It’s been known since early in the pandemic that children’s risk of death from COVID-19 is extremely low. However, proponents of school closures have long argued that keeping schools open would put teachers at significant risk.
Back in January, six teaching unions urged the Government to “pause” school reopenings. They argued that returning pupils to classrooms while the virus was still spreading would expose education workers to “serious risk of ill-health”.
However, figures published by the ONS later that month cast serious doubt on the unions’ claims. Between March and December of 2020, the COVID-19 death rate among education workers – adjusted for age and sex – was “significantly lower” than that among the general population.
The highest death rates were observed among taxi drivers, machine operators, security guards, restaurant workers, and social care staff – i.e., in working class professions.
One potential criticism of the ONS report is that the researchers took an average over ten months, and schools were closed for much of that time. Perhaps the risk for teachers would have been much higher if schools had stayed open?
A new study published in The BMJ confirms that Scottish teachers were not at elevated risk of severe COVID-19 even when schools were open.
The authors analysed a large dataset comprising all the confirmed cases in Scotland up to June 2021, as well as a large sample of controls matched for age, sex and location. This dataset included over 25,000 teaching staff.
The authors’ main finding is shown in the figure below. Periods of interest are the autumn term of 2020 and the summer term of 2021, since this is when schools were open. In both periods, teachers’ risk of hospitalisation was not significantly higher than that of the general population.
The authors also estimated more complex models that controlled for a range of demographic characteristics, and confirmed there was no significant difference between teachers and the general population during the periods when schools were open.
This is consistent with the Swedish study which found that keeping primary and lower-secondary schools open had little impact on the spread of COVID-19.
One could reasonably argue that in-person teaching qualifies as an ‘essential’ service, especially if we’re talking about younger children. Given that teachers were at no greater risk than the general population, the unions’ case against in-person teaching falls apart.
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I would first look at this statement :
” … the rates seen in professional occupations (17.6 deaths per 100,000 males; 12.8 deaths per 100,000 females) …”
… and note the f.ing obvious wider implication : mortality from Covid is incredibly rare!
On occupations that have higher rates, the key factor would seem to be the higher number of random contacts that are made in those jobs.
… and note the obvious caveat implied here :
Yes, the fact that this ‘pandemic’ never was one, and was not an epidemic since May 2020 is deliberately ignored. Now every decision taken , just about everywhere, is about covering up the awful policy decisions. Fundamentally the reduction of control groups wherever and whenever possible.
The ‘prize’ of digital health IDs will never be removed, they will go slower and then quicker depending on opportunities, but they will make sure they are here to stay.
Also, it’s pretty well been proven (if rarely reported) that most infections come from close personal contacts at home not at work or in public places.
And of course hospitals and care homes.
My memory is that at the start lorry drivers came up as high risk too, and some other sitting down jobs with little public contact – maybe risk factors for obesity or diabetes.
This was known a year ago.
The “risk” posed by COVID 19 to healthy children and young people was actually known by the first or second months of the pandemic. Forty five days of hospitalization data around the world was plenty of time for any observer to make the following observation: “You know, virtually all of these patients are very old and/or have serious pre-existing conditions. We are not seeing children hospitalized.”
Still, the experts cancelled school and extracurricular activities for children, including the option of playing outdoors on a playground.
Takeaway: It was taboo (not allowed) to state what was obvious – what all the data quickly revealed. When experts (and journalists) will not state what’s obvious to all, we live in scary times.
If we’re going to have remote learning, let’s outsource it to Indian teachers on Zoom, who will do it for a quarter or a third of the cost to the UK taxpayer.
Do any racist UK based teachers have any racist objections to make in a racist manner?
We’ve done this for some out of school tutoring in a foreign language. It has actually been working quite well.
Perhaps. But, of course, learning as a whole is a social activity, and remote learning only desirable in certain limited and specific contexts. Otherwise, it’s an impoverished activity.
Very true- my wife finds even work training simply doesn’t work over Zoom. Everyone says it does, but it doesn’t, so she told them to do one and they honestly don’t know how to react- everyone else has gone along with it…it’s like, ‘does not compute- don’t know which programme to run…’ Don’t know if it’s really funny or really sad.
I’ve long heard anecdotally that teachers get less colds than everyone else because their immune system is constantly exposed to minor pathogens and is therefore in fit fighting shape. The precise formulation of the statement is something like primary school teachers get loads of colds in their first year of teaching and then just don’t in subsequent years.
I found this when I had children: initially, I was getting colds all the time from my first child, but this slowed down after a few months. It didn’t happen with my other children.
So, that said: has anyone done a study on this effect or is it just common knowledge without scientific basis?
Common knowledge with a scientific explanation.
I heard the same from my mother and other teachers, and also shop workers – when they start they catch everythng but soon develop immunity to most of it.
The same thing happens in Sewage Treatment Works. Workers thereat get minute doses of all sorts of nasties, often in combination. The immune system barks into action and produces all kinds of antibodies and what not.
I am now 71, I have not had and will not have these useless vaccines since I used to work at a Sewage Treatment Works and I am convinced that I have acquired an immunity to this disease or virus. Anyway I am still here having ignored, as far as possible, all the worthless advice from the Health and Safety fascists. A pox on them, a pox and a murrain say I. It would be nice to put that into Classical Greek using the Optative as a wish for the future.
The same I believe is true of farmers.
If you ignore the compulsary face masks, and the freezing cold ‘ventilation’, this is one thing the French did better than the UK. They made sure from day one that the Teacher’s Unions knew that in this case ‘solidarity’ meant going to work so the parents of the kids could also go to work, oh and incidentally the kids could get taught.
There is no surprise here. However, teachers, and their unions, continue to play the ‘we are key workers, aren’t we important’ card when, in fact, most of them, including 2 family members, had extended holidays last year.
I’m a secondary school teacher, never ill, and when I had covid in August – whatever that means – it presented as a minor cold that lasted for four days. I feel like disowning my profession when I read (and hear) such histrionics.
In relation to my post above, do you think that in your experience that teachers get less colds than office workers?
After 10 years of teaching, yes. I taught for over 30 years. The first 10 I basically caught everything. After that, I went 16 years without a day off for illness. Probably because I’d already had everything possible (including chickenpox) in the first 10 years or so.
Yes – I don’t think this syndrome is a myth – it’s pretty well established, and makes scientific sense.
I was once an office worker and remember a number of ‘doozies’; in 13 years of teachers I’ve barely had a cold! Schools are full of bugs, so we all (and the kids) have strong immune systems I think.
There is actually a massive epidemiological study that has now lasted 19 month that tests the hypothesis that school is dangerous to students and their teachers. This scientific study is “real life” in the nation of Sweden.
School (for K through 10th grade) never closed in Sweden. Students have never been told they have to wear masks, and in fact, do not wear masks while at school. Nor are they told that they have to socially distance. In the academic year of 2019-2020 (through June 2020), zero Swedish school children died of COVID. Only 15 students were hospitalized in ICU from or with COVID. Teachers and staff also had no greater rate of contracting the disease than any other profession in Sweden.
Basically, for more than a year and a half, parents in Sweden have been sending close to 2 million school children to school or day care five days a week with zero concern that this will result in the death of their loved ones. Why would these parents do this if they had reason to believe this act jeopardized the health of their children?
We do not need an official “medical study” to prove that COVID poses no risks to healthy school children. Or that wearing masks results in fewer cases or hospitalizations. This study has already been done. And it’s a study with 2 million participants that has now lasted 18+ months. “Studies” don’t get any better than this.
Oh how I would so love to send this to the headteacher of my child’s primary school… However, with the kids only being back a few weeks and already I’ve clocked up a few run ins (ongoing online homework, still no face to face parents evening, staggered class start times and playtimes, still strict facemasks policy in the playground, which I blatantly ignore, still no parents allowed in the school building, no extra curricular activities, no assembly) I am skating on thin ice with her now..
Keep up the good work. I’m saying this as a teacher
It’s like talking to speak your weight machine with these people isn’t it?
What thin ice? What could she do? Keep them off school. It’s a dangerous and very unpleasant place to be from the sound of it, where they might just be peer pressured/bullied into deciding for themselves to get jib-jabbed.
The environment in schools has to mean they are no longer a good place for learning or socializing.
What thin ice? What could she do? Keep them off school. It’s a dangerous place to be where they might just be peer pressured/bullied into deciding for themselves to get jib-jabbed.
The environment in schools has to mean they are no longer a good place for learning.
Government sponsored studies last autumn discovered that child-child transmission was negligible, child-teacher transmission was very low, teacher-child transmission was low and teacher-teacher transmission was high.
But that wasn’t what gov wanted to hear, so it wasn’t publicised much.
So what? Does anybody think the teaching unions care about kids? They are whiny, privileged trouble makers who have never set foot in the real world and who think the world owes them something. It doesn’t.
And appointing Zahawi as Education (Indoctrination?) Minister in England is like putting Mengele in charge of British Gas! I despair.