outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

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...

shame on you all for not providing childcare for man alive's kids

oh fuck off. I have childcare.

of course you do

Here's a modest proposal. In order to combat against the global injustice of vaccine distribution, countries outside of the Global South can contribute their vaccines to countries in the Global South.

The USA & Canada can contribute all of their remaining doses & all its forthcoming doses to Mexico, Central America, and South America, until those countries are fully vaccinated. Then the USA & Canada may vaccinate its own residents.

The UK will do the same for India, Pakistan & Bangladesh.

France will do the same for Algeria, Tunisia & Morocco.

The rest of the EU will do the same for the rest of Africa.

And so on.

This is a way to live up to one's supposed commitments to global justice in a way that actually has costs.

You can each ask yourselves if you favor the continued injustice in favor of you & your fellow national residents, or if you want to fight against global injustice.

Unfortunately, whether we as individuals favor that injustice or not— I don't think many of us do, in theory— that injustice will continue to go on unabated. We can make our beliefs known, but against the machinations of global capital, extraction economies, colonization, and imperialism, there's not so much that we can do except put individual pressure on governments and pharmaceutical companies. And there, well, good luck.

And tbh, to put the onus on individuals within first world countries is pretty typical blame-shifting. Our governments and their corporate partners have the resources to do the right thing, and we can put pressure on them to do so, but if they don't, that isn't on us as individuals.

I agree with all of that. I didn't mean to put the onus on individuals, but rather on governments & their corporate partners, as you say. As you say, though, we as individuals could organize to push our respective governments to do this. The UN could be empowered as the global administrator of the vaccine, rather than leaving it up to individual governments. Of course there is no reason to be optimistic that this would work, but it's at least an exercise to gauge our individual commitments to global justice. If not now, when?

i like it! :)

I can just imagine the reaction in the UK if the government said it was sending vaccines to India. Oy!

They'd probably bring up Joe Root's failed appeal against Rahane in the cricket the other day.

But also, at some point there needs to be a non-shifting standard for what is "safe."

"The UN could be empowered as the global administrator of the vaccine, rather than leaving it up to individual governments."

Private pharma has been a disaster in terms of developing this vaccine so that we all get it. The profit motive seems to have ensured a scarcity of supply. This problem is not one of administration.

Hopefully we can do better during the climate crisis.

CDC reports nearly 4.5 million doses administered over the last two days. Each day was a single day record on its own.

This is major progress. https://t.co/QIDdUjrw5o

— Tim Fullerton (@TimFullerton) February 14, 2021

of course, but starting to have that conversation before even 10% of the US population is vaccinated feels reckless. Let's talk about it when we tick up to 65-70%? It's not going to require a lot of effort to make the shift.
― That's not really my scene (I'm 41) (forksclovetofu), Sunday, February 14, 2021 11:33 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

But why set the bar that high to reopen school? Why not do it, e.g., when most school staff and elderly are vaccinated, which will be much sooner? We might not even be at 65-70% in the fall. I think you're underestimating how significant these spans of time are in, e.g., the life of a 6-year-old, vs your own life.

my partner teaches at a charter school in brooklyn with maybe 60 teachers and staff and only something like five of them have gotten their first shots. the school isn't and can't organize shots so everyone's at the mercy of local dispersal and - as much of the staff lives in places where their local hospitals aren't getting vaccines - most of the teachers are shit out of luck. they've had two covid scares over the two weeks PREPARING to go to hybrid and ended up canceling due to that.

If it's easier for you to see that note as "talk about it when the teaching staff's vaccination rate ticks up to 65-70%"

oof. my thoughts are with your partner and her colleagues, forks.

gotcha. I think that will probably change quickly - H got her appointment canceled the first time around but then got a new one pretty quickly, and that's what I'm hearing from others.

i hope you're right! i'm just saying until that changes in a trackable way, asking why we can't go back to normal just isn't an okay question.

my partner DID get her first shot two weeks ago but she's very much in the minority... and we spent all day today dealing with a concerning allergic reaction that she developed today two weeks afterwards. Just got back from the clinic with some prednisone.