Thing is, they're right. In the case of a pandemic(and I mean a real one, not the latest member of the "Pandemic of the month" club), doing stuff like trying to half the spread of infectious disease is exactly the sort of thing public health officials ought to be doing. And if that means taking teddy bears from toddlers, so be it - would you rather deprive kids of toys, or have dead kids? Public health isn't something to dick around with.

No, it is a terrible argument for getting rid of teddy bears, but an excellent argument for shutting down schools.

Home schooling: protect your children from diseases of body and mind that they may well get in communal schools.

Taking kids' teddy bears seems a bit harsh.

But banning wind instruments seems a good idea, they can melt down all the recorders in the world and throw them in the Pacific AFAIAC and the world would be a better place.

Recorders are perfectly good instruments when not played very badly by 8-years olds:
http://kalyr.fotopic.net/p58747192.html

Two crackingly good comments there by Perry and Mark.

Recorders might be wonderful in the hands, and in the mouths, of the six people in the world who can play them very, very well.

As for all the rest, they're shoved into the faces of helpless children, who are usually being forced to blow into them at the behest of some smiling sado/masochist who pretends the result is music. It most emphatically is not.

I'm with Mark that the Mariannas trench isn't deep enough for them. A few supertankers full of pan flutes wouldn't be a bad idea, either.

The Second Coming occured in November in 2008, in a little place called Washingtondc. However, the order has been reversed- we can expect Obarmeggedon AFTER this event, not before!

The thing is, it's simply unrealistic. If you're going to take away soft and hard toys, what's left? They'll find makeshift toys, and share those.

You won't be able to keep children from sharing things and you won't be able to keep them from getting their hands all over each other and every object in the school.

Your best bet would be to tie them up or, as Perry suggested, keep them home.

Very unrealistic guidelines: typical useless advice.

Don't worry, if they shut down the schools, the BBC will educate your children!

Anthony's right.

Kid will ALWAYS find SOMEHING to play with, stick in their mouths, try to eat, smell, share with others, smear on each other.
This 'take away the Teddy Bears and it'll help prevent the spread of 'the malaise of the week' is nonsense, and they KNOW IT.

Maybe people will just go back to making their own dangerous toys for their own dangerous children.
Actually, if people would just RAISE their own kids, instead of expecting the state to do the lion's share of the job (public education/daycare) dumb stuff about toys wouldn't matter so much.

Perry has it right, if is a good argument for going over to home schooling (to save the children from nasty germs of course) - especially as many of the teachers in private schools (in the United States as well as Britain) now go to the same "teacher training colleges" as the teachers in state schools.