Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk • Hacker News Board

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#101

Post by MarcScott » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:54 PM UTC

collegecamp293 wrote: post #70

3pt14159 wrote: post #3

This is exactly why all the people that said "choosing to protect life is also choosing to protect the economy" were right. It sucks, but people with savings can choose to quit over having to risk their lives. So if there is an appreciable risk (and associated hazard, which, for many of our older educators there is) then that is what is going to happen and you still get the disruptions to the economy.

Why are nurses and grocery workers working then? How are they less at risk than teachers?

Medical staff get to wear PPE. As for grocery workers:

My wife's a teacher. She was back in school for a day last week, with a much smaller class of children. The first thing one of her children tried to do on seeing her was give her a hug. I doubt this happens to many grocery workers.

In September she'll spend about six hours a day in a poorly ventilated and inadequately sized classroom with 30 children. Neither she nor the children are allowed to wear masks or gloves. From the single days she has been in each week, she's watched children unable to maintain social distancing in the classroom or the playground. They cough, sneeze and wipe their noses on their hands and then touch everything. That's what kids are like.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#102

Post by TheCoelacanth » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

collegecamp293 wrote: post #70

3pt14159 wrote: post #3

This is exactly why all the people that said "choosing to protect life is also choosing to protect the economy" were right. It sucks, but people with savings can choose to quit over having to risk their lives. So if there is an appreciable risk (and associated hazard, which, for many of our older educators there is) then that is what is going to happen and you still get the disruptions to the economy.

Why are nurses and grocery workers working then? How are they less at risk than teachers?

They aren't, but they are necessary to sustain life unlike teachers.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#103

Post by lm28469 » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

koop123 wrote: post #49

adamsea wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The danger is not overblown. New teachers just don’t appear out of the woodworks, it takes time to be trained. Plus, since in the US it’s such a poorly paid and poorly respected profession (at least not respected by society; Id imagine parents appreciate teachers), where will these new teachers come from?

Are you stupid? The danger is overblown. I'm not saying covid-19 is a joke, but the media has everyone terrified and even if you want to do something, the Government has literally shut everything down.

Is it ? Afaik nobody knows the long term consequences this virus will have.

Just look at that and the dozens of other articles about related side effects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23870164

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#104

Post by leetrout » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:56 PM UTC

collegecamp293 wrote: post #87

searine wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In both those cases exposure is much different. Nurses largely have the PPE needed to deal with covid and have been trained to do so. Store workers have far less exposure than a teacher trying to wrangle 30 kids for 8 hours a day.

I would argue store workers have much higher exposure due to thousands of customers touching surfaces throughout the store everyday

Agree!

Comment I made the other day:

> What bothers me the most is that just like retail / grocery store workers we put people with the lowest earning potential and generally worst benefits directly in the path of this. I don’t want to get COVID but unless I convince my wife to quit her job my odds of getting it greatly increase due to situations out of my control.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#105

Post by searine » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

collegecamp293 wrote: post #87

searine wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In both those cases exposure is much different. Nurses largely have the PPE needed to deal with covid and have been trained to do so. Store workers have far less exposure than a teacher trying to wrangle 30 kids for 8 hours a day.

I would argue store workers have much higher exposure due to thousands of customers touching surfaces throughout the store everyday

Transmission is largely by aerosol over long periods of time, not fomites.

Store workers are relatively distant and contact with any one person is brief. With teachers, every surface is constantly touched and they spend all day with the children.

Store workers are also dealing with adults rather than children. Most adults know how to conduct themselves in a pandemic, most of them...

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#106

Post by lm28469 » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

starkd wrote: post #24

lm28469 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

idk if it's a tongue in cheek comment or what but when you sign up to work in the medical system it's kind of implied (and probably explicitly written in your work contract) that you'll encounter dangerous and unpleasant situations, much less for teachers, especially when the whole thing is unnecessary and preventable in the first place.

It's also kidn of implied that teachers signed up to work with snivelling children who spread germs. That being said, there's evidence this particular virus doesn't even spread easily among children.

> this particular virus doesn't even spread easily among children.

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-c...

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#107

Post by matz1 » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

lm28469 wrote: post #88

matz1 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No. The danger is not overblown. Ok not for you but at least for me and whole lot other people consider the risk be overblown. >New teachers just don’t appear out of the woodworks, it takes time to be trained This assume there are more teacher who are afraid than not. If there is truly lack of teacher then there are plenty of ways to urge them to work, such as giving more benefit.

> Ok not for you but at least for me and whole lot other people consider the risk be overblown. Funny to think that this is exactly the mental state that put the US at the top of the worsts countries in term of coronavirus response. Six months in and "it's just the flu bro" is still going strong, humans are weird.

I agree the US government response is really disappointing, they should have just reopen everything now.

I'm not saying that there nothing should be done regarding this virus. The vaccine research still have to continue, treatment research still have to continue, increase medical capacity(if needed) still have to be done.

What I'm against is this lockdown/restriction and this fear mongering because the damage it cause is more than the virus.

>Six months in and "it's just the flu bro" is still going strong, humans are weird

I'm not saying its just flu, I'm saying the risk of this virus is very low. The data clearly shown that for majority of cases it either asymptotic or only mild symptom.

Would there be risk of death due or long term damage to his virus ? of course, any diseases could cause that but the risk is low.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#108

Post by ceejayoz » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

collegecamp293 wrote: post #87

searine wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In both those cases exposure is much different. Nurses largely have the PPE needed to deal with covid and have been trained to do so. Store workers have far less exposure than a teacher trying to wrangle 30 kids for 8 hours a day.

I would argue store workers have much higher exposure due to thousands of customers touching surfaces throughout the store everyday

Thus far, surface transmission seems to be low. If you're not licking the payment terminal, you're likely OK in that regard.

Length of exposure to an infected person matters a lot. Spending a day in a room with an infected person is riskier than a 60 second interaction with one as you ring them up.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#109

Post by nickysielicki » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

rgbrenner wrote: post #99

nickysielicki wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 74 million children CDC says that 1.7% of COVID cases belong to children. [2] Among children, CDC says 1.8% of cases required hospitalization. [2] >>> 74000000*0.017*0.018 A dumb kid is better than a dead kid, I agree. But are 74M dumber kids worth less than 25000 ICU visits in the entire country? [1]: https://www.childtrends.org/indicators/number-of-children [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm69…

1.7% while schools are closed.

The numbers in the CDC article are up until just April 2, 2020. Two weeks prior (incubation period) puts the latest case data in mid March, prior to when the lockdown started to be rolled out.

Granted, the situation has become a lot worse since then. It's still a good glance at how the virus spread before any measures were put in place. Especially for relative figures of how COVID behaves differently across age.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#110

Post by Kapura » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

cheerlessbog wrote: post #31

Kapura wrote: post #13

My mother is an elementary school teacher, and I don't want her to go back to school this year. The federal government is worse than useless, and the state government is feckless and unwilling to make the tough calls to protect people's lives. She's been a teacher for ~15 years and still makes less than $30k a year teaching. She loves helping the kids, but her life isn't worth it.

Where does she work that pays $30k for an experienced teacher? Teacher pay sucks

She's in Colorado. The teachers' union agreed to a pay cut & freeze during the Bush financial crisis; pay had had only started to rise again a few years ago.

This is somewhat of a digression, but the extremely low rate of teacher pay (for a job that requires a Master's degree) limits the pool of available teachers greatly. The people taking these jobs typically must have some other way of supporting their family; either their spouse has a higher-paying professional job or they are the beneficiary of some other form of generational wealth.

But we tend to lose the teachers who must make ends meet their own selves on a teacher's pay. There is no good economic argument made to become an elementary school teacher.