[quote GrumblyMumblyisnotJumbly]**@OverTheRubicon* Otherwise you'll end up with a healthy female 25 year old teacher, with a tiny risk of severe illness, being vaccinated ahead of a 52 year old bame and overweight delivery driver. That doesn't seem like fairness, nor is it likely to be medically the best outcome.*
This will have been the case (for a minority) of NHS staff too, some wfh, as quite rightly the whole sector has been prioritised.
In most public facing roles employers /employees should be able to use preventive measures e.g masks / screens / distancing. Schools have NONE of these (other than mask wearing in secondary corridors) yet schools are supposedly a priority sector for the Government to reopen. As they are not allowed by the DfE to implement preventive measures that other sectors can, and the rate of infection has been proven to be higher in the population that they teach, surely they should be prioritised for vaccination?
Do you have a socially isolated child struggling to home school?
We all need schools to reopen, each and every time a primary school teacher falls ill with Covid that is 30 families affected by having to self isolate. If the teacher becomes more ill they are less likely to be able to continue to wfh and teach their isolated class/es.
The police are another public facing sector where they have close physical proximity to people not wearing masks. Another essential service- again surely they should be prioritised for vaccines before the general public?
You could flip your example round and ask why my in-laws in their 60s, or my aunt & uncle in their 50s, who are retired and comfortably able to stay at home should be a higher or equal priority over my DCs teachers, some also in their 50s who teach 5 classes x 30 children a day, with NO protective measures?
If the Government want schools to open and remain open they need to do something to protect the staff.[/quote]
I have 2 socially isolated young primary age children home schooling, a toddler home and I lost my job thanks to covid cuts, so I am very invested in getting schools back. And fully agree that vulnerable teachers (even 50+) should be vaccinated before schools return. What I'm saying is that I don't think that it is necessarily fair to have to have every teacher, even those at very low risk, vaccinated before return can be considered, given that vaccination can take some time and that teachers are not alone in being key workers in more exposed jobs - I'd prefer to see whether distancing can be increased in parallel (e.g. more protection allowed, masks for older children or.even 50/50 schooling would still be an improvement).
The older people being vaccinated are because they are so much more likely to end up.in hospital, or dead, if they do get ill - it is to prevent.deaths and to reduce the strain on the NHS, not because 60 year olds have the right to more.protection. Similarly, WFH NHS workers are in many cases still required for the functioning of our health system and with services so stretched, it's again a big.risk if many are ill.