4049

It might be good political policy though- as parents desperately want schools to reopen, and teachers won’t teach without vaccines.

Also businesses want the government daycare.

Personally, i would have vaccinated medical personnel first, frontline workers in essential industries second, then confined populations, then vulnerable populations. I would have allowed elderly to get it if they were living/dependent on a person in the above groups.

4050

And as I have explained to you before, you would have killed people by following this policy.

Sorry, that’s a little unfair and harsh - doubtless if I was making all these decisions I would have killed lots of people too. But the public health experts do seem pretty united on the vaccine rollout priorities.

4051

Closing schools has one of the highest social costs out there of all measures taken. Just like doctors are receiving the vaccine sooner than their risk profile, and should, so too should teachers.

Sorry, anyone saying the early vaccination for teachers is ‘greasing a squeaky wheel is flat wrong.

4052

Doctors and health workers recieve the vaccine sooner because they are:

  1. Vastly more likely to be in contact with people who are infected.
  2. Vastly more likely to be in contact with people who are vulnerable.

Neither of these is the case for teachers.

4053

Correct, doctors are clearly higher priority. That being said, I do agree with CraigM that in terms of long term damage to society school closures are probably the most serious COVID problem. It’s important to the economy now, and it’s important to the economy and society in the longer term. Asking teachers to ignore all the social distancing and masking rules (because little kids can’t do either for shit) is tough to swallow. I completely support bumping teachers up the vaccination lists ahead of where they should be by age range.

4054

Right, the problem is the point at which vaccinations have sufficiently reduced risk such that it makes sense to reopen schools comes way before the point at which your vaccination program has progressed far enough that vaccinating teachers is warranted.

4055

That would be correct if teachers were robots trained in statistics. The problem is they aren’t. They are people. And the school districts in many parts of the country are getting a lot of pushback from scared teachers.

I don’t disagree with your argument that in a perfect world we prevent the maximum deaths by just going down the age range groups. Since we don’t live in a perfect world and have to manage a society peopled by humans who can be quite irrational and emotional actors, it’s worth prioritizing teachers ahead of their age range in order to restore our educational systems to full function. Just telling a bunch of 25-35 year old elementary teachers to go back to teaching normally and don’t worry the risk is much reduced because the old people have vaccine isn’t going to cut it.

4056

More than anything vaccinating teachers is showing them their social worth.

There’s also the problem that many of the areas of the country pushing teachers to go back to school were already areas that were “COVID skeptical” and so there is this political element to it, Red vs Blue, science vs. mah feelings. Obviously though, not everywhere and in every circumstance, but certainly as a teacher you can’t tell from the chaos of last year if pushing them to return to teaching is because of scientific consensus or if it’s just a bunch of COVID deniers wanting to get things back to normal and damn the consequences and thereby the people such decisions affect.

4057

CDC recommends vaccinations for teachers in group 1B:

Phase 1b

  • Frontline essential workers such as fire fighters, police officers, corrections officers, food and agricultural workers, United States Postal Service workers, manufacturing workers, grocery store workers, public transit workers, and those who work in the educational sector (teachers, support staff, and daycare workers.)
  • People aged 75 years and older because they are at high risk of hospitalization, illness, and death from COVID-19. People aged 75 years and older who are also residents of long-term care facilities should be offered vaccination in Phase 1a.

That is to say, immediately after nursing home residents and front-line medical workers, and in the same class as people aged 75 or older. Is any state including teachers in that group?

4058

NY does, several teachers I know (both public and private schools) in our district have been vaccinated already.

Covid act now has state by state vaccine eligibility info, bit you have to spot check each individually. CA and NY have teachers listed, several others I checked don’t.

4059

That’s helpful, thanks.

It’s pretty clear that the risk to ‘first responders’ (cops and firemen) is no greater than the risk to teachers, but that the former are in the priority scheme largely for political purposes. I guess teachers should be, too.

4060

We’re doing teachers and childcare workers now, ahead of 1b so basically alongside the tail end of 1a. The governor is getting some heavy criticism over it.

The thing is… no matter what choice is made, someone will be unhappy and feel like others are jumping the line… but there is logic for why they are doing it for these groups. When it comes to a line, someone will always be last.

4061

Exactly. Teachers should be prioritized in the same way. Placing them in the group behind doctors and nurses is correct. I know Oregon has started vaccinating teachers recently based on this. Because:

Because asking teachers to return prior to receiving a vaccine as @Aceris is, frankly, bullshit. Because if we are asking teachers and students to return to schools, which has strong social value that needs to be balanced against the COVID risks, then we need to be willing to ensure the safety of those we are asking to bear the burden of those risks most. It is unreasonable to ask the teachers to increase their risk without compensating them for it.

To put it bluntly, I think the CDC grouping guidelines are a reasonable listing that does a decent job of weighing the multiple factors, including personal risk and maximizing lives protected. Because if a 35 year old firefighter, who by nature of their job requires to be in at least decent health, is first in line for the vaccine (and I think they should be), then having teachers behind them and nursing home residents is not only reasonable, but socially desirable.

4062

Arizona, of all places, has. My friends teaching there have already had both doses.

4063

All things considered, when you look at the net impact, Oregon has done pretty well. Not to say everything has been perfect, but the governor has done as reasonable a job listening to experts and doctors and making choices based on that. Certainly room for disagreement in places, but the high level has been pretty good. And it shows, Oregon has one of the lowest mortality rates, beaten only by literal islands, arctic tundra’s, and places like Maine where like 50 people live.

So I give the benefit of the doubt, especially if there is a reasonable logic behind a decision. In this case there is a defensible position, kids in school is a net social good, and past actions indicate she is making a choice which is including input from doctors. So when that change came out I was for it.

I might be more skeptical if, for example, Ron Desantis was our governor who has not acted in this manner. In that case such a move would, probably correctly, be interpreted as not based on some higher principle or considered compromise, but rather purely ideological in purpose.

4064

This feels like this tail end of the conversation should be in one of our vaccine topics, but…

I stood in line for about 30 minutes or so at the pharmacy for a prescription that I’d delayed getting until my limited shopping plans, and I watch this gentle man that had to be at least in his seventies get gently pulled back in place by his probably equally aged wife as she tried to keep him within their six foot marker. She gently repeated to him to stay near here so I could move up to the next spot and let others go by. He looked so… frail. This is the group that isn’t being vaccinated in Oregon yet but so many other states are doing them. This is also the group that is being described as not having to go out as often as those working, or wanting to go to school, or teaching, but there they were in line waiting for a prescription and only able to get 2 because the third one was an hour behind the other 2 because the pharmacy only had 3 people on the weekends. So they have to come out again and stand in line again to get one prescription, and they were so disappointed.

So yeah that’s a high risk group, and I understand why they and their family and friends are disappointed they got jumped, essentially, by people who want the kids in schools. I don’t know that I agree with that decision, but at least I understand it. The odds say this group is doing their senior hours and being cautious and trying to basically stay alive with limited exposure while the the essential workers and the kids… they aren’t as at risk but they are more likely to spread it.

I don’t know there is one right choice, but there are logical ones, and no matter the choice, we just have to keep giving those vaccines out until every single person who will take it gets it… as fast as we can.

4065

Sadly because our distribution system is so ad hoc and our response to the pandemic evolved on a basically hospital by hospital and county by county level, it’s probably best to just dump vaccines in the hands of municipalities or agencies that want them and let them just vaccinate whoever is readily at hand. It probably isn’t a better idea to save all the vaccines for a couple of months while you go through the 1a and 1b lists with a fine toothed comb, making sure nobody skips the line and that every effort has been made to get all the seniors and health care workers first and only.

If the vaccines are being made faster than they’re being used than the system isn’t working. It would be a totally different equation if the vaccines were rare, expensive, and hard to replenish.

4066

They’re not really fine combing these lists, but Oregon, as a state, read governor, made a conscious decision to put teachers and childcare workers ahead of the older groups. I don’t know that any other state is doing that. I think other states are doing 65+ and teachers, but that’s not what we did. Those groups are still coming though. I think 75+ hit on 2/15. All the events I am aware of are now targeting second shots though, not the 1st dose due to delays of vaccines from the storms East and South of us.

I think everyone is doing what they can. CA is moving away from provider by provider approach to a Blue Shield My Turn state wide approach. This could be problematic but again, it’s understood why they are trying to do it that way.

4067

There have been two cops die of covid here. I think they are a high risk group based on their job, based on the variety and numbers of people they may interact with, but I don’t share that feeling with firemen. If I was teaching older kids I sure would want to have been vaccinated.

4068

We aren’t asking teacher to take on any additional risk by returning to school. We now have empirical evidence that within school transmission is very low. Much lower than the community spread at large, so if anything we are decreasing of the risk teachers getting Covid by asking them to return to school.

It is also clear to me that science and statistic aren’t going to be a big in changing peoples minds, seemly even on the forum. It seems pretty obvious that for the reminder of the year, most parents, and some teacher want to return to in persons. But many teachers and some parents want to continue with virtual instruction. Schools should accommodate both. For example if the school had 100 students and 4 teachers/per grade level, than one teacher should teach 40 kids virtually, with help from teacher aids as needed, and the other 3 teaching smaller 20 student classroom. If it is necessary to bribe some teachers to do in person instruction by offering them vaccine, well so be it. But we shouldn’t be prioritizing teachers above 1C.