Those who assume teachers etc will be given a vaccine...

[Unionise]

I’ve seen a lot of posters over recent days saying things like ‘I’d assume that teachers/education/nursery staff will have some priority’. The JCVI have put out their recommendation list and teachers etc are nowhere to be seen (it’s here: bit.ly/3pvWvm7).

If the government are serious about keeping schools/nurseries open, vaccinating staff is a no brainer. I can’t be the only one who has had to isolate myself due to cases in class and whose children have had to isolate multiple times! If staff were vaccinated, it would limit closures, which would enable everyone to work without the constant childcare juggle, including NHS staff and other key workers. Anyway, there’s a petition here if you want to sign: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/554316

Let’s not have another argument about if teachers are at risk. Nobody’s suggesting they should be put at the top of the list above health/care workers, the elderly and the vulnerable! But surely before ‘the rest of the population’, many of whom can distance/wear masks/work from home etc? And this is about protecting continuity of education and childcare as much as it is about risk. If you agree, sign and share and if you don’t, let’s agree to disagree

Sorry MNHQ if sharing things like this isn’t allowed! I’m also going to put this post in the Staffroom.

But if the medically vulnerable, extremely vulnerable and older people are protected by vaccine, why would anyone have to isolate anymore than we isolate for flu or chickenpox? Why would bus drivers for example be at less risk than teachers - we won’t be wearing masks and 2 metres distancing in perpetuity. Once we have some therapeutics as well (interferon, monoclonal antibodies etc), the risk of overwhelming the nhs is dealt with and the fatality rate is low, the media find something else to fixate on and the focus becomes sky high unemployment etc, no one is going to be terribly keen to keep up all these precautions to prevent healthy young adults and children catching what for the vast majority of them will be a cold.

(If you’d said keyworkers ahead of eg people who can work from home I might have agreed with you, but I rely just as much on the people manning food factories for example as I do teachers.)

I assumed that teachers and pupils who were at high risk from Coronavirus would be vaccinated but not non vulnerable staff. Why would they be?

I agree with @Numberblock7. Surely the masks, distancing, isolation etc is necessary to protect the vulnerable and prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed. If the vulnerable are vaccinated why would we still need such measures? At least, that is what I understand of why the current measures are necessary.

I agree with you and I work in a factory. I'd rather teachers get priority for the vaccine over me. Working in a factory means you need your children at school as we can't work from home!

I think it is hard to prioritise after nhs workers, elderly and vulnerable. There are many jobs which are not working from home that are needed to keep everything ticking. Not just teachers.

Also I'm another one hoping that the restrictions will stop once the above have been vaccinated

It depends on the definition of vulnerable. At present, if the JVC guidelines stay as they are, a 49 year old teacher / bus driver with a BMI of 39.9 and well controlled diabetes is considered to have no vulnerability to covid. Which is a bit scary.

Re the diabetic obese bus driver example, I’d far rather see the definition of vulnerable expanded to include those people across the entire population than start vaccinating 25 year old slim white women with no health issues just because they are teachers.

We have established by now that the government dont give 2 hoots about safety in schools so its hardly surprising teachers and school staff won't be offered the vaccine as standard unless they meet the one of the age or vulnerable criteria in the roll out list.
They are vaccinating those who are most likely to require medical help via the NHS , younger teachers without other vulnerabilities are probably going to deal with any illness at home without any intervention, clearly the impact of mass teachers being off sick is not a concern to the government

Fair point about whether we’ll still need to isolate when the most vulnerable are vaccinated. Who knows? I’m glad it’s not my job to make those decisions. But even with a 90% efficacy (hopefully!), 1 in 10 vaccinated vulnerable people wouldn’t be fully protected. And not every vulnerable person will choose to be vaccinated, reducing that amount further. It’s sounding like isolation (at least until a negative test result), masks and distancing will be around for a while longer while we wait for enough people to be vaccinated to achieve a safer level of immunity. Vaccinating staff in schools and nurseries would provide another layer of protection for families with vulnerable children/adults who have been vaccinated but still don’t have 100% protection and reduce the amount of bubble closures (even closures for a few days whilst waiting for test results are disruptive to education).

I completely agree that other key workers should also be prioritised in some way. I didn’t write the petition; it was shared with me, I agreed with the points made in it, so I signed and am sharing in the hope that it makes it to government to be debated further.

The vaccine is being rolled out to those who are at serious risk of getting very very ill and dying, with age being the number one thing that increased this risk and then those who are CEV. Age is a more important criteria than CEV because it’s a bigger factor.

It is being given to health and social care workers not because THEY are at risk of getting seriously ill or dying, but to stop them passing it on to the very old or very vulnerable.

I totally agree that there is no “Covid safety” in school and there should be and that teachers are at risk due to their jobs. But a 40 year old teacher shouldn’t get the vaccine before a 60 year old accountant because they are less likely to get seriously ill or die, even if they are more likely to catch it.

Also of course there are many teachers who do fit into the JCVI list! But young, healthy people are likely going to need to be vaccinated to achieve the right level of immunity to lift restrictions. Why not prioritise those who provide education and childcare (both vital to children and working parents) to reduce the chance of parents having to stay at home with isolating children, when we need to get people working and the economy going again?

It guess depends what you’re trying to achieve and the characteristics of the vaccine. If (big if) the vaccine prevents someone from catching it at all, or spreading it, then yes teachers may be a sensible group to vaccinate alongside other public facing roles.

If the aim is just to keep the nhs functioning and deaths to a manageable number, and if as has been previously suggested all the vaccine does is prevent severe/symptomatic disease, I can’t see why you would vaccinate people who are at a very low risk of severe disease anyway.

I guess we wait and see...

Who would you like to be prioritised over?

We do, and I assume that’s why the list isn’t fixed yet. I don’t envy any of the people tasked with making these decisions. Let’s hope it’s brilliantly effective and that it does stop transmission as well as catching it. I’m looking forward to hearing more about Pfizer and hopefully some news from Oxford too.

I can see sense in vaccinating teachers, just to keep everyone else in work whilst children can attend school.
And to level out the offer of education to all children.

School closure is rising rapidly, staff are off ill or isolating. Supply teachers are just not available in sufficient quantities. Schools will continue to close.