outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

The idea that parenthood endows one with special ineffable understanding of or care for children is pretty outrageous to me also.

Me too.

I think man alive was objecting to the claim that people who want to reopen schools want to do it because they love capitalism.

I think it probably endows you with special understanding of what YOU want for YOUR child, intensely, and maybe rightfully? The most insistent voices for reopening I see in my feeds are the parents whose kids aren't doing well being out of school for whatever reasons. Advocating for your kid in that case is basically your job as a parent, and for some people I think that's probably the highest good in their hierarchy?

We are not all obligated to agree with them, however.

Kids who aren’t doing well out of school = most elementary school aged kids.

Adults who aren’t doing well during pandemic = most adults

Doing well in school and becoming a teacher so I can do well in a pandemic

The issue, for me, is that it shouldn't come down to whether teachers are willing to teach in a period of high transmission without a vaccine. There is a vaccine. We have the ability to lower transmission with lockdowns. If we're not using them, it's because we don't care enough to, and that's not on the teachers.

This country has a pattern of expecting teachers to put in extra labor to compensate for systemic failures, but at a certain point, our ability to give even more just becomes saturated. You can't keep making decisions that render school openings unsafe for staff and families, and act like it's the teachers who are making the call not to reopen schools.

The notion that anyone who is exposed to covid, whether they are teachers or frontline healthcare workers, is selfish or trying to ruin your life by not wanting the risk to themselves to be so high is a fucking toxic one and it needs to die already. Nobody signed up for this bullshit, the very least you should expect are safe working conditions. I was thinking about this attitude yesterday watching this video and I’m thinking about it now reading people just casually disregarding the risk to teachers.

Next time you want to order from @Deliveroo think about this 😂🤣😂🤣 pic.twitter.com/LNvXCgfUG4

— tom (@tom_the_cabbie) February 11, 2021

This country has a pattern of expecting teachers to put in extra labor to compensate for systemic failures

Uh, that's pretty much worldwide.

Agree with in orbit: once teachers have actually been offered and given the vaccine, then we can figure out what to do if teachers are refusing to be vaccinated or refusing to teach if vaccinated. Until then, it's a moot point. Treat teachers like every other high risk group imo. Make the vaccine available, make it easy to sign up and get the vaccine, reach out to them to correct any misinformation, and then proceed from there.

I mean, every decision about who to give vaccines to in the US is going to be made in that context. I was just talking about whether in-person teachers should be treated as high-risk workers or not. Whether the US should have enough vaccines for its high-risk workers is another question.

I wasn’t specifically going after you, Lily Dale, but rather highlighting yet again the global injustice that underlies this discussion, and hoping to at least ironise its America First take.

christ that deliveroo tweet and the sinister followup from hq

Someday there might be an instance of global justice. Right now I'm coming up empty on any past examples of it.

xp it’s ok, the public outrage is on the side of the driver and it means they’ve had to say he won’t lose his contract

Someday there might be an instance of global justice. Right now I'm coming up empty on any past examples of it.

Most likely apocryphal but it's frequently attributed to Gandhi on Western civilization: "I think it would be a good idea."

-Bob Marley

This platitude...

It was an observation, not a platitude. If you can cite an instance of global justice it would be helpful to see what one looks like. I fully understand that I am a beneficiary of injustices, both global and domestic. Since these are bestowed on me automatically, by default, through the working of mechanisms beyond my personal control, it is not a simple matter to refuse them. They do exist and yes, I see them.

I'm not sure how you manage to escape those same mechanisms.

By moving to France iirc

Agree with in orbit: once teachers have actually been offered and given the vaccine, then we can figure out what to do if teachers are refusing to be vaccinated or refusing to teach if vaccinated. Until then, it's a moot point. Treat teachers like every other high risk group imo. Make the vaccine available, make it easy to sign up and get the vaccine, reach out to them to correct any misinformation, and then proceed from there. Trying to guess the attitudes of a huge and diverse workforce and make decisions accordingly is a recipe for paralysis and scapegoating.

― Lily Dale, Saturday, February 13, 2021 2:42 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Most evidence suggest that teachers are not at a particularly elevated risk of COVID fwiw -- the genuinely high risk jobs are restaurant/food workers, care workers, healthcare workers, industrial workers, security guards, taxi drivers, social workers. Secondary education teachers had a very slightly elevated risk but teachers on the whole did not.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55795608 (looking at data from UK, where schools were largely open until recently).

Also worth noting that far and away the number one risk factor for death is being over 65, and especially over 75. So I don't really buy that, e.g., a 45 year old teacher that doesn't have diabetes, hypertension, cancer or lung disease is "high risk." In spite of that, I think it's worth the tradeoff to prioritize teachers being vaccinated if it means getting kids back into schools.

But also, at some point there needs to be a non-shifting standard for what is "safe." Once teachers are vaccinated, do we also need to have the lowest possible community spread AND masks AND 6 feet distancing AND barriers AND cohorting AND no eating indoors? Because at some point that makes returning to school pragmatically impossible. COVID is here to stay, we aren't going to eradicate it.

Why not

I mean, that's kind of the consensus among epidemiologists right now

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/12/coronavirus-dr-fauci-says-he-doubts-whether-covid-can-be-eradicated.html
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/12/21/world/science-health-world/vaccines-coronavirus-eradication/
the-scientist.com/news-opinion/sars-cov-2-isnt-going-away-experts-predict-68386
https://qz.com/1968898/will-the-covid-19-vaccines-end-the-pandemic/

to some extent, same reasons we never eradicated flu or the common cold, to some extent different reasons specific to COVID

But also, at some point there needs to be a non-shifting standard for what is "safe." Once teachers are vaccinated, do we also need to have the lowest possible community spread AND masks AND 6 feet distancing AND barriers AND cohorting AND no eating indoors? Because at some point that makes returning to school pragmatically impossible. COVID is here to stay, we aren't going to eradicate it.

― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Saturday, February 13, 2021 6:00 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don’t understand this comment...I was back to school in November and am again now and there has been no question of several of these things. There is 6 feet of distancing within the classroom, and kids do wear masks. During this time most teachers were not vaccinated although that’s changing now. I also think it is reasonable for a labor union to request vaccination before its members go to work; I wish restaurant workers and grocery store workers had for real unions everywhere. Is there someone who’s demanding all the things you’re mentioning in perpetuity, even post vaccine?

The CDC guidance that was just released doesn't take vaccination much into account and basically requires 6 feet unless COVID spread is lower than it pretty much has ever been to date. Granted "requires" has no teeth from the CDC because the federal government has no jurisdiction over schools. But the 6 feet requirement makes having school at full capacity virtually impossible in many districts.

xp Can you explain why teachers are at a lower risk of Covid, when we know from experience that our working conditions put us at a higher risk of everything else? Being a teacher generally means being constantly sick, at least until you've been teaching for long enough for your immune system to adjust.

I am going to echo what in orbit said upthread and say I am v suspicious when neoliberal experts start publicly running down teachers unions, some of the only unions left in this country where working people’s lives are terrible. I am a teacher and care about kids and agree that distance learning has been a terrible experience for many of them, especially young ones. But I also know a lot of students in my building are likely hanging out maskless drinking on weekends with their parents’ sanction, and it makes me feel a bit weird about the discourse of guilting us into going back for the kids. (Private schools with the worlds most entitled parents and no teachers unions are by no means representative, but they do inform my experience)

I guess, re your last post, man alive, I would love for public schools to have better facilities; they’ve had inadequate ones for decades. Something about these guidelines now makes me a bit crazy considering how little money or attention public schools get, and then all of a sudden they’re expected to become different places because of COVID. Fwiw the publicschools in Maryland are going back to work in the coming months and there is no way six feet of distance will happen; my husband’s boss is already talking about doubling up the number of recommended kids in the classroom. Schools will continue to cut corners in the hopes of getting as many kids as possible a decent education, but the public discourse about it feels like a smokescreen to me.

the genuinely high risk jobs are restaurant/food workers, care workers, healthcare workers, industrial workers, security guards, taxi drivers, social workers.

I see hs got here before me but just to say...those people ABSOLUTELY should be protected and getting the vaccine since we seem to demand that they work continuously for our convenience (instead of paying ppl to stay home), but the reason they aren't able to push back is they're mostly not unionized. Teachers are just the only group that still has a union (that isn't the PBA) to advocate for them.

I was just reading somewhere (where? who knows) about someone who got COVID from their home healthcare worker, who was asymptomatic, because the healthcare employers weren't testing their own employees who go into the most vulnerable people's homes.

As always, it turns out the real problem was capitalism all along.

The issue, for me, is that it shouldn't come down to whether teachers are willing to teach in a period of high transmission without a vaccine. There is a vaccine. We have the ability to lower transmission with lockdowns. If we're not using them, it's because we don't care enough to, and that's not on the teachers.

This country has a pattern of expecting teachers to put in extra labor to compensate for systemic failures, but at a certain point, our ability to give even more just becomes saturated. You can't keep making decisions that render school openings unsafe for staff and families, and act like it's the teachers who are making the call not to reopen schools.

― Lily Dale, Saturday, February 13, 2021 8:53 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This comment, 100%, as many times as it takes to sink in.

I also get worried that the kind of rhetoric Lily Dale mentions will become a pretense to shut down more public school, charterize/privatize a bunch more, and pay teachers even less/deprive them of even more rights.

I don't really buy that, e.g., a 45 year old teacher that doesn't have diabetes, hypertension, cancer or lung disease is "high risk."

Most evidence suggest that teachers are not at a particularly elevated risk of COVID fwiw -- the genuinely high risk jobs are restaurant/food workers, care workers, healthcare workers, industrial workers, security guards, taxi drivers, social workers. Secondary education teachers had a very slightly elevated risk but teachers on the whole did not.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55795608 (looking at data from UK, where schools were largely open until recently).

fwiw this article's just about the number of deaths, it doesn't prove that teachers are less likely to contract covid than any other group

Like the notion of "high risk" still seems frustrating to hear because plenty of people not in the HR category have died and in many cases nobody has known why it overwhelmed their system

Also lol my entire family has hypertension and two of us are under 45

And people wonder why I’m not racing to find another teaching job? Ffs! Teachers are treated like garbage, disposable. I’m 45 with no serious health conditions...beyond the cumulative stress of teaching for 15 years. It wears on you even without the pandemic. With it being a teacher is its own health condition. Fuck this shit

Because the numbers for secondary teachers were comparatively small - 52 deaths in total - it's difficult to be certain about their exact risk, but any increase there might be compared with the general population was not considered statistically significant.

However, while teachers were not at higher risk than the average, they did appear to be at higher risk than some other professional job roles, which have seen very few or no deaths.

The ONS excluded from its analysis any occupation that had seen fewer than 10 deaths, and the average death rate for the whole population masks this variation.

The study also covers periods where there were limited numbers of children attending school.

But the figures do tell us teachers didn't have an elevated risk of the magnitude faced by health and care staff and by lower-paid manual and service workers.

doesn't inspire a lot of confidence, using a time period with less kids in school, and comparing to an "average" that is not so great, then saying well, they're better off than this group that is exposed all the time

i'm sorry, FEWER kids in school

xxp I’m suspicious of that article, given that the ONS data only goes up to the 28th December and completely omits the fact that the second wave was worse at least in part because the schools were open. The horrendously named Schools Infection Study is a bit murkier and does indicate that secondary school teachers and staff were dealing with increased levels of infection compared to primary school teachers (45 cases in about 3000 staff during the 2 week sampling period).

Really inspired by politicians and others getting worked up about schoolkids's mental health, I'm looking forward to them getting worked up about other stuff that's injurious to mental health like poverty, precarious work, gross economic inequality and scapegoating public employees

yeah p much. especially when it's David Motherfucking Brooks blaming teachers for ruining black and brown kids' lives; lives he has shown 0 evidence of ever caring about.

He’s probably just feeling cooped up with his child bride and wants to pack her back up to Choate or whatever

Really inspired by politicians and others getting worked up about schoolkids's mental health, I'm looking forward to them getting worked up about other stuff that's injurious to mental health like poverty, precarious work, gross economic inequality and scapegoating public employees.

Exactly.

Pretty sure that everyone who is making a super-well-reasoned argument for re-opening schools also happens to have kids under 8 in their house.

Again, I don't really understand how what I wrote is wrong. Just a more pithy take than some of the more informed and nuanced posts below, which I thank you for.

Also, Euler otm-- the US has reserved enough doses to vaccinate every adult several times, and meanwhile, they're saying that many parts of the Global South won't be fully vaccinated until 2024.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/upshot/schools-reopening-coronavirus-experts.html

It's certainly possible that every single one of these experts has children under 8 I guess...