Tuesday 15 September 2020

Quarantine madness

At my daughter's school, one of the pupils in Year 8 had Covid-19 symptoms or tested positive (not sure). As a result, the whole of Year 8 has to stay at home for two weeks. I assume that this also applies to all teachers who gave a lesson with that pupil in it (she wasn't sure).

I don't know whether the school is under some legal obligation to do this, or whether they are overreacting to cover their arses, but this is surely madness?

There are one hundred pupils in each Year plus two dozen teachers. Mass Covid-19 testing indicates that about 2% of people test positive. So if they actually tested everybody in a whole Year and all the teachers regularly, the probability that at least one tests positive is over 90% (1 minus 0.98^124).

On that basis, most pupils and most teachers will be in quarantine most of the time (there is no test yet to see whether people have had it and are immune AFAIAA), so they might as well continue doing online lessons and everybody stays at home.

19 comments:

Shiney said...

And anyway most of the 'cases' are probably false positives

https://lockdownsceptics.org/radical-uncertainty-and-government-innumeracy/

Bayard said...

The object of the exercise is not to protect people from catching COVID, as without a vaccine, everyone is going to be exposed to it sooner or later anyway, and sooner is better than later, the object of the exercise is to be seen to be doing something, so the more you do, like shuffling pupils in and out of quarantine, the better. It's long stopped being medicine in the British sense of the word and has become medicine in the Native American sense.

JuliaM said...

The whole country's gone mad.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Sh, probably. Which makes this all even madder.

B, I'm not sure sooner is better than later. The disease is becoming less virulent every month, so if you can delay the inevitable, that improves your chances of surviving. Unless you are under 30 or so, in which case you chance of surviving was always 100% anyway.

Agreed on "appearing to do something".

JM, it's not us, it's them.

Lola said...

I'm Speechless. Quite speechless.

A K Haart said...

We are hearing about problems with kids having minor illnesses such as coughs and colds. Some schools seem to have a robust approach because coughs and colds are bound to be as common as they have always been - others just panic.

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, yup.

AKH, some schools are still old school!

George Carty said...

Couldn't this blog's extremely long list of tags be shorted by substituting ones that are very similar in meaning: for example by replacing all occurrences of "Corona virus" with "Covid-19", or "Homeownerism" with "Home-Owner-Ism"?

Mark Wadsworth said...

GC, yes, I keep meaning to do it, but it's quite laborious.

Mark Wadsworth said...

GC< as a test I changed 39 "corona virus" labels to "covid-19" and it took me 13 minutes. Boring but necessary, I suppose.

George Carty said...

MW, is there no way of automating the process of changing tags? (If it was my blog my instinct would probably be to rustle up a Python script to do the job...)

Mark Wadsworth said...

GC, I wish there was!

Robin Smith said...

This is more mad though: Scientific American has unanimously stated they will endorse Biden in the US election. Because Trump is anti science. Has science been overwhelmed by Fake News? Was the decision a scientific one where they can show Trump is anti science?

George Carty said...

MW, is it that you don't have the programming skills to automate the tag switching process, or is it that Blogger has made it impossible to automate (eg by gating the process with CAPTCHAs)?

Mark Wadsworth said...

GS, it is the former. There's none of this Captcha nonsense in the innards of it, that's only for comments.

Bayard said...

RS, is Scientific American an Alarmist publication? If so pot/kettle.

Robin Smith said...

@Baynard

I wouldn't say so.

As here though,they are deeply religious

Anonymous said...

My Test and Trace experience. I got these texts (the names have been changed but they are not mine) clearly T&T has a lot of problems. I am not 9 years old nor am I or ever have been a female. No reply was possible to either text.

------ Thursday, Aug 20, 2020 ------UK_Gov (3:53 am)
We've registered you for a corona virus test on 20 Aug 2020 at 12:30. The test site is Glasgow Airport (drive in only), Glasgow Airport, Long Stay South Car Park (Zone E), Paisley . To enter, show this text or use the pass we emailed you (if you have one). £$%^& *&^%$£ Date of birth: 02-06-2011

------ Thursday, Aug 20, 2020 ------NHS (6:15 pm)NHS COVID-19 Notification:
Dear £$%^& *&^%$£ Birth Date - 02 June 2011 Your corona virus test result is unclear. You'll need to get another test. If you have not had coronavirus symptoms, you don't need to self-isolate. If you have symptoms, self-isolate for 10 days from when symptoms started.You may return to work on day 11 if you've not had a high temperature for 48 hours and feel well. Talk to your employer first. If someone you live with has tested positive, continue to self-isolate. Follow the relevant guidelines.If you're shielding or you've been traced as a contact of someone who tested positive, or this is for a care home resident, another test may be needed. Follow the relevant guidelines.
If this result is for a child or staff member at school/nursery, tell the school or nursery.Contact 111 if you need medical help. In an emergency dial 999.

And here is a good read via N.O.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/09/17/12-steps-to-create-your-own-pandemic/

Mark Wadsworth said...

EM, that is mental. But I can't see in those texts where they refer to you as Ms or Mrs.