UK Coronavirus: Boris Johnson May Be Taught a Cruel Lesson in Bid to Re-Open Schools

UK Prime minister is left to face the cruel lesson by exposing people to coronavirus with his decision to re-open school in the United Kingdom.

The Chief Medical Officer of Johnson, Chris Whitty, said England has probably reached the limits of how open it can be, given the number of coronavirus cases in the country.

However, the United Kingdom Minister’s decision lies between a quick recovery from the economic downturn caused by the lockdown or the students avoiding the generational catastrophe, predicated by UN Secretary-General, if the school is not re-opened.

The government does not see it like that, according to numerous UK government sources;

First, the lockdown has weakened the UK’s economy, that made the UK’s GDP to fall with a record of 20.4% in the second quarter of 2020

One government minister told CNN: “There is huge harm caused by lockdown itself and that needs to be set against the obvious huge harm caused by the virus. When you set one against the other and realize how low transmissions are among schoolchildren — how do you justifiably come down on the side of economic catastrophe over schools?”

Contrary to the idea that there is a straight choice to be made, another government adviser told CNN. “It’s not the case of if pubs and bars are open X will happen and if you open schools Y will happen. If everyone is compliant with the rules of social distancing, cleaning their hands, you can basically have both at once.”

More so, the two things are not unrelated. “Schools are going back regardless, mostly because parents need to get back to work. Everything has a knock-on effect,” said a senior civil servant.

Another reason is that the disease is here and, despite optimistic signs, there is still no clear idea of when a vaccine will arrive.

Sources from the government say that despite the tragedy’s scale, it is still most dangerous for the elderly and vulnerable. So, if most people can go back to some normality, the focus can be on local lockdowns and protecting the vulnerable.

UK’s test and trace program are still not up to scratch. According to Christina Pagel, professor of operational research at University College London, “a strong contact tracing system that can break chains of transmission and drive infections down” is essential if schools are to be safe.

“Contact tracing should reach 80% of new symptomatic cases and 80% of their contacts,” she told CNN, adding, “we’re probably reaching about 50-70% of symptomatic cases” currently.

If testing is not where it needs to be, things could get out of hand quickly. “If we go back to the same level of contact that we had in March, then we will go back to the same level of epidemic growth,” says Graham Medley, professor of infectious disease modeling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Graham Medley explains that re-opening schools are dangerous not just because of transmissions but also because of the size of networks they create. “A school of 500 children could connect 300-400 homes. And homes with more than one child who go to different schools, connecting all the households in both schools. So, you can see how, when all schools are open, and the network can get enormous very quickly.”

Of course, it is difficult to overlook that schools and economics have a meaningful impact on one another. Obviously, parents cannot go back to work if they have to stay home to look after children. But there’s also the matter of Brits’ confidence in their government.

“If people see that it’s possible to go to work, have schools open and go out to dinner while targeted measures quickly suppress local spikes, their economic behavior will be more normal,” says Jonathan Portes, professor of economics at King’s College London. “If restaurants and pubs are suddenly forced to close, and teachers say they don’t feel safe, this obviously undermines the government’s strategy, which ultimately affects confidence that life will return to normal.”

Whatever happens, it’s going to be complicated. Both things remain in the hands of the government for people to obey the rules, or Johnson has to choose between children’s education or recovering economic activity.

Government critics say that the Prime Minister is himself partly responsible for his predicament, pointing to errors made in the early days of the pandemic.

“The most obvious error was the abandonment of community testing in March, which meant we missed months of being able to effectively identify cases and trace the contacts,” says Gabriel Scally, president of epidemiology at the Royal Society of Medicine, adding that this means months later the country’s test and trace system is inadequate.

He points to the delays in lockdown and stopping people entering the country, leading to the impression that the government was “underplaying the seriousness of the virus.” He says the government’s centralized control “made curbing outbreaks very difficult. A pandemic is essentially lots of local epidemics, and it’s easier to suppress these at a local level.”