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.

@Bizawit

They were at risk like the nurses were

But the evidence doesn’t support this claim?

So you believe the government propaganda that teachers don't catch covid in school 🤦‍♀️

Newsflash - everyone is at risk of catching covid. And certain environments increase that risk.

I can't work out if you're just being an arse for kicks, hard or reading or genuinely cannot understand that it very obviously didn't mean "equal risk". (And if you genuinely didn't understand I apologise for being judgemental)

@AfternoonToffee

It doesn't matter of it was one week, one month, or one year the fact remains the unions did call for schools to shut, I'm not sure why posters are arguing so fervently that they didn't.

I'm really not that bothered if they did or they didn't but the absolute denial that they ever did is strange.

I think the issue is that majority of schools in England and Wales were already asked to be closed by the DforE but not all (mostly the London ones funnily enough), which was when the unions started their emergency meetings as to why the discrepancy when some boroughs had higher rates than others. The fact that the DforE changed their mind and then decided to close all schools to many children on the Jan 4th afternoon, was not down to the unions. Old headlines out of context at the time does need explaining (as in, why close these schools but not these ones, rather than schools need to close, full stop) when it is being used to argue that the unions have more ‘power’ than they do and that the reasons schools closed to many have never been down to the unions.

The teaching unions have called for so many sensible, reasonable things and been ignored. They've been vilified in the press by govt and opposition.

To suggest that they have any influence over government policy-making is just totally out of touch with reality.

Whether they were calling for school closures or not, it wouldn't have made any difference to the govt decision to close schools.

If the govt closed schools, it was because they couldn't justify keeping them open given the deaths it would cause. And we know that Johnson had quite a tolerance for bodies piling up.

So you believe the government propaganda that teachers don't catch covid in school

Of course they do and can catch covid in schools. But people can and do catch covid anywhere. I didn’t (and don’t) believe that teachers are particularly more at risk teaching at school , than anyone else is at risk anywhere else in the community. And therefore I don’t believe the harm caused by the closure of schools was appropriately balanced by the need to protect teachers’ safety. This is my understanding of the evidence. (Feel free to go ahead and continue to belittle , insult me etc, if you think that’s the best line of attach that you’ve got , that says much more about you than in does me).

Nurses are at elevated risk when caring for people who are sick and dying of covid.

And therefore I don’t believe the harm caused by the closure of schools was appropriately balanced by the need to protect teachers’ safety.

You think that schools were closed to protect teachers?

Wow. You really are clueless.

Nurses are at elevated risk when caring for people who are sick and dying of covid.

Some nurses yes. Not all nurses were working with patients who were sick and dying of Covid. However, I do respect your opinion that schools should not have closed (even though they didn’t in lockdown 2 and still caused the R rate to stay high and were not closed in January to protect teacher safety-that has never been the reason)

And therefore I don’t believe the harm caused by the closure of schools was appropriately balanced by the need to protect teachers’ safety.

But schools weren’t closed to protect teachers’ safety.

the ONS numbers at the time of Christmas, of nurses vs all education staff (not just split up into categories)

I’m not sure I fully understand this? So you are saying that the peer review BMJ study conclusions are wrong because you’ve found a way to cut/ aggregate a snap shot of data that supports a view that educational staff and nurses have comparable risk of dying of covid?

@noblegiraffe and @HipTightOnions sigh. My original post was badly thought through, as I made a statement to the effect that lobbying/ advocacy by the teachers union to close schools.
This was a foolish statement. Whilst the unions did exert pressure on the government to close schools, of course there were a variety of pressures coming from a variety of different angles.

I immediately took that back and since tried to clarify, multiple times, that all I was trying to do was to point out that teachers unions were calling for schools to shut and people should be allowed to challenge/ criticise this action.

Many pp’s have pointed out that unions were calling for schools to shut to protect teachers safety.

*as I made a statement to the effect that lobbying/ advocacy by the teachers union led to the closure of schools.

That’s why schools should never shut again.

Teaching was no more hazardous than many other professions and kids are overwhelmingly likely to be okay. Community mortality mitigated by a vaccine.

Time to get on with it now.

I haven’t cut and pasted anything. Go back to my previous post and click on the link. It shows the full table of data of occupational deaths from ONS related to Covid rates from the time up to December 2020. I’m talking about the risk at that time regarding school closures, as were you.
The recent study discussed in the BMJ article is regarding a different time period and focusing only on a smaller controlled group on hospitalisations only, post vaccines etc etc.

Time to get on with it now.
We are.

Many pp’s have pointed out that unions were calling for schools to shut to protect teachers safety.

Since the point of a teaching union is to protect teachers, whose safety should they have been campaigning for?

@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.

This implies that school closures were done to protect teachers! This absolutely isn't the case. Schools were closed to reduce the spread of the virus. The article you've quoted says nothing about students and teachers spreading the virus. Whilst it's reassuring to know that teachers may not be at such a high risk, this has nothing to do with school closures.

@Chillychangchoo

That’s why schools should never shut again.

Teaching was no more hazardous than many other professions and kids are overwhelmingly likely to be okay. Community mortality mitigated by a vaccine.

Time to get on with it now.

‘Schools’ won’t shut again (and they never were totally shut but I’ll assume that your child’s school was ‘shut’ to your child, or at least your us4them friends). It’s pretty likely that individual schools and probably local area schools will shut as there will be no one available to staff them because people will be sick because there is nothing at all to stop the spread of the disease in schools unless individual headteachers decide not to follow government guidance and actually put mitigation’s in place.

Living with covid is not the same as going back to 2019, I really wish people would understand this.

Oh god that old us4them chestnut because you happen to have a different view point. 👀

Deja vu. What makes you think teachers will all be off at once? It’s not how viruses work, they have incubation periods. Very catastrophic thinking as per.

I’m off now, the mitigation brigade bores me to tears.

I haven’t cut and pasted anything

I didn’t say you did- that’s not what I meant but “cutting the data”. In any case, I just want to clarify that you are disputing a conclusion that teachers are/ were not at increased risk of getting seriously ill of dying of covid (both pre and post vaccine) If you are-
ok we can have that debate , although it will involve trundling through the data /
research. Noted that the BMJ study was speaking post vaccine, I had admittedly not taken that into account in my pp. However, analyses that I read prior to vaccine rollout drew the same conclusions (teachers were not dying at higher rates than the general population of comparable age etc). At the time, of course, people argued that was because schools were mostly closed during the heat of the first and second waves.

@CarrieBlue

Many pp’s have pointed out that unions were calling for schools to shut to protect teachers safety.

Since the point of a teaching union is to protect teachers, whose safety should they have been campaigning for?

This has nothing to do with any of the points I have been trying to make.

So you're annoyed at the teaching unions lobbying on behalf of their members (their actual job) even though it made no difference to anything?

Have you looked through what all the other unions have been doing on behalf of their members during the pandemic, or is it only the teaching unions?

I just want to clarify that you are disputing a conclusion that teachers are/ were not at increased risk of getting seriously ill of dying of covid (both pre and post vaccine)

This is the problem. Language regarding risk keeps changing to suit people’s points. Being at risk which is what has been posted that you have responded to, is not the same as saying more risk and increased risk doesn’t mean no risk. School staff were (and are) at risk of catching Covid more than other professions (you can see that in that very large table, which I would recommend looking at) and there were also some professions that were more at risk than school staff.
I’ll repeat that the ONS have repeatedly said that they can never comment or show risk, only data and it has been the government nudging the media in interpreting that data with particular language to suit their million pound PR campaign of ‘Schools are Safe’ .

@ChloeDecker

Time to get on with it now. We are.

Yes, we are, and have been all along.

@Kitcat122

That's of there will be enough teachers to teach him m.

Haven't lots of teachers already had it? If as you say lots of staff were off ill with it last term then those shouldn't be ill again this term. How many times are they going to get it?

It is worth pointing out that all employers (Heads / local authorities in the case of schools) have the following legal responsibility under Health and Safety legislation:

"It is an employer's duty to protect the health, safety and welfare of their employees and other people who might be affected by their business. Employers must do whatever is reasonably practicable to achieve this.

This means making sure that workers and others are protected from anything that may cause harm, effectively controlling any risks to injury or health that could arise in the workplace."

Interestingly, I know of no schools closed by union action as part of the pandemic. I do, however, know of at least 1 school where the Head decided at the start of January that they could not meet their legal Health and Safety duty (which trumps Government Covid guidance) due to the state of the pandemic, and refused to open their school to children and staff, instead calling a short-notice online training day.

@ChloeDecker

I just want to clarify that you are disputing a conclusion that teachers are/ were not at increased risk of getting seriously ill of dying of covid (both pre and post vaccine)

This is the problem. Language regarding risk keeps changing to suit people’s points. Being at risk which is what has been posted that you have responded to, is not the same as saying more risk and increased risk doesn’t mean no risk. School staff were (and are) at risk of catching Covid more than other professions (you can see that in that very large table, which I would recommend looking at) and there were also some professions that were more at risk than school staff.
I’ll repeat that the ONS have repeatedly said that they can never comment or show risk, only data and it has been the government nudging the media in interpreting that data with particular language to suit their million pound PR campaign of ‘Schools are Safe’ .

Sorry @ChloeDecker I still don’t really understand what we are arguing about?

We are living in a global pandemic, therefore we are all at risk of catching, becoming seriously ill, and dying of covid.

The analyses of the evidence that I have read have all concluded that teachers are not at increased risk of becoming seriously ill or dying of covid, when compared to the general population (nurses are at elevated risk). Are you saying the ONS table you have shared demonstrates otherwise?