Thread by @karamballes

🧵 @GavinWilliamson Statement to the commons.
What a sham

"Important mitigations like hand washing and improved ventilation will remain"

What improved ventilation? How do they keep getting away with pushing this lie?
#edutwitter

2/ Shows how out of touch Tory MPs are that a huge cheer goes up when GW says that social distancing will end in schools.

Do they actually believe the crap they read in the Telegraph?

3/ @KateGreenSU says she's relieved bubbles are going, asks about support for ventilation, evidence for removing masks and will children be vaccinated?

4/GW ignores the questions,tells @KateGreenSU shes missed the main point and then instead goes off on one about the EU vaccination programme

5/ No follow up allowed for @KateGreenSU, isn't it time they got all the MPs back without distancing or masks, and none of them should isolate as close contacts either.

6/ Edward Lee says thank you for putting children first, some children have died but 6k children die a year, isn't it time parents put this in perspective
😱

7/ Another Q on ventilation
GW: We have been supporting schools with good hand hygiene and will continue to offer guidence.

Its useless without the funding, hive us the money

8/ Tory Backbencher with a pure toady question
"Will pupils continue to benefit from amazing distribution of laptops?"
GW:its been fantastic

Some students are still waiting...

9/ GW answers another toady question
"Labour would want schools to remain closed"

Backbencher suggests don't test children at all

10/ Another question on ventilation
GW: schools haven't been vectors of transmission, reflect community rates, we have measures to prevent transmission

So why did Johnson say step 4 had to come now because the school holidays would act as a breaker?

11/ Another Tory MP calls to scrap testing of children. GW says gov has taken a cautious approach throughout

So we are pretending Greenwich weren't taken to court and they tried to have all students back in on 4th Jan?

12/ MP suggests Pupil premium money should be ring fenced for sport
GW: schools just see pp as another funding stream, time schools started thinking how they use this money.

How insulting to heads struggling with inadequate funding

13/ Mark Harper says now we have vaccinated adults,isn't it time we just stopped testing?

Sounds like outright skeptic nonsense, dont test and that will mean its all over

14/ Backbencher says isn't it time NEU stopped focusing on decolonisation and start caring about education
GW: NEU don't want teachers on school, don't want remote learning, I don't think they like children, they've refused to cooperate, hopefully next term they will be better

15/ Right @GavinWilliamson and the deceitful muppets on the backbench, if you had listened to NEU following likes of NYC children would have had less disruption and spent more time in school than they have.
You failed the children.

16/ Yeah we wanted teachers out of school, mid waves when hundreds of educators died.
If the NEU doesn't support remote learning why did we spend money setting up a remote learning hub on our website so members can share best practices and resources?

17/ We did say remote learning required sensible safeguarding rules which we produced and were easy to follow.
Do Tories not agree with safeguarding? I guess how comfortable they are with child infections suggests not

18/ SEND funding question
GW: I won't enter this discourse, but
they are a top priority

Since when? Are they going to
restore the money they stripped
from CAHMS? I doubt it, last time I
raised this with @AlokSharma_RDG
he told me to stop playing politics

19/ Question on sports days
GW: schools should be allowing all activities which allow parents onto the site

Just set up some Heads for a really tough end of term with confrontational parents wanting last min changes

20/ Question on early years funding (which is on its knees and is close to complete collapse)

GW gives non answer about adequate funding

21/ Another question about vaccination, no proper answer.

22/ Thats the end of it, 50 minutes of gov and opposition failing to adequately serve the nation and its children.

Main focus of Tory MPs seemed to be scrapping testing entirely, "if we stop testing the pandemic goes away"
Trumpian? Yeadonite? Certainly not sane

23/ Every speaker celebrated removing bubbles and ending isolation, not a single person who spoke said perhaps this isn't sensible, none checked SAGE docs that disagree with governments view.

Every ventilation question avoided.

24/ Seems like MPs are sticking their heads in the sand regarding @LongCovidKids and CV/CEV households. The lack of attention, the lack of scrutiny of this gigantic elephant in the room was quite sickening, reminded of how the DWP crimes against ppl have gone unpunished

25/ So close contacts will not have to isolate, instead they take 1 PCR test.
Quick question, what is the incubation time of Delta before virus builds up enough to be picked up by PCR? Shouldn't this inform when a PCR test should be taken?

26/ Otherwise we could have infected ppl testing negative and then being in school when they become infectious.
Also it seems the one PCR taken isn't going to be checked up or enforceable by test and trace according to NAHT deputy on LBC just now

27/ Makes me wonder why they carried out unethical experiments without proper consent in school to replace isolation. These were 5 days of LFD and 2 PCRs.
So after this we get 1 PCR, which might not get checked up on.

28/ One of GWs answers was "LFDs in September" Now I saw a leak a couple of days ago which said there would be a review of LFD in early September, which would find that LFDs can be removed.

One Tory MP did suggest not even testing symptomatic children!

29/ I forsee parents sending in students with minor symptoms rather than checking with a PCR and infected students who should be isolating transmitting in school, more will be asymptomatic and so we will be getting a few isolations from positive PCRs from symptomatic while

30/ Asymptomatic/minor symptoms spread continues to grow.

Advice from virologists on this please, I believe the size of viral dose someone encounters can increase the likelihood of severe symptoms, certainly seen data that masks reducing dose leads to less severe symptoms

31/ So if ppl are stuck in a poorly ventilated environment without masks with multiple infected people for hours, does this increase their risk?
Is this partially why P1 was so brutal in Brazil particularly in children in comparison,hit with so much virus their systems struggled?

32/ Besides schools becoming variant factories, and perfect locations for new variants like Lamda or Delta+ to get established, is there a risk of viral bombardment to either children or 2 jabbed adults beyond what they already face?

End🧵

Thing is, if someone wanted to pursue Herd Immunity via infection of young people, this is exactly how the gov would go about it while keeping up a pretence of caring about safety

And this is what they asked SAGE to model in hope of reducing winter wave

And this is how they treat parents asking for evidence behind the decision to remove masks

Of course there will be no transparency, I bet they didn't bother collecting evidence,

Look what SAGE recommendations for whole of step 4 and compare to gov policy.

They arent listening to SAGE, they are pursuing policies that look remarkably like GBD lobbyist demands

SAGE say vulnerable and disadvantaged will face the brunt of it, and Johnson is clearly fine with that, otherwise he would fund ventilation

Chris Whitty says we need to expect a significant amount of long covid particularly in young people, the government chose to do this, what will the economic and health impact be?

Hope they have got their #SociopathMaths correct, looks like by their calculations the risk of removing masks is worth around £4b
inews.co.uk/news/politics/…

But don't worry I'm sure most the media will do their best to hold the government to account

Starting to look like there is an issue with mRNA vaccine supply, as AZ can no longer be used for younger age groups,they might not be able to vaccinate under 18s without admitting a mistake and asking for help so childrens health is risked to save face