New data reveals jobs with highest death rate from coronavirus

[MeanwhileTime]

news.sky.com/story/covid-19-new-data-reveals-jobs-with-highest-rates-of-death-from-coronavirus-12198285

At every turn on Mumsnet certain posters have gone along with the government's narrative of rule breakers spreading Covid and that if you just obey the rules you will be fine. I've said all along that clearly Covid could be spread by people just going to work or school and bringing it home, obeying the rules and just doing their jobs. It was always clear that most areas where the virus was rife had tons of manual workers who could not work from home.

In the town where I live, there is an 8 year difference in the life expectancy of women between the highest and lowest areas. That's within a 5 mile radius. Being poor is incredibly bad for your health, Covid or no covid.

I'm a teacher and certainly care about other people. All teachers I know do too. Absolutely there needs to be talk and help for those such as chefs and factory workers.

That doesn't mean we don't care about ourselves and want to keep schools, staff and families as safe as possible.

There's a huge amount of crowing and smugness on this thread from people saying awful things about school staff which is actually distasteful. I don't understand why school staff asking for safer workplaces makes people so angry and aggressive.

I also think it's interesting what noble said about cutting the age off and not including other school staff in the figures. I also think the data will be screwed due to holidays and only being open to keyworker bubbles for so long.

Exposure KW children would have increased risks though? Most people weren’t wearing ppe even in hospitals at that stage.

These stats likely show that chefs etc are more likely to be overweight or have diabetes etcc...

My DH does 40000 steps in a day when he works a long busy shift. I have known a lot of chefs over the years and I can think of 2 that were overweight. It's a very physical job, as are a lot of low paid jobs, keeps you pretty fit.

clearly Covid could be spread by people just going to work or school and bringing it home, obeying the rules and just doing their jobs.

Agree. But it was government policy that this very thing happened. Eat out to help out etc. No workplace is really covid safe. If you have to go to a place of work, you're likely to contribute to transmission. If that place of work involves multiple interactions with the public, ditto. If you use public transport to get there, ditto again. No rule breaking involved whatsoever.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz

I wonder if they adjusted the teacher/school staff figures to cover only September to December, as schools were closed from 20 March until 4 Sept.

They didn’t. They also didn’t include staff over 65 or weight it reflect the number of workers in each sector. We’re seeing raw data when the number of deaths per 100,00 employees per month and covering all ages is what’s needed.

As for security staff, stands to reason that a job that involves multiple interactions with violent pissheads puts you at risk.

What a shame that this post has been taken over by discussion of teachers instead of the focus being on the occupations with the highest death rate.
It is interesting that so many on here automatically assume that those in these professions are unhealthy, smoke, live in poor housing etc. My DH works in one of those jobs and we have a decent home, he is young, fit and healthy and he and his colleagues probably do far more physical activity than the majority on this post.

Zero hours contracts means you don't complain and you don't call in sick. And SSP is one hell of a deterrent to getting a test if you have symptoms. I think that a lot of people who don't work in these industries don't realise the reality.

Yes I agree with that. Also the delays inherent in track and trace (it can be 14 days from contact with someone before you even know you're supposed to have been isolating, not through fuckups even, just lag before symptoms and then lag for app to work through data after positive test input) mean that if you're working outside of home every day, you have a high chance of bringing the virus into work unwittingly.

And then ofc the financial considerations kick in: if the majority of the workforce are on zero/short hours contracts then the majority of them are not in a position to isolate.

So teachers don't 'win' with the current death rates- therefore it's all made up......

@noblegiraffe

No one going to comment on the age 65+ workers being excluded from this analysis? Lots of deaths being ignored. Why?

Is 65 the retirement age and it's supposed to be working age population data?

Yes, 65 is the technical retirement age but if those people are still working as teachers, nurses, shopkeepers, whatever, shouldn’t they be included in the ‘working population’?

It seems weird to have it look like ‘only’ 52 secondary teachers died of covid when actually it’s three times as many.

It’s not like over 65s have been vaccinated.

I suspect a lot of the reason behind these figures isn't to do with their jobs.

The death rate is highest among those most likely to live in crowded, probably multi-generational households. Possibly in areas where conforming to guidance is patchy (that doesn't mean I blame them, before anyone starts - it could be the people around them being careless). The job they do might well be the least of their risk.

I don't think these stats do much at all to enlighten us.

@noblegiraffe

Yes, 65 is the technical retirement age but if those people are still working as teachers, nurses, shopkeepers, whatever, shouldn’t they be included in the ‘working population’?

It seems weird to have it look like ‘only’ 52 secondary teachers died of covid when actually it’s three times as many.

It’s not like over 65s have been vaccinated.

I guess they have to cut the age off somewhere if it's working age and 65 seems reasonable. In my experience teachers retire before then anyway - I don't have any data to back that up though just observational

Here you go @noblegiraffe

*Working age population

In this bulletin the working age population concerns those aged 20 to 64 years. The analysis begins at 20 years to avoid the accidental inclusion of those who may still be in education, and the analysis does not include those aged 65 years and above to avoid the accidental inclusion of those who are retired. The upper age limit of 64 years is consistent with other ONS outputs looking at those who are economically active, including the number of people who are in employment.*

How would they accidentally register someone retired as actually working as a taxi driver? They have missed an awful lot of deaths due to this cut-off.

It would be interesting if this was compared to the stats for these professions in 2019, so that socioeconomic factors could be accounted for, although clearly there are some professions that need to be made much safer somehow.

They certainly haven’t missed a whole load of teachers though.

Waiting for someone to tell me that classrooms across the land are choc-full of teachers aged 65+....

It would be really nice if the teacher lobbyists who’ve been frothing for months actually had the decency to admit that they aren’t actually the ones who have been worst affected and concede that many other professions are actually much more vulnerable.

Yes, of course there will be deaths not counted across all occupations by the age bracket ending at 64. However there is always going to be a cut off point and 64 seems to be the standard cut off point when talking about the working age population.

They certainly haven’t missed a whole load of teachers though.

As I mentioned, if you include the over 65s in secondary teaching you get three times the number of deaths.

teacher lobbyists who’ve been frothing for months actually had the decency to admit that they aren’t actually the ones who have been worst affected

Not me, so nothing to admit.

@Hardbackwriter

Did it not occur to you to maybe express just a little bit of sympathy or concern for the fact that so many of the lowest paid and least respected in society have been left at the greatest risk - which I think is sobering and shameful - before banging on about yourself as a teacher? You could have pretended to be less self-absorbed?

@noblegiraffe

How would they accidentally register someone retired as actually working as a taxi driver? They have missed an awful lot of deaths due to this cut-off.

I imagine it would be because you might be given data relating to the person's last job prior to retirement in some cases. I think people have a very unrealistic idea of how "clean" the data that statisticians get generally is. That's a particular issue when you're dealing with relatively small numbers (these are small numbers to do a statistical analysis with) as a few bits of incorrect data can have a big effect.

I’ve been saying this for a while, it’s a horrible bias people have about lower paid workers. Why didn’t we shut down meat packing plants or takeaways? It’s no more radical than shutting schools and would’ve saved more lives.

[quote FanciedanewnameAnne]@tilder

Yes vaccinations need giving out to workers in factories/takeaways and taxi drivers and all the other low paid jobs that people forget about ....[/quote]
They could do it by hourly wage, lowest to highest, would be pretty accurate at targeting those most at risk I'd say.