Prof Sir Mark Walport adds that closing schools and distancing children is only measure known to bring down transmission rates – something that can’t yet be said even for vaccines
Sage scientist and former Chief Scientific Officer Professor Mark Walport dropped a coronavirus bombshell on yesterday’s Marr programme that seems, unsurprisingly, to have been ignored by the so-called ‘mainstream’ media in their analysis of the Boris Johnson’s resistance to teaching unions’ calls to close schools as part of a national lockdown – a resistance shamefully matched by Labour leader Keir Starmer.
Walport was emphatic – and stated frankly that the government and its scientific advisers know that older school pupils are seven times more likely to bring the virus home to infect their family than any other household member. And he added that it was clear that school holidays bring down infection rates and keeping people apart – which means closing schools – is the only thing currently known to do so, something that can’t yet be said even about the new coronavirus vaccines:
Boris Johnson is wrong to stubbornly insist schools remain open. Keir Starmer is equally wrong to support him. Teachers and their unions are right. ‘The science’ says so – and the government knows it.
That obstinacy is costing thousands of lives – and will cost many thousands more, if it is not abandoned immediately.
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