At the very least, Lockdown 2 needs to shut secondary schools and universities for the duration. https://twitter.com/ONS/status/1322148487484657669

You know how basically all of Europe has gone through its phase of doing a curfew which obviously didn't work because SARS-CoV2 doesn't have a bedtime? It's now fashionable to do hard lockdown with schools open and that's not going to be much more effective.

If we're going to insist on Lockdown 2, it needs to be done right, not in a way which still makes large numbers of households mix, and creates morning and afternoon rush hours.

I remember talk over the summer of levels of response in schools if virus rates started climbing, such as mandatory masks, and staggering secondary schools so pupils would have two weeks in school and two weeks learning from home and this just has never been mentioned again.

Kids will be fine if schools close for four weeks; research found mental health in secondary pupils *improved* when they were learning from home in the first lockdown ffs https://sphr.nihr.ac.uk/news-and-events/new-report-shows-young-peoples-mental-health-improved-during-lockdown/

As for unis, if there's going to be a four week stay home order, that's an ideal opportunity for students to leave halls and move home, quarantine, and then be home until this government has actually dealt with this fucking virus effectively.

I'm just fucking fuming that they probably won't do Lockdown 2 effectively, tanking the economy and dragging all this misery out with no end rather than taking a couple of additional measures which SAGE modelling suggests could reduce R by up to 0.5!

There's just no way a lockdown with schools and universities open can achieve enough in four weeks. Last time, it took about two months of hard lockdown including schools closed for infections to fall sufficiently to even start talking about reopening non-essential retail.

(also, from a purely political firefighting point of view, closing schools makes sense as they can say "modelling shows *our* lockdown will be much more effective than the half measures proposed by opposition")