Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

buzzfeednews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 954 posts

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

#111

Post by leetrout »

MarcScott wrote: post #101
collegecamp293 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> poorly ventilated and inadequately sized classroom

BINGO. That's what has bothered me the most and I've talked a lot to my wife about what we can do to mitigate the risk.

> Neither she nor the children are allowed to wear masks or gloves

How is that enforceable? Seems like they shouldn't be allowed to mandate no masks given the documented health risks.

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

#112

Post by Phillips126 »

MarcScott wrote: post #101
collegecamp293 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Having three young kids myself and a parent who is a teacher, I know how "gross" kids are first hand.

>Neither she nor the children are allowed to wear masks or gloves.

I understand why the children won't be wearing any PPE - my 3yo would never keep a mask on for more than 15 minutes. Why is your Wife not allowed to at minimum wear a mask?

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

#113

Post by lm28469 »

matz1 wrote: post #107
lm28469 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 caus…

> I'm saying the risk is very low. The data clearly shown that for majority of cases it either asymptotic or only mild symptom.

The data also shows that 140k Americans died (probably many more if you take into account the excess deaths that have been recorded but haven't been linked to covid yet) and many more will suffer long term side effects. The data also shows that Europeans countries almost completely curbed the epidemic and can _safely_ and _slowly_ reopen because they went through a real lock down. If anything the data clearly shows that reopening anything in the US right now is suicide for thousands of people.

This situation will be a literal text book example of how to completely fail at handling an epidemic for the centuries to come, it would be comical if it wasn't for all the preventable deaths and suffering.

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

#114

Post by [deleted] »

nickysielicki wrote: post #109
rgbrenner wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#115

Post by Wowfunhappy »

kevmo wrote: post #30

Why wouldn't a teacher quit if they possibly could? The pay is peanuts, certainly not worth any serious immediate risk to your health.

It's a lot better than no pay at all!

(Also fwiw, teacher salaries in the US do vary greatly by state. You won't make off like a bandit anywhere, but it's a perfectly respectable amount in some places.)

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

#116

Post by dragonwriter »

hhs wrote: post #86
dragonwriter wrote: post #55

One should note that the safety risks are not one sided, as the American Academy of Pediatrics has pointed out in strongly urging planning centered around means to reopen in-person schooling, there are risks to health and lives at issue with not returning to school: > the AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in…

Please note that there’s more to the story than that statement: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/07/13/trump-ad...

I'm not endorsing the simplistic and punitive Trump Administration spin that is at issue in your story, so I'm not sure what your point is.

Both the “reopen without significant investment in safety” and “stay closed” sides are both grave health risks and education failures, as the original statement itself implies and the further elaboration makes clear.

It's probably the case that, reduced to those options, “stay closed” (to in-person schooling, continuing distance learning) is best for teachers, so it's understandable that with governments refusing to offer more when it comes to reopening that’s their stance. But even when it is reduced to those two bad options, it's far less clear that that's the best for kids (especially since a lot of the private internet access subsidies from ISPs, that were given with no obligation by providers, that mitigated the inequities with distance learning have expired.)

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

#117

Post by hysan »

leetrout wrote: post #111
MarcScott wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> poorly ventilated and inadequately sized classroom BINGO. That's what has bothered me the most and I've talked a lot to my wife about what we can do to mitigate the risk. > Neither she nor the children are allowed to wear masks or gloves How is that enforceable? Seems like they shouldn't be allowed to mandate no masks given the documented health risks.

Because if they didn’t, they’d get pushback from teachers unions demanding schools provide masks (and soap, sanitizer, etc.). What most of America does not realize is how little money American schools on average spend on school supplies. Most teachers pay out of pocket for the majority of school supplies (on top of their already low pay). So as with most things that make no sense, it’s enforceable because there are people with significant sway up top that realize how much more money will be needed if they didn’t enforce it.

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

#118

Post by ceejayoz »

nickysielicki wrote: post #94
leetrout wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES! I don't want my wife sacrificed by an asymptomatic kid carrying it to class

In spite of the common idea that schools and young children are germ factories that make adults sick, there's a recent article from the American Academy of Pediatrics that shows children are very rarely the index case for COVID. It's much more likely that she would give it to them, than that they would give it to her. https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2020/07...

"Children aren't typically the family index case during lockdown" doesn't really tell us much about non-lockdown spread.

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

#119

Post by tomohawk »

In Iceland, they did extensive testing, and genetic tracing of infections.

Children infecting other children was extremely rare. In almost all cases, it was adults infecting them.

There was only a single case of a child infecting an adult.

https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/blog/hunting-down-covi...

Now that we have actual experience with the disease, hospitalization rates for children with covid is 5x lower than flu.

As pediatricians have noted, focusing only on covid risks leaves a whole host of other more serious risks with no management.

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

#120

Post by matz1 »

lm28469 wrote: post #113
matz1 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 caus…

> I'm saying the risk is very low. The data clearly shown that for majority of cases it either asymptotic or only mild symptom. The data also shows that 140k Americans died (probably many more if you take into account the excess deaths that have been recorded but haven't been linked to covid yet) and many more will suffer long term side effects. The data also shows that Europeans countries almost completely curbed th…

So only 140k died (0.04%) and with now with the death rate that is going down, its a good news, even more reason to reopen as soon as possible.
Post reply on HN