Schools closed until February? (part 3)

meeeeh wrote: »

You are comparing peaches with apples

Lol, if listen to you then everybody in this thread are comparing incomparable

Lillyfae wrote: »

Unless the principal is reporting everything back to him every single day, which seems unlikely, he knows little more than gossip. He doesn't know what things are like "on the ground", because he hasn't actually been there during all this.

Some here seem to think there is some grand scheme to wipe out teachers with Covid-19. There's no end to the fear mongering, all punctuated with "Where did I say that I want the schools to close?". Recycling studies from 6 months ago, from third world countries rife with malnutrition and limited access to potable water in order to prove some kind of point that children are harbingers of virus- to what result?

If the number of teachers who have contracted this since September is 666 that is a very low number. If that number actually goes back to March, that is outstanding. I'm delighted that your risk has been minimized by your own hard work.

Where did you get the number 666 from?

And how does that number if remotely accurate become outstanding if you go back to March?

Boggles wrote: »

It's a nonsense stat that tells us noting.

Plumbers are .25% the national average.

Teachers are 4 times more likely than plumbers to contract Covid.

That's nonsense as well by the way.

https://www.independent.ie/world-news/coronavirus/revealed-health-staff-teachers-and-students-the-breakdown-of-covid-cases-in-ireland-39833650.html

The 666 number comes from information published in the Independent yesterday.

Your stat regarding plumbers would be perfectly acceptable if plumbers make up 0.25% of the population. In that case you would say that plumbers are no more or less likely to catch coronavirus than anyone else.

Of course you could say that the 666 number does not reflect the true number of teachers infected by the virus. Maybe teachers don't want to state their profession when they go to get a test. Maybe there are more asymptomatic teachers than there are in other professions, so they don't get tested. Maybe the HSE have out and out lied to Irish Independent in order to suppress the true number. I can't see any of those scenarios actually being realistic, but I would accept them as valid arguments.

Deleted User wrote: »

It tells us teachers are less likely to have caught covid than the national average. Now it doesn't tell us why, or how it compares to other groups, but it does suggest being locked in classrooms with dozens of disease ridden snotballs has not had a massive impact on the risk they have faced compared to the average person

I dont know who you are dealing with daily but I dont refer to my students as "disease ridden snotballs" so please don't.

Boggles wrote: »

Which doesn't really tell us much.

Again it depends on the variables. If you are going to list by profession you have to compare with profession.

If it is since schools open, that is 7+ teachers a day getting infected.

It is since the first infection in March.

It's very difficult to find a comparable profession: i.e. an industry where the employees did not attend work between March and September, and from that date attended work where social distancing was not possible. There is no comparable profession.

The closest you might get is food factory workers - i.e. working in an indoor environment in close quarters with other people, albeit with masks and PPE in the part of the factory workers. But it's still very hard to compare, as food factory workers were physically at work during the first wave, so you would expect higher numbers, though maybe not hugely higher because they have PPE, the lack of which teachers have raised as increasing their risk of infection.

As it turns out about 2% of food production workers have been infected. That seems pretty similar to the number of teachers infected if you take into account that food factory workers have been physically at work over the two waves.

What teachers have done, with ventilating classrooms, avoiding the staff room, and having less hours per shift being exposed to large numbers of other people, and by sticking to the rules outside of school hours, is that they have kept their infection rate down to that of a worker who works in a similar environment but wears PPE. That's a massive achievement on their part and they should be commended for it.

byhookorbycrook is a mod on the "Primary and Preschool" forum and I have seen him refer to kids as "little asbo" a few times!

Hmmm.
If only we had proper numbers from nphet and the HSE.
The last 4 or 5 pages of this thread wouldnt have been necessary.

Deleted User wrote: »

The suggestion from the twitter thread linked was 666 cases among teachers was further evidence of huge spread in schools. Since it was pointed out that this was at a lower rate than society in general so that contention was not supported by the data there' has been a re framing of the argument that teachers were out of society between March and September. If we accept that and take it to the extreme that zero teachers caught covid before schools returned, 1% of the population have had the virus since September and 1% of teachers also. So even though they have been exposed at work everyday from September to now, while large portions of the population have been working from home, they have still not caught the virus in greater numbers than society as a whole. That counts as a success in my book. Especially when teachers no doubt did catch the virus before September

But it could be 10 / 20 times higher than most other professions, or lower?

Did it offer numbers on other school staff?

Deleted User wrote: »

I see workers in education have been place at number 11 on the list for the vaccine and schools kids at the bottom of the list. What is the view on this in the context of the school return? Genuine question.

https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/39038-provisional-vaccine-allocation-groups/

2 behind

People aged 18-64 living or working in crowded settings

5 behind

Key workers

They are just trolling the unions at this stage.

JDD wrote: »

https://www.independent.ie/world-news/coronavirus/revealed-health-staff-teachers-and-students-the-breakdown-of-covid-cases-in-ireland-39833650.html

The 666 number comes from information published in the Independent yesterday.

Can't get through the paywall.. Do they refer any particular document where they got theirs data?

I've found same on MSN, they writing:

Students 'including schoolchildren' were 3,154 or 6.2%, while teachers were 666 cases.

© HSPC Report of the profile of COVID-19 cases in healthcare workers in Ireland including 28/11/20

I see such report on HPSC site: https://www.hpsc.ie/a-z/respiratory/coronavirus/novelcoronavirus/surveillance/covid-19casesinhealthcareworkers/ - but no any teachers in it.


All of this is looking suspicious