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Karam Bales Profile picture
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23 Mar, 26 tweets, 8 min read
1/ 🧵Third wave gamble
Its clear government is taking a gamble, frustrating, as they did after the 1st wave they risk unnecessary suffering due to impatience.

Looking at SAGE modelling they've already decided around 30k lives is a fair price to pay.
2/ I guess this is a consequence of a government of financiers, PR, and hacks with a liberal sprinkling of edgelords.

They're used to gambling without personal risk, particularly while they have a protective ring of client journalists around them.
3/ They might get away with it, or as they expect, they might be able to edge it without collapsing the NHS, avoiding a dangerous new variant and keeping thr death toll down to numbers they deem manageable.

I worry they've messed up timing and measures.
4/ As has been the case for the whole pandemic, failure to address transmission in schools, failure to even admit it, increases the risk

Only around 3% of whole population are fully 2 jabs vaccinated,and less than half have one jab,Exponential growth is possible and problematIc
5/ Most of Europe opened up earlier than us due to having a smaller winter wave, they also have more safety measures in their schools so we are several weeks behind them.

Belgium PM has announced schools are driving their 3rd wave,media will ignore this
6/ Same thing happening in France, average age of those hospitalised is lowering as children infect their parents, considering Frances vaccine roll out we can't really say vaccinating the elderly fully explains this
7/ Same pattern in Canada. It will spreads in UK schools then moving up through the age groups it will reach those not vaccinated, and those with one dose that hasn't triggered an adequate response.

8/ Heatmap from Germany, starts in younger age groups then spreads upwards
9/ Now a heatmap on the UK, same pattern again, but we have less safety measures, the spread will occur faster

10/ Age distribution in the UK
11/ We know B117 and other variants are more infectious and more deadly to one extent or another, meaning measures which might have kept transmission low before aren't good enough, and in UK we didn't have enough measures to handle wild covid.
12/ We haven't gained much in safety measures, and now government is reviewing mask use after pressure from skeptic lobbyists and MPs

However B117 might also be better adapted at infecting children than wild covid
13/ I worry we are constructing a long covid health bomb, there's still much we don't know, particularly neurological impact many suffer and what this means in the long term.

New UK long covid cases
14/ Children Hospitalised.
15/ The government and those pushing for no measures in schools are willfully ignoring Long covid, im shocked how few people know about it and even less know about Long covid in kids.

Its negligence, but its a risk others are willing for us to take
16/ And Ireland saw the same pattern too, but most the media will fail to acknowledge any of this, statement by Belgiums PM definitely won't ever get mentioned.

17/ There are other issues with B117, was a report just over a month ago that it had longer incubation and infectiousness time

Merkel has now said B117 is more dangerous (SAGE said around 30% more initially, some say up to 65%) its also more contagious
18/ Merkel also announces B117 is more contagious and dangerous in children, calls for a rapid reappraisal of safety measures in education.

Isnt this a big story?
What about the statements from Belgium etc?
UK media? Tumbleweed
mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/id…
19/ Increased risk to children in UK originally reported 3 months ago.
BBCRadio5 phone in a NHS worker spoke of a ward of children with covid.
High profile pediatrics labeled this fake news
"Dangerous spread of disinformation" became the news story around this phone call
20/ Start of February the data arrived to show that we are seeing increased child hospitalizations.
There was tumbleweed then, the pediatrics dug into their established position, the story disappeared...

The call and response is here ⬇️
21/ Now consider the "evidence" DfE have provided for threatening schools with court action, Jenny Harries again, looks awful.

But not as awful as planning full student return in January when they already had some of this data
22/ But we know the government have been consistently dishonest on transmission in schools, its also been dishonest on what safety measures schools have.

Just look at their #BackToSchool campaign
23/ Its what I expected from this government, as are the actions of client journalists.

Whats more worrying are those from the scientific and medical community who don't just refute what most govs are now accepting, they set out to discredit others
24/ For the latest data on school aged children and infection, along with the government considering scrapping mask use in secondary classrooms
25/ If considering scrapping masks wasn't enough, DfE have started getting Heads to volunteer their schools as guinea pigs to replace isolation with LFDs

Students must still isolate outside of school.
manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-m…
26/26 However we are constantly getting more data that the LFDs used in schools aren't suitable as a replacement for isolation.

Whole gov approach to safety in schools is just willfully negligent, they don't care about workers, students or their families

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Karam Bales Profile picture
24 Mar
Remember few months ago the bbc 5 live phone call from a woman who said she had a hospital ward of children with covid

Certain high profile pediatrics called it fake news, bbc rushed out an apology

Well...
#edutwitter
reuters.com/article/uk-hea…
We were seeing increased hospitalisation at the time, but the statement from pediatrics completely shut down that conversation Image
The same pediatrics who don't feel long covid is enough of a major issue to have been more cautious around school safety. The same ones who downplay transmission and don't worry about education workers safety
Read 4 tweets
Karam Bales Profile picture
24 Mar
1/🧵I wonder how many people who contracted covid but didn't get a positive case due to lack of testing in first wave or being asymptomatic will suffer long covid.

It has employment and education implications.
2/ Long covid is varied, there will be workers and children struggling with long covid who don't even know they had covid.

Without knowing long covid is the cause workers could find themselves in capability issues, students could be labelled as school refusers.
3/ We have had our department isolating multiple times due to outbreaks, I tried recebtly to get us antibody tests as these could confirm who had covid even if they didn't get a PCR test,this would allow me the ability to negotiate adjustments if they started suffering long covid
Read 5 tweets
Karam Bales Profile picture
14 Mar
1/🧵Beware the Catch Up stalking horse

For anyone who has seen how some of the worst practices of the private sector have been imported into education since Gove and Cummings got into the DfE, the awarding of Covid contracts should come as no suprise.
2/ As we hopefully move out of the pandemic through this year the government will have two focuses for education policy.

First is culture wars, they see this as a route to electoral success. It drives division, destroys sensible debate and creates enemies of opposing voices
3/ It also manufactures the outrage required as an excuse for rapid far reaching reforms, throw in disruption of Covid and Brexit and combine it with the governments audacity to lie and misinform its impossible to know how far this lot are willing to go.
Read 24 tweets
Karam Bales Profile picture
2 Mar
1/🧵
@ReicherStephen has explained how we have to be careful LFTs don't give a false sense of assurance leading to changes in behaviour.
DfE advert seems to be encouraging the wrong behaviour for political purposes.

#edutwitter
2/DfE is also running radio adverts claiming that staff will be protected with ventilation.

The Government hasn't invested in ventilation, open a window, if you can, thats what the advice says.

Its a propoganda campaign.
3/ Government is worried parents won't send their children back, would show a lack of public support, and so to keep the desired narrative they are will to distort the truth, fudge figures and they're also willing to go for outright coercion.
Read 45 tweets
Karam Bales Profile picture
22 Feb
1/ Thread🧵A walk through the DfE guidence for the "big bang"

Not many changes from September to December, looks like government is willing to accept transmission in schools.
11th February SAGE said it should be phased.

Changes summarised at the start
2/ Starts off by claiming risks for staff are no greater than other occupations.

Latest ONS data on Sept to January put education staff as one of the groups at highest risk to infection.

Apparently not much needed to deal with the new variant
3/ School leaders have a legal duty to protect people from harm, reduce risk to the lowest practicable level.

Surely this should also apply to government? Leaders can't accomplish this with inadequate support and guidelines
Read 46 tweets
Karam Bales Profile picture
21 Feb
LBC this morning
Guest 1 "Primary school children rarely infect others"
Guest 2 "In a few weeks covid will be a non fatal disease"
Presentor @toryboypierce"Now we are opening up the schools what else do you want opened up?"
1/
This flawed thinking is constantly on display this week, a belief that once schools are fully open then we can start loosening other restrictions.
Schools are going to raise RO, 0.2-0.5 were the estimates from SAGE in May.
BTW DfE ignored all SAGE modelling for its June proposals
3/ That was before we had B117 and other variants to contend with.

Read 10 tweets

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