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These are the numbers that show why schools are highly unlikely to reopen anytime soon in London and the South East and why in a week or so the entire country may be in a lockdown including school closings.
Level 4, the so-called “stay-at-home level”, is broadly equivalent to the four-week circuit interruption lockout that was imposed in November.
It did not include school closings, but it did suppress the Covid-19 transmission rate to 0.85 or 0.9. In other words, it led to the infection gradually reducing in the community.
Unfortunately, we have since witnessed the explosive growth of the new strain of Covid-19.
Here’s the point: the accumulating evidence, analyzed by experts from Imperial College, the University of Edinburgh, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Public Health England, among many others, is that increased transmissibility of the new strain , its infectivity, is at the high end of initial estimates.
Then it’s probably 70% more transmissible than the old strain.
Which means that the measures equivalent to the November lockdown would only see the transmission rate or “R” reduced to 1.4 or 1.5. The virus would still be growing exponentially.
This means that any repressive measure that does not include school closings would cause the virus to continue to ravage the community like wildfire; it would continue to spread.
That is why, with the virus rampant in London, the South East and the East of England, it is very difficult to see schools reopen in a few weeks there.
And as for the rest of the country, there is evidence that the virus is growing everywhere, which means that elementary schools that open on Monday may not be open that long.
The same depressing logic applies to high schools. And it is increasingly debatable whether it is rational and sustainable for Boris Johnson and Gavin Williamson to continue to insist that GCSE and A Level exams take place.
Unless it’s more or less, the entire British Army was deployed to schools to administer Covid-19 tests to every student two or three times a week.
As I understand it, the government has given itself a week to review the post-Christmas data before making a final decision on whether to impose a nationwide shutdown that includes school closings.
But few of his advisers hope that the data will improve enough to avoid a crash.
Still, the depressing statistics don’t end there.
Even school closings might not reduce the R-number to less than 1. An analysis in September by government scientific advisers on Sage suggested that school closings would lower Rs by just under 0.4.
So it is possible that a new lockdown, involving school closings, would reduce the growth rate of the virus, but would not see it slow down.
That implies that any new national blockade may have to include additional draconian measures like curfews or incarcerating us in our homes between, say, 8 pm and 6 am, as is the case in France.
The libertarian wing of the Conservative Party will go nuts if that happens. The prime minister will resist infuriating them to that point.
All of which is to reinforce what I’ve been talking about for weeks. There is no amount of cash or resources that can be used to speed up vaccination that most reasonable people would consider to be more than incredible value for money.
