Of all the things the teachers say is risky, the one about parents sending in sick children, or kids with temperatures - that’s a definite concern. They do it at my child’s school and it makes me livid. There needs to be very serious consequences around this.
A lot of the other stuff is surmountable once you accept that social distancing isn’t possible in schools. It’s not possible in a lot of jobs, so they use PPE. A lot of those jobs are much, much higher risk, eg caring for the physical health of actual rather than perceived patients.
I think it really does sound hysterical and defeatist to cite ‘no soap’ or ‘we aren’t allowed hand sanitiser.’ And yes, people cherry pick research, however at some point we have to decide which research to follow, and it won’t be you or I making that call, fortunately.
I have suggested previously that teachers who don’t want to be in the classroom with children should have the option to opt out, this received no reply apart from one person saying ‘but I won’t get paid if I opt out.’
No nurse would get paid, either.
We public employees are in a fairly privileged position, though we might not have thought so in the past. I would like to be furloughed at home on 80%, however I’d also be worried by now about redundancy.
There is something about being employed in essential services and paid from the state purse that entails a moral obligation to put your best foot forward. To ‘have a go’ and act in the interest of others.
That sense of duty and obligation is why some public employees set foot on Covid wards. My husband has to do it. We can’t afford to become hysterical about it, otherwise people wouldn’t have doctors.
I had to do it myself in April. The patient was not on my caseload, the hospital was not my usual place of work, but I was needed. I wasn’t happy about it, but I didn’t refuse either. I weighed it up and concluded that in order to refuse, I’d have to go off sick or take unpaid leave. They gave me PPE, the ward was crowded, people stood too close, but I didn’t catch the virus.
September will see no change in this virus unless there’s a vaccine or it’s gone away. I think there will be a vaccine, but it won’t be ready for September.
Until then, and possibly for a while afterwards, I still maintain that we should give people the right to refuse to take a risk with their own health, however, once the government say it’s safe to do so, citing whatever research they agree on, I think we ‘state’ employees will have to accept not being paid if we refuse. We can take it to our unions (I’m a member of two different ones), however I’m not sure that taking strike action during a pandemic would cast any profession (teacher or otherwise) in a favourable light, and I can well imagine the press holding up the example of doctors, nurses, carers, supermarket workers and whoever as examples of why teachers (with PPE) were being ‘unreasonable,’ and for that I think they would lose a great deal of public goodwill, which would be a shame when they do such a great job, really.