BMJ: Teachers not at greater risk of hosp'n, and lower risk of severe disease, than general population

[Kokeshi123]

www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2060?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_term=hootsuite&utm_content=sme&utm_campaign=usage

Unlike previous studies, this one actually looked at periods when schools were open and compared like-with-like for those periods.

Compared with adults of working age who are otherwise similar, teachers and their household members were not found to be at increased risk of hospital admission with covid-19 and were found to be at lower risk of severe covid-19. These findings should reassure those who are engaged in face-to-face teaching.

This should not be taken to mean that we should do schooling with no mitigations whatsoever--I'd be in favor of doing indoor masks for kids and teachers till the winter is over if it was up to me, and ventilation is always a good thing anyway. However, at least this should provide some reassurance for teachers and families. And in my opinion, this kind of thing should settle the argument on having any further school closures; mitigations are one thing, but schools absolutely must remain open IMO.

My DS has just started a new school as we’re moving house next week. His village school is very small and there’s only 16 in his class. He’ll be going in 5 days a week as long as the school is open. Only one primary school here had to close because of staff shortages.

Oh dear, just the sort of school where COVID does close a school, small staff team, all catch COVID. Some of the schools I work with are small too.
Tiny amount of staff with no capacity to cover for each other, all doing multiple jobs.
It would only take the Designated Safeguarding Lead and deputy to be ill and the school would have to close.

@sherrystrull Yes I had no choice. All the university building are shut except for the medical school and science laboratories. I went in one day to collect some books from my office and security turned up and told me it wasn’t safe to be in the building. The building was empty, apart from when they showed up. Academics are in offices on their own yet we’re not allowed to go in. It’s ridiculous, it’s overkill. When the students return at the end of September we can be in at 60% capacity only to keep everywhere ‘Covid secure’.

@HambletonSquare

My DS has just started a new school as we’re moving house next week. His village school is very small and there’s only 16 in his class. He’ll be going in 5 days a week as long as the school is open. Only one primary school here had to close because of staff shortages.

Oh dear, just the sort of school where COVID does close a school, small staff team, all catch COVID. Some of the schools I work with are small too.
Tiny amount of staff with no capacity to cover for each other, all doing multiple jobs.
It would only take the Designated Safeguarding Lead and deputy to be ill and the school would have to close.

You seem to enjoy the idea that my son’s school may end up closing due to Covid. What kind of sadistic parenting forum is this? Anyway I’m optimistic it won’t happen.

[quote AchillesLastStand]@sherrystrull Yes I had no choice. All the university building are shut except for the medical school and science laboratories. I went in one day to collect some books from my office and security turned up and told me it wasn’t safe to be in the building. The building was empty, apart from when they showed up. Academics are in offices on their own yet we’re not allowed to go in. It’s ridiculous, it’s overkill. When the students return at the end of September we can be in at 60% capacity only to keep everywhere ‘Covid secure’.[/quote]
Completely understand that you had no choice but it’s a bit rich of you lording it over teachers on this thread with your ‘I’m going back in to lecturing face to face at the end of the month because I’m doing it for the benefit for education when school staff have been ‘in face to face’ from the word go (even if not to all children at all times but they have been and for a damn sight longer face to face than you and your colleagues have) so you have no right to criticise as much as you have done on this thread.
By the way, I am a parent of a new year 2 child so you can’t use that as your trump card.

[quote AchillesLastStand]@sherrystrull Yes I had no choice. All the university building are shut except for the medical school and science laboratories. I went in one day to collect some books from my office and security turned up and told me it wasn’t safe to be in the building. The building was empty, apart from when they showed up. Academics are in offices on their own yet we’re not allowed to go in. It’s ridiculous, it’s overkill. When the students return at the end of September we can be in at 60% capacity only to keep everywhere ‘Covid secure’.[/quote]
I understand you had no choice. Please try and have some empathy for people (including teachers) who have had no choice but to go into crowded rooms each day.

You seem to enjoy the idea that my son’s school may end up closing due to Covid. What kind of sadistic parenting forum is this? Anyway I’m optimistic it won’t happen.

Just as you are determined that your child's school will remain open when in fact it is out of your control.

I'm realistic based on my professional experience. I've supported schools throughout this and know how tough it is to maintain staffing especially when there isn't even any supply staff available.

I do have empathy for teachers. I don’t know what suggested I didn’t. My brother (yes I know he’s a male!) is a teacher and I would hate anything to happen to him. I don’t think the government should have reopened school with no mitigations in place, but we can’t keep closing them either. We need to live with Covid and stop obsessing about case numbers.

I had no choice to not teach face to face. Doing lectures online has been an awful experience and one I never wish to repeat. In seminars I’ve had students who won’t turn their cameras on and engage at all. I’ve been personal tutoring students having mental breakdowns online and I can’t help them as I usually would, Yes it’s been awful for teachers too for different reasons. It’s not a competition. I don’t think I’m lording anything over anyone. All I said is education matters more than Covid does.

@AchillesLastStand

I do have empathy for teachers. I don’t know what suggested I didn’t. My brother (yes I know he’s a male!) is a teacher and I would hate anything to happen to him. I don’t think the government should have reopened school with no mitigations in place, but we can’t keep closing them either. We need to live with Covid and stop obsessing about case numbers.

I had no choice to not teach face to face. Doing lectures online has been an awful experience and one I never wish to repeat. In seminars I’ve had students who won’t turn their cameras on and engage at all. I’ve been personal tutoring students having mental breakdowns online and I can’t help them as I usually would, Yes it’s been awful for teachers too for different reasons. It’s not a competition. I don’t think I’m lording anything over anyone. All I said is education matters more than Covid does.

Your comments drip with pent up frustration with teachers. Read them back.

I think education matters more than covid. Where did I suggest I didn't? I realise that highlighting the issues in schools and increasing mitigation will help education.

I do have empathy for teachers. I don’t know what suggested I didn’t

You wrote this amongst other unfair posts on this thread:

At end of the month I will be entering the lecture theatre/seminar room to teach students face to face. I will do it without grumbling or complaining as I realise, like all my colleagues, the benefits of education not just to individual students but wider society as a whole far outweigh the risks of Covid.

You’re saying that you are better than teachers by finally going in to lecture face to face after 18 months without grumbling because you truly care about education (despite the fact that you say you are going to go on strike again) shows you have very little empathy for what school staff have done in the past 18 months whilst you have worked safely from home.

AchillesLastStand

You seem to enjoy the idea that my son’s school may end up closing due to Covid. What kind of sadistic parenting forum is this?

I don't see anyone saying that they would enjoy this. Even the teachers are saying that it shouldn't happen.

Anyway I’m optimistic it won’t happen.

It probably won't happen, there is likely to be no testing after September. All other mitigations have been removed including isolations any close contact isolations (teachers are exempt), no bubbles, no sd, no sanitation.

There will be no record of how schools will cope with covid because (like last march) there will be no data.

IME all education professionals put the education of their students above their own personal concerns - whether those concerns be the impact of long-term online learning on students or the impact of Covid-insecure classrooms on students and their families.

I don't think it is wrong for those education professionals to raise the issues that they see - university academics have campaigned for f2f education to be offered, and school staff have requested greater risk mitigations.

Raising issues is PRO education. Not ANTI education. In the end, we all want the same thing - efficient, effective provision of education to all students, full time, long term and without individual, group or cohort disruption.

Not frustration with teachers per se but frustration that we’ll be having the same argument next year and the one after that. Covid isn’t going anywhere. You and I will get it and have a natural booster. The government has said that Covid is now endemic and can’t be controlled. Fine have mitigations in schools, we’ll be having them too in universities. But we can’t ever talk about shutting down education again an any level. It’s too damaging for society as a whole.

@cantkeepawayforever

IME all education professionals put the education of their students above their own personal concerns - whether those concerns be the impact of long-term online learning on students or the impact of Covid-insecure classrooms on students and their families.

I don't think it is wrong for those education professionals to raise the issues that they see - university academics have campaigned for f2f education to be offered, and school staff have requested greater risk mitigations.

Raising issues is PRO education. Not ANTI education. In the end, we all want the same thing - efficient, effective provision of education to all students, full time, long term and without individual, group or cohort disruption.

Exactly.

But we can’t ever talk about shutting down education again an any level. It’s too damaging for society as a whole.

No one is talking about that as in, no one wants that to happen. You are straying into gaslighting territory here.

@AchillesLastStand

Not frustration with teachers per se but frustration that we’ll be having the same argument next year and the one after that. Covid isn’t going anywhere. You and I will get it and have a natural booster. The government has said that Covid is now endemic and can’t be controlled. Fine have mitigations in schools, we’ll be having them too in universities. But we can’t ever talk about shutting down education again an any level. It’s too damaging for society as a whole.

Who has talked about shutting education down? It's a straw man.

Schools opened up on 6th March. They will have no mitigations.

Universities are opening up this month. As you say, they will have some mitigations.

INDIVIDUAL schools will close or operate in a way that does not offer a good education (e.g. 1:1 TAs or lunchtime staff covering classes due to shortage of teaching staff). INDIVIDUAL university courses may run less well because of specific issues. Specific students or groups of students will learn online, because of illness or other barriers to their attendance, for periods of days or weeks.

AchillesLastStand

But the reason that we will be having this discussion over and over again is because there are no mitigations in schools.

A bigger problem (and its on this thread) is posters that think that bringing up this problem is whinging.

And INDIVIDUAL staff will continue to suffer - from not being able to visit vulnerable relatives due to the risk of carrying infection from their workplace, from having to carry out childcare due to temporary closures, from having to provide online and in person education simultaneously, from being ill.

And to mention the elephant in the room that the more money spent on cover teachers, less money will be spent on actually educating the pupils.

@FrippEnos

AchillesLastStand

But the reason that we will be having this discussion over and over again is because there are no mitigations in schools.

A bigger problem (and its on this thread) is posters that think that bringing up this problem is whinging.

I do find this a problem - especially as it has been admitted that there WILL be mitigations in universities.

Having no mitigations in school IS AN ISSUE. Infections will be higher, and worse, than they need to be. Parents and grandparents will become ill who need not. Children will miss education completely avoidably, and this will remover parents from the workplace, also avoidably.

People will complain about these outcomes, but for some reason stating the obvious root cause is whinging, even when it is raised by those who know best, and who have done their jobs in those environments for the longest.

@cantkeepawayforever

I find it really dd that ANYONE thinks teachers want lockdowns.

Teachers universally hated lockdowns, IME.

We want in-school mitigations that keep ALL children and ALL teachers in school (no part time, no rotas, no in-out-in-out isolation due to in-school infections, no sickness absence) BY KEEPING COVID TRANSMISSION AS LOW AS POSSIBLE.

We are pointing out that, no, schools are not magically Covid-free, that infections will occur and that children and staff will be ill and therefore absent.

Very largely, we accept the personal risk. We would like the government and others to be honest about the fact the risk is there, but it is the dishonesty and gaslighting that we object to - the risk itself has not put us off doing our jobs, though it has increased our stress levels as we worry about the impact on children and adults in the school community.

Excellent post

@FrippEnos

And to mention the elephant in the room that the more money spent on cover teachers, less money will be spent on actually educating the pupils.

My school does not buy in cover teachers. It uses any and all adults within the school - 1:1 TAs, lunchtime supervisors, unqualified students - to be in front of the classes, forsaking their normal roles and offering babysitting within school hours. Parents really don't notice - 'OUR school is open', they say smugly - but education is massively compromised.

cantkeepawayforever

We do have a small (smaller this year) of internal cover supervisors, but that has already been compromised for reasons that I can't go in to on here.

At one point last year, we couldn't get enough cover in and TAs and other areas were butchered to try and keep lessons running, And this was with half classes joined together (pointless year group bubbles) amongst other things.

All I said is education matters more than Covid does.

But they aren't mutually exclusive.

Covid will affect education whether it was the continuation of bubbles or not.

Covid is still around and those infected still have to isolate for 10 days.

Some will be off a damn sight longer.

It's just daft that there are still no mitigation's to prevent this happening at an extreme level.

Fripp, we were down to, across the whole school, 1 adult per class + the receptionist running round to check that everyone was OK. Nothing else - all SEN children without the 1:1 they are legally entitled to, no head, no TAs, all lunchtime supervisors in all day.

It was scary.