To all intents and purposes the worst ravages of the Covid pandemic are behind us, at least in the United Kingdom that is. Even the UK Government has bowed to the inevitable and recognised that Covid is under control and relaxed the onerous and damaging restrictions that Britons have lived under for two years. We’ve arrived at this point because of a combination of the disease mutating into more infectious but less generally deadly variants along with the vaccine programme and the future anti-virals that are coming soon, have all played or may play a future part in reducing the dangers both real and perceived posed by Covid.

Whilst the national government may have recognised, although belatedly, that Covid is no longer the great problem it once was, some local government entities are still milking and exploiting Covid as much as they can. Some councils are flogging the now dead horse of Covid very hard and as can be expected it’s the ordinary people, including children whose education has already been disturbed who will suffer, not council workers or local education authority staff.

One council that seems to be very keen on flogging the dead horse called Covid is Herefordshire County Council. The Assistant Director for Education, Development and Skills a person called Ceri Morgan has sent every parent in the educational authority area a letter stating that because of ‘a rise in Covid cases across all age groups’ the county will be facing school closures and other education restrictions. The letter from Ms Morgan continued and said: ‘It is sometimes necessary (for schools) to send classes home for the safety of children, or because staff have tested positive and replacement staff cannot be found’.

The letter then goes on to state that the council are doing their best to keep the schools open and sympathises with parents whose lives may be disturbed by this ‘unavoidable action’.

The letter from Ms Morgan was accompanied by a letter from each of the headteachers of the schools that Herefordshire Council controls stating that because of the rise in cases pre-booked meetings such as parents evenings and other meetings with parents will be cancelled until the Summer Term. This means that it will be impossible for parents to have any meaningful face to face contact with their child’s school or teachers until the 6^th of June when the Summer Term starts.

This decision by Herefordshire Council, one which they’ve imposed on the schools that are within their control is disgraceful. The decision, one that I believe has been imposed on schools by the local authority, to ban parent’s evenings and face to face contact between parents and staff is absolutely disgusting. It shows that the local authority, despite the weasel words and empty sympathy present in Ms Morgan’s letter, really don’t give two hoots about the education of the children that it responsible for. I suspect that what the council’s decision will result in will be massive disruption of children’s education at a time when there is a desperate need for children to catch up with education after the past two years of pandemic related disruption. After all saying, as Ms Morgan does in her letter to all Herefordshire parents, that the council were more than willing to support schools that decide to close or limit education provision or restrict contact between parents and school staff, because of a rise in Covid infections, is practically giving carte blanche to the teacher’s unions to do what they damned well want. Teacher’s union members can now freely and with the backing of the local council, disrupt education and have staff absent from the classroom for possibly dubious and maybe less than honest Covid related reasons.

Herefordshire parents are now in a position where they and more importantly their children, are at the mercy of the teacher’s unions who can now use, or rather flog the dead horse of Covid, as an excuse for more staff absences, even if such absences are not medically required. I foresee much more Covid-excused staff absences and therefore kids being sent home early from school and parents having to abandon their workplaces in order to pick up their children, possibly at extremely short notice. This is an utter disaster for the children of Herefordshire it really is.

So, what are the numbers that have given the local educational bureaucracy class the reasoning behind making this decision. The letter from Ms Morgan just says ‘rising cases’, it does not give any numbers.

I decided that I would look into the numbers that has made Ms Morgan and others in the educational bureaucracy class so alarmed. When I went to the Government’s published Covid figures for Herefordshire for this month (up until the 23rd March ), I was quite surprised by what I saw. As usual original sources are in italics whereas my comments are in plain text.

According to the Government:

Between 17 March 2022 and 23 March 2022, 2,008 people had a confirmed positive test result. This shows an increase of 35.7% compared to the previous 7 days.

2008 may sound a lot but remember this is out of a total county population of 197,107 (2019 figures) and in a county which has considerably less population density and therefore less opportunities for infections spreading than a major city would have. 2008 cases represents just approximately 1% of the population of the country of Herefordshire.

The percentage figure showing infection growth looks alarming at first sight with a rise of 35.7% in infections over a seven day period but as there are only 2008 residents of Herefordshire testing positive for Covid then this percentage rise is less significant as it represents only a rise of roughly 528*. That 528 additional extra positive test results represents a mere 0.25% additional members of the near 200k population of Herefordshire becoming infected. The jump in cases was from 1480 to 2008.

The numerical rise in cases compared to the numbers in the population do not suggest to me that the local authority’s education system is in the same position that it was in March 2020 or even March 2021. The current numbers are relatively small compared to back then and the other health indicators look similarly good.

According to the Government’s figures there were 16 people admitted to hospital with Coronavirus infections between the 7^th and 13^th March of this year. This rose to 22 patients on the 15^th March. Now this may sound like an alarmingly high number but is considerably less bad than the situation that existed in April of 2021 when the Wye Valley NHS Trust, the local hospital authority reported that there were 307 patients being treated in hospital for Covid related conditions (data source via documents from this link). Most importantly the local authority is currently reporting that there were no Covid patients on mechanical ventilation in the local hospital although I suspect that some Covid patients may well be receiving additional oxygen as part of their treatment. This compares well to April 2021 where across the Midlands region, which also includes the Wye Valley NHS Trust, where there were 81 patients on mechanical ventilation for Covid although not as many as could be found in London, where 126 patients were on mechanical ventilation at this time (data source via documents from this link). In addition to the drop in figures for Covid hospitalisation it also needs to be noted that 83% of the population of Herefordshire is vaccinated against Covid and therefore the county has very good vaccine coverage. This good vaccine coverage is probably preventing the serious illness today that could not be prevented in Spring of 2021.

Looking at the numbers of infections and hospitalisations in Herefordshire for Covid and comparing them with the figures for Spring 2021 shows us that Covid is not out of control in the county. In fact the county is far from being a Covid disaster area and seems to be managing quite well.

The Covid numbers that are being reported for the present time do not look to me like they are sufficiently worrying to warrant the actions of Herefordshire Council regarding schools. The figures certainly give me concern that this decision by the council was not made on an epidemiological or other similar basis but is possibly a political one that the public sector unions may have applied pressure on the council to make.

Throughout the pandemic, the only winners from a bad situation that looking back on it was aggravated by Government decisions, as far as I can see have been public sector workers. They are the ones who have exploited the work from home mentality and who have increasingly used Covid as the excuse to provide even worse service to the public that pays their wages than they do already.

I don’t know anyone who has worked in the private sector who has done as well out of the Covid fiasco as public sector workers have done and who have managed, as the public sector has, to achieve the ability to do less work for the same pay.

The decision by the local authority to back schools whose staff decide to declare absence due to Covid at a time when the figures suggest that this is not wholly justified is an appalling one. It will hand power to teachers union agitators, affect the salaries and wages of parents who have to take time out of work to deal with childcare issues caused by teacher absences and most importantly harm the education of children who are already way behind in learning because of the shutdown of schools during the height of the pandemic. This is disgraceful and damaging behaviour by Herefordshire Council that not just parents but all voters should remember the next time that council seats come up for election and vote for those who will stop the council officers from making bad decisions like this.

*I’m very grateful to the commentator below who pointed out that in the original piece my maths was more than a little out.  I have now corrected the figures for the rise in infections in Herefordshire.  I apologise for my initial mathematical faux pas.