BC EDUCATION
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We've been falsely told 'schools are safe', 'don't drive community transmission', & teachers don't have a higher risk of infection repeatedly by govt & their advisors- to justify some of the most negligent policies in history. 🧵

 @educationgovuk data shows *both* primary & secondary school teachers are at double the risk of confirmed infection relative to comparable positivity in the general population. ONS household infection data also clearly show that children are important sources of transmission.
Yet, in the parliamentary select meeting today, witnesses like Jenny Harries repeated the same claims- that have been debunked by the ONS data, and the data released by the @educationgovuk today. How many lives have been lost to these lies? How many more people have long COVID?
@SarahDRasmussen has repeatedly pointed out errors & gaps in the ONS reporting of evidence around risk of infection among teachers- and it's taken *months* to get clarity on this. The released data are a result of months of campaigning by her, the @NEU and others.
Rather than being transparent about the risk of transmission in school settings & mitigating this, the govt (& many of its advisors) has engaged in dismissing & denying evidence that's been clear for a while. Evidence from the govt's own surveys. And global evidence.

Why?
If schools weren't impacting community transmission, as the govt claimed, why did the govt decide to close them? And if they were increasing community transmission, why is the govt plan to open schools *without* putting safety measures in place?
Rather than making schools safer, the govt has sought to take away protections, by replacing isolation with lateral flow testing, a strategy that's been rejected by the MHRA & not in line with CDC recommendations. A strategy that could increase risk of transmission within schools
These strategies have directly led us to school closures - had we addressed school transmission head on as many other countries did, it's quite possible we wouldn't be here now.
If the govt truly wants to prioritise children's wellbeing & education, they must act urgently to make schools safer. This requires clear evidence based guidance and financial & practical support for schools, teachers & families.
We also need accountability - both from govt & its advisors who have promoted these falsehoods despite not being supported by scientific evidence. At an unacceptable cost. We need an independent investigation with evidence from diverse experts within the scientific community.
Link to data on infection among teachers here:
https://t.co/EcKP8Vq2yo
And if you want to review the evidence on children, schools, & transmission, here's a thread summarising this:

https://t.co/Bwu6QXm6Q1
Sorry, I've just realised that some of the links to the DfE data in the NEU tweet may be broken, so here's the link, if you are interested. Thanks to @cfinnecy for linking to this:

https://t.co/nFrjbuTiPC

More from Deepti Gurdasani

Deepti Gurdasani
Deepti Gurdasani
@dgurdasani1
Brief thread to debunk the repeated claims we hear about transmission not happening 'within school walls', infection in school children being 'a reflection of infection from the community', and 'primary school children less likely to get infected and contribute to transmission'.

I've heard a lot of scientists claim these three - including most recently the chief advisor to the CDC, where the claim that most transmission doesn't happen within the walls of schools. There is strong evidence to rebut this claim. Let's look at


Let's look at the trends of infection in different age groups in England first- as reported by the ONS. Being a random survey of infection in the community, this doesn't suffer from the biases of symptom-based testing, particularly important in children who are often asymptomatic

A few things to note:
1. The infection rates among primary & secondary school children closely follow school openings, closures & levels of attendance. E.g. We see a dip in infections following Oct half-term, followed by a rise after school reopening.


We see steep drops in both primary & secondary school groups after end of term (18th December), but these drops plateau out in primary school children, where attendance has been >20% after re-opening in January (by contrast with 2ndary schools where this is ~5%).
SOCIETY
Deepti Gurdasani
Deepti Gurdasani
@dgurdasani1
Thread on the recent report on the possible risk of increased death associated with the new UK variant (B117)- with a discussion of the evidence around this, and what this means.

First, there is strong evidence to support increased transmissibility of B117 - current estimates of increased transmissibility range between 30-70% - from epidemiological evidence examining the differential rate of growth of B117 with respect to other variants & increase in R

There is also evidence from PHE contact studies that the risk of transmission from those carrying the B117 variant is ~50% greater than with other non-B117 variants.

Increased transmissibility, even if a variant has the same fatality rate can increase deaths substantially, because the rate of growth of cases is higher- & more cases means more deaths.

Increased fatality rates also increase deaths- but do so


So how was risk of death with the variant studied?
We don't routinely sequence all samples for the virus. We've found that the variant has a particular deletion which means that some PCR tests on samples with the variant give a different read-out when the variant is present.
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Deepti Gurdasani
Deepti Gurdasani
@dgurdasani1
I'm honestly at a loss as to understanding what our government is thinking & what evidence they're considering in enacting gravely negligent policies that will almost certainly lead to tens of thousands of deaths in the coming weeks. Thread.

To recap - NHS capacity is critical in many places. Hospitals have reported oxygen shortages, and doctors are talking about having to choose who to put on ventilatory support. We have rapidly rising case numbers, >50,000 daily reported cases & 981 deaths reported yesterday.

Let's remember that the impact of socialising over christmas hasn't even begun to show in our numbers yet. And that hospitalisations are indicative of infections that happened ~2-3 wks ago (since then we have been seeing exponential rises in cases).

This means even if we act today, and bring R to below 1 right now, hospitalisations will continue to rise for another 2 wks or so - in line with exponential rises in cases over the past 2 weeks. And deaths will continue to rise for 2-4 wks after we act.

Given current doubling periods, this means very conservatively, 20-30,000 deaths over the next 4 weeks or so, which we sadly can't do anything about now, because most of those who will die during this period have already been infected.
GOVERNMENT
Deepti Gurdasani
Deepti Gurdasani
@dgurdasani1
I've been seeing a lot of discussion around the dosage gaps recommended by government for the Astra/Oxford & Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines. My thoughts on the potential benefits & risks of such an approach, and the need for much greater transparency around these decisions. Thread.


The UK govt announced recently that both the Oxford & BioNTech vaccines would be now administered with a gap of between 4-12 weeks (so prioritise administration of first dose, given limited resources).

What is the basis of this?

The basis that's been discussed seems to be that
1) the first dose is likely to confer some degree of protection against disease, so better to roll this out as fast as possible, and
2) that for Oxford/Astra efficacy may be higher when the gap between doses is greater.

I discuss some of the technical details around the Oxford trial below for those interested in these. If you'd just like a summary of this, please skip to the summary tweet titled 'SUMMARY'.

What does published evidence show? The Astra/Oxford data are a bit messy because of protocol changes during the trial. This is because the trial was originally planned as a single dose trial, but a booster dose was added when developers realised that this would likely help.
GOVERNMENT
Deepti Gurdasani
Deepti Gurdasani
@dgurdasani1
This is the exact problem with our government's thinking & response- despite this strategy of 'tolerating deaths' and half-way measures having spectacularly failed, it's quite amazing that our govt still hasn't learned anything, & continues to promote a policy of death. Thread


Had we adopted an elimination strategy early on, rather than one of tolerating a certain level of infection, we wouldn't be here now. The reason we're here is because the govt never committed to elimination.

We eased lockdown in May when infection levels were much higher than when other countries in Europe did this. The govt was warned about this, but did this to 'help the economy'. Not only did this lead us into the 2nd wave, the need for further lockdowns harmed the economy further

It's very clear from global evidence that we cannot 'tolerate a level of community transmission' and maintain 'R at or just below 1', which has been our governments policy for a long time. This isn't sustainable & very rapidly gets out of control, leading to exponential rises

Coupled with late action to contain these surges, not only does this lead to many more deaths, and much more morbidity with Long COVID, it also creates a fertile ground for viral mutations to accumulate with a greater risk of adaptation, which is exactly what happened in the UK
GOVERNMENT

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Sahil
Sahil
@sahilypatel
A list of cool websites you might now know about

A thread 🧵

1) Learn Anything - Search tools for knowledge discovery that helps you understand any topic through the most efficient

2) Grad Speeches - Discover the best commencement speeches.

This website is made by me

3) What does the Internet Think - Find out what the internet thinks about anything

4) https://t.co/vuhT6jVItx - Send notes that will self-destruct after being read.
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Anna Leahy
Anna Leahy
@AMLeahy
1/ THREAD. MFA in Creative Writing at Chapman University. Application deadline: February 1. That's MONDAY! Let me say a few things about our program first, and then I'll provide a CODE for an application FEE WAIVER at the end of this thread. #MFA #gradschool #creativewriting


2/ While some of our MFA students focus on one genre, many write across genres. @tryphena_yeboah published her first poetry chapbook last year with @AkashicBooks, has published stories @NarrativeMag, and is writing a thesis in fiction with thesis director Richard Bausch.

3/ Likewise, @lizharmer published her first novel with @penguinrandom while she was an MFA student here, her second novel is forthcoming in 2022, and she drafted a memoir as her thesis, with me as the thesis director. Lots of our students take a workshop in a second genre.

4/ MFA faculty work across genres too. Jim Blaylock is a steampunk fiction writers (see Homunculus), and now he writes essays (see a couple in @poetswritersinc). @TheMil10 writes plays & poems & I write poems & essays. Together, our expertise covers a broad range of aesthetics.

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Corey A. DeAngelis
Corey A. DeAngelis
@DeAngelisCorey
Chicago Public Schools are supposed to open for some special needs and pre-K students Monday

The Chicago Teachers Union is now threatening to refuse to return to work in person.

https://t.co/MgDgNe6REj


Meanwhile
https://t.co/FIij8J3r7z

Dr. Fauci: "The default position should be to try as best as possible within reason to keep the children in school or to get them back to school [...] if you look at the data the spread among children and from children is not really big at


UNICEF: "Data from 191 countries shows no consistent link between reopening schools and increased rates of coronavirus
EDUCATION
Shuvo Ghosh, MD
Shuvo Ghosh, MD
@ghoshuvo
@KaylaAncrum 1) This reminds me of junior high back in the Chicago suburbs when some classmates pretended my name was ‘too hard’ & relentlessly teased me as ‘Shoehead,’ ‘Shitvo,’ & ‘Shamu’ for almost 2 years until my social studies teacher Mr. C decided to absolutely GO OFF on them:

2) In class one day, to everyone’s utter astonishment, he stopped his lecture & said ‘I think some of you are having trouble pronouncing Shuvo’s name. It’s easy to say shoo-VOH, but your behaviour inspires me to give you new names now. Let’s point out a few examples.’

3) Mr. C turned to a red-haired jerk who often led the bullying and said ‘If you don’t shape up, you’ll be known as Carrot Head in my class, since you’re uglier than Carrot Top and you’re certainly bigheaded and arrogant.’

His face turned redder than his hair.

4) He then then turned to a classmate named Edie & said to her ‘I won’t call you Edie anymore, I’ll call you Dedie, as in DD, since that’s the grade you get in my class & it’s short for Dum-Dum, which is what you proved to be.’

I actually felt bad for her she was so mortified.

5) Then he turned to another kid whose last name was McCracken & said ‘You will be known as McChicken, since you’re a coward, & based on your performance it seems the most you can ever aspire to be is a fast food server, so wipe that smug grin off your face, cluck cluck.’

!!
EDUCATION
Product School
Product School
@productschool
Our top 15 tweets

A #prodmgmt thread 👇

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positional one

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