Your sums just don’t add up

DEAR SAGE,

Mummy and Daddy are hoping to send us back to primary school in Newcastle on June 1 as my little brother is in Year 1 and I am in Year 6. We think there is a good chance we will get Covid19 before the end of the term. Here are our sums.

We worked out that the latest Covid-19 figures in Newcastle are about 1,400 infections a week and this rate will continue for some time because even after lockdown it did not go down. Since Year 1 and Year 6 are 1/40th of all the people in Newcastle, this means at present 35 children in our age groups are infected every week. If they go back to school, they could infect at least two others in a week. We have done our infection sums as follows:

Week 1: 35

Week 2: 70

Week 3: 140

Week 4: 280

Week 5: 560

Week 6: 1,120

Week 7: 2,240

This adds up to 4,445 which is more than half of the total number of our age groups in all the schools in Newcastle, which is about 7,000.

Yes, in Germany children are going back to school yet all of them are wearing face masks at all times and so are their teachers; no one is allowed to pass each other in the corridor.

We don’t have any face masks. Yes, you could argue that one child will not infect two children every week but how do you know?

In Week 7, when the 2,240 newly-infected go home, they will probably infect at least three other people, which means that the total rate of infection in Newcastle then per week just from sending our two age groups back to school could be as much as 6,000. This is four times the existing level and the Government is suggesting that all children go back in three weeks’ time for the last four weeks of term! This will make the situation worse.

Adrian Mole (53) thinks that all 54 members of your SAGE group should go back to school to reset their brains and learn how to do sums properly. He also thinks we might then find out the real rate of spread of Covid-19 when you get infected. See you in school? Love, Janet & John

JOHN URQUHART, Gosforth