"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
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?
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
2/ The bill gives the Secretary of State the power to add to the list of interests that can access your childrens data through secondary legislation avoiding parliamentary scrutiny
3/ The Bill also permits 14-18 year olds to be targeted with political marketing
3/ More and more evidence emerges of the long term harms caused by covid, but the UK govs preferred paedatricians continue to peddle claims that with enough infections children will develop lasting immunity
Said this would occur after 1 infection, what is it now? 5? 7? 10?🤷♂️
🧵Cass Review
Not had a chance to read the whole thing yet, but have had time to look through the main points
What positives can be taken from it? The time spent on waiting lists was identified as a major issue, all children's services are massively underfunded at the moment
2/ I would like to think that this will lead to an investment in all children's support services like CAHMS, more pastoral support in schools etc
That would be a positive outcome, regardless of what else is included in the review, unfortunately real terms cuts are the reality
3/ What matters is how government interprets the review and what it chooses to implement, additional funding for children isn't going to be prioritised over tax cuts to appease RW papers
Imagine if the billions from last round of tax cuts had instead been invested in children
Miriam Cates and Ranil Jayawardena's offices were very insistent that speaking at this conference didn't constitute "sharing a platform" or speaking "alongside" the other speakers
Cates' office even threatened legal action if those words were used
Interesting how Tory MPs and RW media consiser going on marches to call for a ceasefire in Gaza will have ppl labeled as being part of a hate march, but speaking at the same conference as multiple ppl named in a EU report on US and Russian dark money shouldnt draw associations
In total over $707,000,000 in funding between 2009-2018 was identified by the Tip Of The Iceberg Report published 2021
🧵This article by Camilla Turner is a great example of how antivax talking points are laundered into the mainstream by those trying to claim excess deaths are being caused by vaccines
Group of MPs call for data to be released insinuating there's a cover up
2/ They claim they need data on dose and deaths, worth noting this has come from McVeys anti-lockdown APPG and UsForThem whose founder is supporting Bridgen and RFK Jr
3/ However I'm not certain what data they claim is being withheld as data on dose and death stratified by age is publicly available from the ONS