When I was growing up children who were sick stayed home. It didn’t do our education any harm whatsoever and meant that the whole class didn’t get sick. The current attitude towards attendance is unhealthy imo. It has prioritised attendance over children’s long term health and is why we have tens - ThreadSky

elhopkins.bsky.social • 32 days ago

When I was growing up children who were sick stayed home. It didn’t do our education any harm whatsoever and meant that the whole class didn’t get sick. The current attitude towards attendance is unhealthy imo. It has prioritised attendance over children’s long term health and is why we have tens

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earthfire1224.bsky.social•32 days ago

Teachers would love for sick kids to stay home. Unfortunately it just doesn’t happen. Here in Florida with “parental rights” even the school nurse is limited in their ability to ask a parent to keep a kid home. Budget cuts and lack of supplies(tissues, wipes, disinfectant)make for huge problems.

voicesoffreedom.bsky.social•31 days ago

Most parents don't have sick leave themselves from work. If they work, kids come to school sick.

elhopkins.bsky.social•31 days ago

Yes this is very problematic with COVID, specifically because it’s essential to rest to reduce post infection risks #longcovid and the government should be supporting this. It’s not a cold.

voicesoffreedom.bsky.social•31 days ago

They could also support sick leave for parents. I worked in a low income school district during covid. Many of the children's parents were in 'essential' industries. Day care was none existent.
We still have not made a dent in supporting families with family leave or sick leave.

elhopkins.bsky.social•31 days ago

This studies identified key areas that increased individual risk and one of those was inability to rest. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01136-X/fulltext

defeline.bsky.social•32 days ago

I believe the problems began as soon as schools began getting paid to have “butts in seats.”

beansproutsmom.bsky.social•32 days ago

In my kids, I notice the pressure to attend school comes from the teachers themselves, mostly unable (tho some outright unwilling) to send work home etc in grossly under-resourced education system.

elhopkins.bsky.social•32 days ago

I think the fines have been the problem, far better for headteachers to be able to make sensible decisions than schools feel pressure to fine parents.

beansproutsmom.bsky.social•32 days ago

We don't have fines here.

elhopkins.bsky.social•32 days ago

Yes they fined some clinically vulnerable here, so many felt forced to off roll.

beansproutsmom.bsky.social•32 days ago

😭

elhopkins.bsky.social•32 days ago

of thousands of children suffering long covid and had pushing 200 covid deaths. We urgently need to start preventing these infections and not just COVID. The government needs to step up and clean the air.

elhopkins.bsky.social•32 days ago

I am aware it’s tough for some parents to be able to stay off work and that’s why we need more flexible policies for parents. If the government wants a healthy future generation, they must invest and support parents.

elhopkins.bsky.social•32 days ago

Employers should also provide Hepa air purifiers in work. It’s in everyone’s interest to stay well. One sick member of staff can easily turn into 30. It’s better to support that person to stay off and catch up on work than lose key staff to long covid.

gbjoce.bsky.social•32 days ago

I find it so sad that these are not in all schools.Letting children get Covid over and over again makes no sense.

wrambbit.bsky.social•32 days ago

None of this will happen bc teachers’ unions refuse to protect their members

Even before Covid,chronic lung & sinus infections, repeat strep,GI viruses etc were common place for teachers

Staff came to work with walking pneumonia.Now it’s even more dangerous with Covid&measles joining the mix

lulachthesimple.bsky.social•32 days ago

Teachers' unions are trying.
Their powers were knocked out by Thatcherism (perpetuated by Blair, Brown & Starmer), and their members succumb to the lies pushed scot-free by Media (thanks to Cameron scrapping Leveson).

wrambbit.bsky.social•32 days ago

I’m from Canada so it sounds like teachers are struggling everywhere. In Canada, our unions didn’t do a single thing to support teachers health.

Ontario has more measles cases than the entire USA & no one is doing anything to curb yet another airborne virus.

elhopkins.bsky.social•32 days ago

Yes I was very unimpressed with the lack of support for clinically vulnerable members.

davidpeacock40.bsky.social•32 days ago

I completely agree with you. It's all about pointless league tables/ KPI's. Time to start measuring health, both physical and mental, and give it higher priority

elhopkins.bsky.social•32 days ago

Yes and mental health also, teachers and children seem so stressed with all these targets, testing and paperwork.

davidpeacock40.bsky.social•32 days ago

And anything not measured is just not taught or considered.

elhopkins.bsky.social•32 days ago

I have felt for a long time that there isn’t enough practical life skills or outdoor time for pupils. Life isn’t all about academic study and many adults struggle later on with basic practical skills.

davidpeacock40.bsky.social•32 days ago

I do training and assessing of engineering staff, recently I have assessed someone with a PhD and someone who started as a cleaner and has advanced via in house training - guess which one was the better fitter?

elhopkins.bsky.social•32 days ago

That’s really great! I always remember chatting to a cleaner in my college who was always so cheery and he said to me ‘I have a PhD in physics.’ I said ‘why are you here?’ He said ‘it gives me time to think about my interests while I clean and now I don’t have any stress’.

satmandu.bsky.social•32 days ago

Maybe we need lower cost viral particle sensing. Maybe a readout of "there are tons of cold viruses in the air" might be able to convince businesses to get better air filtering.

lulachthesimple.bsky.social•32 days ago

CO² is a fair analog for pathogen loads.

(Business *has* improved ventilation, at least in their corporate offices, btw.)

elhopkins.bsky.social•32 days ago

In some offices but not all.

lulachthesimple.bsky.social•32 days ago

True.
Hard to know for sure, as they keep quiet about it, in case we ask why *these* offices, but not *those*..?

And because their brand despises snowflakes publicly.

elhopkins.bsky.social•32 days ago

It makes no sense to have people struggling into the office streaming with germs and spreading to everyone else. Possibly spreading to elderly family members also.

lulachthesimple.bsky.social•32 days ago

Neoliberalism also makes no sense. It's all a cult.

elhopkins.bsky.social•32 days ago

Seeing the virus would help. There was a company developing this for masks. They had a sensor that turned pink after 15 mins if the virus was present.

satmandu.bsky.social•32 days ago

Every so often I do a quick lit search on the topic. There still isn't a realtime airborne pathogen detection method, but it looks like we are getting closer!

But even a non-realtime method might be useful for showing relative concentrations between rooms to see if other Air Qual metrics correlate.

elhopkins.bsky.social•32 days ago

Yes it would be so good. I think this would really help.

wrambbit.bsky.social•32 days ago

Private schools have already switched over to better air filtration, test to stay policies, you know, everything that government buildings upgraded for themselves, it’s just being done in public schools or hospitals bc reasons.

wrambbit.bsky.social•32 days ago

*not being done

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