open up society and let the virus run rampage.
It is a disgrace.
And the Tories’ adherence to the neoliberal system that demands minimal investment for maximum return (to the very, very rich) means that the reopening will be done on the cheap.
Jamal proposes a series of measures to make schools safe – or at least safer. None of them have been supported – or even mentioned – by Boris Johnson because they cost money.
Teachers should be prioritised for the vaccine since they will be mixing with such a large number of people. This should have been done months ago and as more and more of the clinically vulnerable and elderly are vaccinated, there is no reason not to now prioritise teachers.
There should also be plans to repurpose public buildings as classrooms or put money into new buildings on school sites to facilitate social distancing in classrooms and allow for proper separation of year group bubbles.
Supply teachers and newly-qualified teachers who are not employed can be utilised to allow for smaller class sizes and more social distancing.
The vaccine is not the cure-all that Johnson and his cronies have claimed. It wont protect you as fully as you think, and it won’t protect as many people as you think.
And, of course, it has only been applied to a minority of the population – on a first-dose basis.
How sad that Johnson is so keen to prolong the UK’s Covid-19 agony, just to please his backbenchers, the baying hounds of the mass media… and Keir Starmer.
Source: A school student speaks: 8 March ‘big bang’ reopening just isn’t safe – Counterfire
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I can hear the deniers all decrying ‘what does this schoolboy know after all he is just a child unlike our leader dick johnson who knows every thing and nothing!’
This is not widespread news ‘ The latest data from Imperial’s React programme showed that 5 to 12 year olds had the second highest infection rate of any age group. Given this, there is no doubt that schools will increase the infection rate again. The difference this time is that infection rates will be much higher.’
Neither is the fact the vaccinations are only the first injection and will not provide full protection because the second one might not even happen and if it does the effects of the first injection will have ceased by the time little fascist dictator johnson decides okay we’ll give the peasants their second jab!
Instead the baying cry from little fascist dictator dick johnson and his crooked callous fascist tories is ‘re-open the schools – re-open the schools – we don’t care about infecting thousands and thousands more women and men! We aren’t going to spend public money on ensuring schools and teachers are safe – no we are using your public money to give it to our crooked criminal bros!