Friend of mine just refused to meet for coffee today as I am a teacher working with Covid infected children all day!

[Quarks69]

After 5 Exhausting weeks of working a 12 hour day every day at a secondary school, I woke up this morning looking forward to a coffee and catch up with A local friend. am now totally stunned and feeling pretty betrayed by her response. This is someone I have known since our kids were born and she is healthy and works from home. is this what most people think?

I teach at a university but due to previously being in the Shielding category I’m extremely fortunate that my employers are insisting I teach online from home.

I’m not meeting anyone outside my home. I wouldn’t survive ventilation due to my health conditions and I have a family member who’s as high risk as they come. I’m not prepared to put anyone I love or anyone else’s loved ones at risk.

I’m in a local lockdown area so we are strongly advised not to mix households. I don’t care a jot if I get flamed for this, but when I do have to leave the house for something essential (post office, bank, a walk etc) I will ensure I do so within school hours so that I limit my contact with children who aren’t able to social distance and have been mixing in large groups. I will sit or stand as far away as possible from everyone at my health appointments and move if necessary.

I have every right to make the calls I wish to make about the risks I’m willing to take. The majority of my family are doctors, nurses and care workers. The more I do to personally limit the spread the more I am protecting them and making their job easier.

I’m in regular contact with my friends and loved ones. We do Zoom coffees, online groups together, FaceTime, regular phone calls and texts, we send each other little cards and letters. The vast majority of them are also social distancing and have loved ones they want to protect. You don’t have to meet in person to be a good friend, although prior to it being banned locally I had a few one-to-one socially distanced garden meet ups with friends that were lovely. We know we will have all the time in the world to meet up when this is over.

It’s no one’s civic duty to meet up with a key worker who is much higher risk for coffee indoors. You can be a good friend to someone who’s at more risk and support them in other ways. If she phrased it the way you say OP she was tactless, and I’d find a different way of phrasing it, “I’m sorry, I’d love to meet up in person but for now I’m limiting my exposure and not doing in person meet ups. Can we have a long coffee and chat on FaceTime or over the phone?”. But I also thing you are being unreasonable towards her and dare I say, a little selfish and demanding. It’s really unfair to think it’s your right to put others at risk because you somehow think people owe you in person meet ups.

@CurlyhairedAssassin

In the case of the OP, she is basically told that she is a danger when the friend is just as much as risk because she has a child/ren herself and, according to her, they are all infected

Er, you do understand what hyperbole is, don’t you? Not to mention what MINIMISING risk (as opposed to removing all possible risk) means?

Actually I do.

Having gone through the headache of organising work for it to be Covid secure (plus reading the research papers etc...), I have a quite good understanding of risk in that area I think.
And the risk of catching Covid from a family member is the highest risk of all (hence the rule of 6 and not meeting up with family etc...). I would say that the risk associated with meeting a teacher is very small vs living with a child going to school.

If you want to avoid risk and minimise it, you don’t remove the smallest risks. You remove the biggest. And that would be the dcs for her as she wfh etc...

[quote Meuniere]@LakieLady, if you have children yourself then it doesn’t make sense because they are just as much at risk of having caught Covid in class than the teacher is.
Actually I would day more at risk because (young) children don’t SD....[/quote]
But then that’s why you limit contact with those away from the bubble your child is in surely? To reduce that risk.

Some contact with people you can’t avoid, but if people take steps to keep away from others where there is a choice then that will obviously reduce the spread.

People need to judge risk of what they feel comfy. Not feeling comfy socialising with others at the moment doesn’t make someone selfish or uncaring or any of the other names being thrown around. It makes them concerned and wanting to do what they can to keep their family safe

But @NameChange84, you dint have dcs yourself do you?
It’s a very different situation imo.

If we are saying that teachers are so dangerous re the virus and so are children, they no one should ever have agreed to have their dcs go back to school.
As it is, I suspect many people who are saying teachers are dangerous, are also the ones who were happy to see them back at school so they can wfh wo distraction.

@Sirzy, that’s not what the friend said though.

She isn’t restricting herself to her bubble Or her children‘s bubble.

I think you will probably find that most probably the people not wanting to meet with you inside were strongly against schools going back without more mitigation such as blended learning or more money for finding more space etc but our views counted for nothing

I'm one such. I still think it's madness that more measures weren't put in place before reopening schools.

Covid numbers started to rise 2 weeks after schools went back and, while I know coincidence doesn't prove causation, it shouldn't be disregarded either.

It's her choice to make,
BUT I would reduce my contact with her to a minimum from now on. Covid "situation" will eventually change and this friend would need to find another coffee mate for her. First teachers were "lazy" and overly cautious, now they are too dangerous to have contact with, even with distancing and precautions.

I think she's being very sensible. You are in contact with a large number of people every day who each come from a different household, each of which in turn are observing a wide range of hygiene and distancing practices. Not only is she being sensible in relation to managing her risk of catching Covid from you, but she's also being responsible about the huge number of people who will potentially be put at risk if she's the one who gives it to you. Some risks are necessary, but expecting a friend to ignore the realities of this disease's transmissibility for the sake of cheering you up over a cup of coffee is unreasonable and pretty selfish imo.

Fwiw, I think teachers have been treated very badly by the government throughout this, and yanbu to feel hard done by generally.

[quote Meuniere]@Sirzy, that’s not what the friend said though.

She isn’t restricting herself to her bubble Or her children‘s bubble.[/quote]
We don’t know what else she is doing.

Seeing her school age children isn’t really optional. For most people keeping them home all the time isn’t optional (or ideal) so you have to take the risk that comes with that. That doesn’t mean you have to take other risks though.

If we are saying that teachers are so dangerous re the virus and so are children, they no one should ever have agreed to have their dcs go back to school.

No I don’t think so.

It’s not inconsistent to believe that there are could be risks in a school situation, but benefits too, and weigh those up accordingly. Keeping contacts down outside of school to minimise any community transmission is probably sensible in those circs.

That’s not my position, to be clear. I would meet the friend.

i get its upsetting, but really, you ought to be more considerate.

I'm keeping my social contacts to a minimum now the kids are back at school.. DD is 'bubbling' with nearly 70 other students, the school has already had 3 positive covid cases and had to isolate so many staff from one infection they had to close down 2 separate year bubbles (infected teacher)
I understand you're lonely, but dont be too hard on your friend.

How about we don’t see any humans ever again in case we get some sort of infection?

I'd meet you for coffee, OP.
Ok, I hate coffee, but hot chock is fine. You can enjoy the mocha.
It's a stressful time & hard to know what's right thing to do.
Try not to stay cross about your friend.

If Covid goes on for 10 years, will some people refuse to see friends or family for a decade?

But @NameChange84, you dint have dcs yourself do you?
It’s a very different situation imo.

No, sadly, I don’t have children.

But if my life had been different and I did, there’s a big difference IMO to a child or children being in their own bubble with their year group or class (and at my age I most likely would have had primary aged children) and a secondary school teacher, as I used to be, who is exposed to hundreds of children day in day out. In my last school there were over 1000 of us. I had contact with roughly 800 children every single week. That’s quite the difference from, say, a 6 and 8 year old being exposed to 60 children between them at the primary school down the road.

Typical attitude of the smug WFH lot, happy that they're at home safe and cosy with regular Sainsbury's deliveries

WFH isn't all that! We have no proper desks, and no room to put one. DP and I are both suffering from neck and shoulder problems from working without proper work stations. DP is trying to get staff of an emergency service paid on time and I'm supporting clients with MH issues, with an internet connection that is unreliable,. poor mobile signal and occasional power cuts. We gave up trying to get supermarket deliveries after the first month of lockdown, we could never get a slot. And we didn't have any choice in the matter, our offices were closed.

But it does mean we've been able to minimise our risk of getting Covid, for which I am very grateful. And that is also why I wouldn't meet F2F with a friend who was at a much greater risk - it would make everything we've done up to now pointless.

Please don't blame your friend for this. People are really scared of the virus, and potentially catching it (or passing it on the loved ones). They're told in the media all about various outbreaks at schools, people carrying and spreading because they're not showing symptoms, scary stories of the people who died with no underlying health issues ..

We are all 'coping' in whatever way we see fit. Some people do as much as they're allowed (and indeed many people do more!) whereas others prefer to keep themselves to themselves.

It's not fair to expect your friend to meet you if she's then going to worry about catching the virus. Keep in touch with her, phone her even, but to say you're disappointed is unfair really.

To add to my post, I won't go anywhere where you have to leave details (so pub, restaurant, coffee shop etc) because after losing so much of my income this year and getting so little support, I absolutely cannot afford to isolate for two weeks - I think it might break me. So I avoid any situation that might result in a message telling me to.

I do still go to shops when I need to, and I have had the virus so I'm not actually concerned about catching it, but even if you've had it you still have to isolate, and that's what worries me.

I'm also dreading the day DSS brings it home from college.

She's being completely reasonable. DH is a teacher and I used to be - teachers are at a higher risk of catching Covid than most people right now. She has a right to make reasonable decisions not to catch Covid. You'd like your friend to put her life at risk to be polite? She hasn't "betrayed" you - stop being so dramatic.

@Quarks69

Actually wolfie betrayed is my reaction, although it might not be yours, because society and parents (she is one) expect teachers (and nhs staff) to put themselves at risk looking after their children, but aren’t prepared to risk anything themselves to support us, and we are talking the smallest risk here. We teachers could do with support too! How many teachers have had Covid in the last month compared to other groups? Look at the stats.

Seems Responses tell me I am Typhoid Mary for the next 6 months then. That’s a long time without coffee and a chat.

Do you only have one friend?

@Funkypolar

If Covid goes on for 10 years, will some people refuse to see friends or family for a decade?

Don't be ridiculous. Most people who are being cautious are hoping it will be a few more months, maybe into summer next year and there will be a vaccine and more effective treatments. Speaking for myself, I am buying time until those things happen.

If they don't we will all have to reevaluate and try to live as normal a life as possible while mitigating the risks. The governments of all countries will have to do the same. No one will be living exactly like this for more than a year or too.

Why is it ridiculous? We have the flu vaccine but still get flu. Why on earth will cv be any different? I'm sure we'll have breakouts for years to come.

What about flu? Do people refuse to see friends and family who are teachers because there is a bad flu season?

And knittingaddict, somebody having a different opinion to you does not make them ridiculous. There may never be an effective vaccine.