Researchers from the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, at Imperial College London, have suggested closing schools in an attempt to reduce the spread of pandemic flu. Perhaps, though, at least in this country, school closures have contributed to its spread.
In London, and doubtless elsewhere, 4-5 pupils in a school would go down with flu, so the schools would immediately be closed and the kids turned loose on the streets, in what they called the “swine skive”.
Inevitably, some of those kids would have already been incubating the virus and, indeed, quite a few subsequently became ill and were hauled off to hospital. But, before that happened, how many other people, especially in the crowded environments of buses and trains, did those kids infect? And how much did it snow-ball, with each infected person passing it on to a bunch of others almost ad infinitum, and all, maybe, from one infected kid on a bus?
Pupils in schools with infected kids should have been isolated, as should, in the early days, returnees from the US and Mexico – maybe then we wouldn’t be descending into the influenzal mire as swiftly as we currently are. And there is support for this viewpoint. I posted this comment at the Times online, and as you can see, it’s picked up 39 recommendations:-
Ron wrote:
Returnees from Mexico and the US should have been isolated right from the outset. Schools where some pupils were infected should not have been closed to allow potentially infected pupils to roam the streets on the “swine skive” and infect others; they too, should have been isolated (see also events in China if you doubt that).
The government’s wait and see policy has been a potentially lethal farce, taking risks with public health in the face of a virus which is still very much an unknown quantity and those, like me, in high-risk groups (I have severe COPD), are likely to pay the ultimate price for their inaction and stupidity.
July 19, 2009 12:25 AM BST on UK-TimesOnline
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Closing schools, putting hundreds of thousands of kids on the streets (you don’t think they’re all going to stay indoors, do you?), is not the answer. Not least because it will place an enormous burden on working parents, causing financial hardship if they have to take time off work to look after children (with a knock-on effect on the already rocky economy). and parents taking what may need to be unlimited time off may be fired.
And how will children, out of school, be prevented from catching the flu and, when they catch it, from spreading it to their peers? Kids, for the most part, like the company of other kids, and gather in groups – gangs, if you like; the term isn’t always pejorative – and the risk then will be similar to school. As it will be if they go to places like cinemas.
In a normal summer six weeks of other people’s kids is a complete pain in the butt (as it is for parents, but at least they can send their kids out to bother someone else). I mean, I live less than five minutes from a park, yet the buggers persist in playing football in the streets, to the detriment of parked cars and to gardens. And why is it – you can walk past any junior school playground and experience this for yourself – that kids of a certain age do nothing but scream? It’s not as if they’re shouting, to make themselves heard over the noise, it’s simply screaming. Really, do you want the summer holiday to continue indefinitely? Anybody?
Closing places were people gather in numbers, and in close proximity, may not be a bad idea, though – cinemas, pubs, football grounds, clubs, whatever. It makes just as much sense as closing schools, but it won’t happen. However, I shall certainly be absenting myself from pubs, as this thing tightens its grip.
As I’ve said previously, for those of us in high-risk groups, isolation is the safest course. I can do my shopping early in the mornings (and there is less risk in a taxi tan on a bus), when there are few people about (not perfectly safe, but the important thing is to minimise risk), and stay in otherwise. Or I can do it online. Either way I’ll swab all packages with a sterilising solution – one flu-ridden, sneezing and coughing, supermarket shelf-filler can infect, potentially, thousands of people, as the flu virus can linger for ages on surfaces like cans and jars.
What terrifies me, though, is that this is “only” flu, albeit an unknown variety, yet the handling of it has been a fuck-up right from the beginning. If something seriously lethal comes our way – Ebola, for example – if we can’t do better than this, we’re seriously screwed.
