When will this shit end?

[DeanoL]

Just now, Barry Fish said:

I think you are wrong.  The science and maths says Teachers are no more at risk than other professions.  Everything else from that point is just white noise....

Does it? I can't see how a teacher who will have 100s of contacts with children (who are a transmission vector) can be at the same risk as me, who works from home and has 0 contacts in my job.

[hodgey123]

6 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

I don't think it's that. It's what can be done easily without slowing things down. The vaccination is an NHS operation. So therefore they have all your NHS data, so it's really easy to just look up anything related to your health and prioritise based on that.

The NHS doesn't know your occupation. Or they might have that data, but it might be out of date. Is there an easily accessible database of every teacher that we can easily match into the NHS data, even if we wanted to?

It's not going to work if we do it on the honour system - you can get the jab if you say that you're a teacher or supermarket worker? It'd be massively abused. But the time it would take to actually have a system that can verify a teacher is really a teacher just wouldn't be done in time for when they'd get to these people naturally anyway.

The teaching unions were far, far too slow on this, to be frank. What they should have done is said six months ago, we're going to assemble this verified data of all teachers in the UK, took on the work themselves, done the verification work themselves and also collected NHS numbers for all those people. Then now they could be saying "here's the data, you can add it in and now prioritise teachers".

(And when they were doing that, loads of people would have complained about the privacy implications)

There's no question that vaccinating certain groups ahead of others would be beneficial. It's just wasn't beneficial enough to be worth doing all the work months ago, and it's too late now.

(As a side point, if we did have some sort of national ID card that recorded people's occupation then we could do it - but I don't think that really justifies it).

Great overview and one I will use to justify why I argued teachers should not be prioritised to my mate (who is a 27-year old teacher).

[balthazarstarbuck]

By the time you establish who a key worker is and who isn’t (which is subjective as hell anyway), administer it and set it out, you could have rolled it out in to everyone anyway. Age is a blunt instrument, and I’d understand objections if it meant a delay of months, but we’re talking a difference of weeks. Seems best to carry on proceeding this way.

[Euphoricape]

14 minutes ago, Barry Fish said:

You sound like you are in exactly same situation as me and my Mrs...

Does she teach Primary or Secondary ?
 

There isn't anyway you can let her have yours by the way.  

She teaches infants, 4 to 5 year olds. Obviously masks and social distancing etc is impossible with that age group. 

[Mellotr0n]

10 minutes ago, Barry Fish said:

And its not just teachers - it the whole system and how far do you go...

Bus drivers who are contracted to bring the kids to school ?  What about them ? etc etc

Quite - ridiculously, I am considered a key worker under Government definitions. I work in Financial Services. I do not need the vaccine before it's my turn age-wise.

[st dan]

On a somewhat related note, nursery nurses deserve great credit throughout all of this. They really have been lambs to the slaughter - can’t wear PPE, very close contact with kids, staying open throughout the year. All this whilst being a low paying profession. 
More or less every staff member at my sons nursery has now had Covid, and some of the older members have been in a bad way with it. We can’t thank them enough as we couldn’t have survived this year without them. 

[JoeyT]

 

[steviewevie]

Poland raising upper age limit for AZ vaccine to 69.

[steviewevie]

 

[Ozanne]

15 minutes ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

Excellent news! Great feeling isn't it?

Thanks! Yeah it is, she’s very happy too!

[balthazarstarbuck]

6 minutes ago, Barry Fish said:

Well that makes no sense...  Why 69 ? 

Because regulators like childish humour too one would imagine.

[Punksnotdead]

6 minutes ago, Barry Fish said:

Well that makes no sense...  Why 69 ? 

Because it's great.......oh wait, you mean age? 😄

[efcfanwirral]

15 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

 

forgetting the arguments over its one dose or any data so far - how come they haven't applied for approval here yet, but have done everywhere else (and are being approved)? 

[steviewevie]

1 minute ago, efcfanwirral said:

forgetting the arguments over its one dose or any data so far - how come they haven't applied for approval here yet, but have done everywhere else (and are being approved)? 

maybe won't be same demand here as we appear to have shitloads?

[Mr.Tease]

53 minutes ago, fraybentos1 said:

''Professor Wei Shen Lim of JCVI says structuring the programme around occupation would be very difficult, could slow down the roll out and would probably only give anyone a jab about a week earlier.''

Seems to not really make much difference. I trust the JCVI a lot and think they will have got it spot on.

I get the reasoning, though maybe prioritising uni students might have been a good idea (mainly due to them splitting time between uni and home, and while at uni live in accommodation that's  cramped and more likely to spread the virus) 

[steviewevie]

6 minutes ago, Mr.Tease said:

I get the reasoning, though maybe prioritising uni students might have been a good idea (mainly due to them splitting time between uni and home, and while at uni live in accommodation that's  cramped and more likely to spread the virus) 

but hardly any of them get severly ill compared to those aged 40-49

[Fuzzy Afro]

42 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Does it? I can't see how a teacher who will have 100s of contacts with children (who are a transmission vector) can be at the same risk as me, who works from home and has 0 contacts in my job.

It’s not about the probability of catching the virus, it’s about the likely outcome if you do. Risk increases exponentially with age. You might have a 45 year old who works from home, drives to Tesco once a week etc versus a 22 year old teacher who uses the tube every day and is teaching a class full of pre teens. 
 

Sure, the latter is FAR more likely to catch covid. But if she does, she’s highly unlikely to require medical attention at all let alone hospital treatment. The 45 year olds is less likely to catch the virus, but if they do then there is a much higher risk of hospitalisation (albeit still low compared to this in the top 9 groups)

 

Remember that teachers aren’t being artificially pushed down the list. A very significant percentage of teachers will already have been vaccinated in groups 1-9, either due to being over 50 or due to having an underlying health condition that makes them a higher risk. Another significant percentage are in their 40’s, so would among the first to get vaccinated after group 9 regardless of whether age or occupation was used.

 

So that leaves teachers in their 20’s and 30’s without underlying health problems. Yes there’s a high risk of them catching the virus but the data overwhelmingly shows that it’s likely to be unserious in these people. The JCVI’s purpose is to prevent serious illness and death and they’ll have done modelling to prove why age is the best metric. 

[efcfanwirral]

13 minutes ago, Barry Fish said:

I think its down to contracts...  We have 30 million on order for a July arrival so they won't probably go for approval until April / May / June I would guess.

ah makes sense - focus their energy on the documents for the countries they'll deliver to first

[zahidf]

We aren't vaccinating to stop spread but to prevent deaths. In that sense, frontline health workers and doing it by Age/health conditions is the best way to do it

[DeanoL]

40 minutes ago, Barry Fish said:

I think it is more sensibly comparing it to other office / shop environments.

Well yeah, I'd argue if we were to prioritise teachers we should be prioritising supermarket workers also. I can't see the argument for doing one and not the other.

[Mr.Tease]

13 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

but hardly any of them get severly ill compared to those aged 40-49

Yep, but in terms of spreading variants to other regions and households, they're probably high risk.

[JoeyT]

 

[Zoo Music Girl]

Boring question re SJA volunteering for those in the know @rascalpete @Leyrulion 

I managed to apply for a couple of shifts! But am now wondering if you hear anything if you get rejected or is it only if you get accepted? One of the shifts I volunteered for is no longer showing up on the app and I haven't had it confirmed, so does that mean I didn't get it? Also how long did it take for you to get them confirmed? Applied for four on Wednesday and three still show up as the green "Volunteered" label but no confirmation. 

I wouldn't mind but I've been offered paid work I could take on those days but would rather volunteer if they want me. Just wondering how long to wait!

Also does it matter that I'm registered in West London but applied for shifts in the East London region? They're actually about as close to me as the West London locations, transport wise, but none of those have shifts coming up.

[Toilet Duck]

1 hour ago, Barry Fish said:

Yup - but at the same time we are talking about repository droplets being breathed out by children that are very small.  Also the viral load coming out of such young children at the very worse can only be very low.  Children don't get ill from this because the virus can not latch its spike protein.  So children are going to have a similar "vaccine" effect that we are now seeing in vaccinated adults (much reduced spread).

My wife who is at secondary dealing with a lot of adult sized kids is at far more risk.  Yet she is also quite relaxed in understanding she is 39 - in good health and needs to keep her shit together and not teach in fear.  

I think we all need to calm down to an extent.  In the end the science and experts do tell us Teachers are not at increased risk.

Kids also appear to mount a different immune response when they do actually get infected (using non-specific, innate anti-viral immunity), which is currently the best explanation for why they predominantly only experience asymptomatic or mild disease...even kids that were PCR-negative but had household exposure switched on a strong innate immune response to protect themselves (this is a pretty amazing finding!)...still more work to do to fully characterise what is going on, but we learn more and more all the time!

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21414-x

[rascalpete]

20 minutes ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

Boring question re SJA volunteering for those in the know @rascalpete @Leyrulion 

I managed to apply for a couple of shifts! But am now wondering if you hear anything if you get rejected or is it only if you get accepted? One of the shifts I volunteered for is no longer showing up on the app and I haven't had it confirmed, so does that mean I didn't get it? Also how long did it take for you to get them confirmed? Applied for four on Wednesday and three still show up as the green "Volunteered" label but no confirmation. 

I wouldn't mind but I've been offered paid work I could take on those days but would rather volunteer if they want me. Just wondering how long to wait!

Also does it matter that I'm registered in West London but applied for shifts in the East London region? They're actually about as close to me as the West London locations, transport wise, but none of those have shifts coming up.

Hey, I doubt it will matter I think you can volunteer in any of the sites but I’m not sure. I didn’t get auto confirmation until the following day after but I thought it was strange I didn’t get instant confirmation so emailed the resourcing team a couple hours after who confirmed I was booked in the shift, I think the resource teams email addresses are in the GRS initial email. The north one was pretty responsive, hope this helps