Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Gaz]

3 minutes ago, Steven W said:

2 - Seems to me the teachers union are enjoying being off just now. Doesn't seem to be any appetite for going back from them and offering no solutions on how to overcome this.

I'm the EIS rep at my school, so have a bit of knowledge on this. Two things:

1) No, we're not. I myself am having to juggle the equivalent of working a full-time job, under circumstances quite different and quite more difficult than what I've been trained for, whilst caring for my own three children. I don't know any teachers who are enjoying being off. I would far rather be back at school, as would my colleagues both in school and within my union.

2) That's just not true. There is plenty appetite for going back. What there isn't appetite for is going back under a 'business as usual' model. Just this morning we canvassed all staff to ask for their opinions on how going back could be best managed and what precautions could be taken.

Please don't fall for the spin that teachers are enjoying being at home right now. We're not. We're trained to teach kids, and that's what we want to be doing.

[Granny Danger]

3 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

I have a friend who is a teacher. He's fairly confident the union won't allow a return in Scotland before the end of the summer holidays, as well as demanding extra pay if teachers are asked to come in to schools over the holidays

Now you’re at it!

[Gaz]

Just now, Steven W said:

Good grief. Now is surely not the time to be demanding extra pay. I thought we were all in this together?

(Does this hint at there's a train of thought that the schools might possibly return early?)

Why wouldn't we demand extra pay if we are forced to come in over the school holidays?

Do you work for free for your employer?

[superbigal]

Well, the 'guidance' now is to wear masks in certain circumstances.
Just to recap somewhat....
On 12 th March, the government decided against tracking and tracing. They'd been asleep
at the wheel, and it was too late for that.  In addition, there ideology had spent years chipping away at, and privatising
public services, so there were no resources immediately available to them anyway.
Me ? As soon as the lockdown was announced, I looked at what I had.
My hobby is messing around with cars, so I had some disposable gloves that mechanics use. Typically these
cost £5 at most, for a box of 50 pairs. I also had a couple of face masks that I use, with protective glasses, when
I'm scraping around under a car. 
So  I had some kit , and wore them for shopping right from the get go.
Couple of weeks in, time to get some more. 
With health workers crying out for PPE, where to find some ?
Only place I could see was eBay.  
Ordered a pack of 10 masks from an eBay seller that seemed to have better feedback rating than others.
That's the light blue coloured ones that you see around. Price £11.45. 
8 days later the gloves arrived. Package fitted in 'Large Letter' envelope,
so postage relatively small.  The 'real' price' of these masks in normal circumstances, retail, I'd guestimate to be about £2, £3 max.
The first one I tried , the elastic earband separated from the main mask as I put it on.
Gloves....   The best I could find on eBay was a box of 50 pairs.  £11.99.
Gloves arrived within 3 or 4 days. Quality OK.  I go for Nitrile gloves, non allergenic.
 
My question is...., if guidance now is to wear masks, are we supposed to buy everything
from eBay profiteers ?    Where are we supposed to obtain the things ?

Look for my previous post on this thread very early About ebay profiteering.
As a buyer you hold all the cards and dubious sellers can be easily made to refund. That's all I'm saying.

[madwullie]

13 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

At least you agree it's ineffective

Only if you think it wouldn't have spread more with no lockdown. Effective isn't black or white. But of course you know what I meant 

Edited May 12, 2020 by madwullie

[Thereisalight..]

47 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

It's only 80% if your employer agrees to contribute to bring it up to that amount, govt will not be paying 80% beyond July.

There seems to be mixed messages in regards to that (there’s a surprise). 

Edited May 12, 2020 by Thereisalight..

[pandarilla]

Good grief. Now is surely not the time to be demanding extra pay. I thought we were all in this together?
(Does this hint at there's a train of thought that the schools might possibly return early?)

As gaz mentioned, this wasn't extra pay - this was just pay.

We get a long summer holiday because the job is pretty stressful, and I'd you want kids taught in an effective way, then you want to try and minimise the stress of teachers.

Councils are going to keep hubs open over the holiday. But they'll pay the cheapest workers to do this (after school club staff, support staff etc).

[Crùbag]

 

[ayrmad]

30 minutes ago, Honest_Man#1 said:

Are you seriously suggesting that if we had not gone into lockdown then excess deaths would be the same as they are now?

Starting to?

Like J Cole earlier, he has posted some stuff with merit, might just be reverting to the mean now. 

[Todd_is_God]

11 minutes ago, mizfit said:

There’s zero point in schools going back now. How it’s even being discussed is beyond me.

Someone on twitter essentially boiled it down to them wanting a break from looking after their kids. Now I get that, but that isn't really the primary point of a school.

Even if kids did go back, they'd be back for about 3 weeks before summer.

Trying to get in to any sort of routine and useful learning in that time would be a struggle.

I remember when I was at school. Once it hit June you were counting down the days till summer

Edited May 12, 2020 by Todd_is_God

[Steven W]

8 minutes ago, Gaz said:

I'm the EIS rep at my school, so have a bit of knowledge on this. Two things:

1) No, we're not. I myself am having to juggle the equivalent of working a full-time job, under circumstances quite different and quite more difficult than what I've been trained for, whilst caring for my own three children. I don't know any teachers who are enjoying being off. I would far rather be back at school, as would my colleagues both in school and within my union.

2) That's just not true. There is plenty appetite for going back. What there isn't appetite for is going back under a 'business as usual' model. Just this morning we canvassed all staff to ask for their opinions on how going back could be best managed and what precautions could be taken.

Please don't fall for the spin that teachers are enjoying being at home right now. We're not. We're trained to teach kids, and that's what we want to be doing.

I'm glad to hear there's an appetite for getting them back ASAP. Thats good news.

Obviously when they do go back things will need to be a bit different. Do you know if any head teachers / teachers have been back into school to look at ways of implementing change?

[Crùbag]

3 minutes ago, pandarilla said:

As gaz mentioned, this wasn't extra pay - this was just pay.

We get a long summer holiday because the job is pretty stressful, and I'd you want kids taught in an effective way, then you want to try and minimise the stress of teachers.

Councils are going to keep hubs open over the holiday. But they'll pay the cheapest workers to do this (after school club staff, support staff etc).
 

Agree. Teachers work long, long hours and are paid for a 35-hr week. Most exceed that. Knew an older teacher a few years ago who calculated that she'd worked a 54-week year given the extra hours she worked during term-time and to some extent during holidays.

Teachers, nurses, care workers, refuse collecters, postal workers all deserve more.

[Honest_Man#1]

30 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

Yes

Christ.

19 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

At least you agree it's ineffective

So a lockdown is only effective if it leads to 0 deaths then? I think you must be intentionally being dense now to troll.

[RiG]

9 minutes ago, Thereisalight.. said:

There seems to be mixed messages in regards to that (there’s a surprise). 

It's as things stand until the end of July (80% of wages up to £2,500 covered by Government) but after that there will likely be changes. Sunak has said that they will look for employers to make some kind of contribution.

 

Edited May 12, 2020 by RiG

[Gaz]

Just now, Steven W said:

I'm glad to hear there's an appetite for getting them back ASAP. Thats good news.

Obviously when they do go back things will need to be a bit different. Do you know if any head teachers / teachers have been back into school to look at ways of implementing change?

We've been in and out of school as much as is safely possible. We've been measuring up rooms to see how many pupils can fit in at any one time if the 2m social distancing is still to apply. There are various conversations happening both at local and national level.

I would again urge you to refrain from falling for the propaganda that this is an easy time for teachers who are enjoying being sat at home. It's quite the opposite, certainly for all the teachers I know across different schools and local authorities.

[NotThePars]

Respect those that aren't even allowing a deadly pandemic to stop them having a pop at those feckless lazy teachers!

[Todd_is_God]

14 minutes ago, Honest_Man#1 said:

So a lockdown is only effective if it leads to 0 deaths then? I think you must be intentionally being dense now to troll.

No, that's not what I said.

Having x amount of deaths spread out over a longer period of time is no more indicative of a lockdown's effectiveness than the same amount of deaths over a shorter period. It's not unfeasible that, having started down the herd immunity path, the UK would have seen a higher, sharper peak, with a similar overall death toll at the end.

That the virus in the UK is still infecting as many people per day as it was at the start of April is not a glowing review of its effectiveness.

It's clear that lockdowns work, look at Germany, NZ, France, Italy, Spain etc but they work when they are implemented early or, if you are late in doing so, are fairly strict.

The UKs lockdown was too late and too soft. Im terms of limiting the spread or fatalities the likelihood is it did very little.

Edited May 12, 2020 by Todd_is_God

[bendan]

48 minutes ago, renton said:

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/when-will-it-be-over-an-introduction-to-viral-reproduction-numbers-r0-and-re/

Based on that definition: 

The denser the population, the more people are susceptible, and the more infective the virus, the larger R₀ will be for a given virus; the faster the rate of removal of infected individuals, by recovery or death, the smaller R₀ will be

That suggests that the removal rate of infected individuals matters. So as number of vectors in the population decrease, so should the R0 value. 

I think you are misunderstanding this. Removal refers to a single individual becoming no longer infectious, either through recovery or death. R0 is the rate of reproduction for a single infectious case. If that individual recovers quickly, or dies quickly, then all other things being equal, fewer secondary infections will take place. The number of people recovering doesn't make any difference to R0 other than to reduce the size of the susceptible population. We're nowhere near herd immunity, so that's pretty irrelevant right now.

[D.A.F.C]

No, that's not what I said.
Having x amount of deaths spread out over a longer period of time is no more indicative of a lockdown's effectiveness than the same amount of deaths over a shorter period.
That the virus in the UK is still infecting as many people per day as it was at the start of April is not a glowing review of its effectiveness.
It's clear that lockdowns work, look at Germany, NZ, France, Italy, Spain etc but they work when they are implemented early or, if you are late in doing so, are fairly strict.
The UKs lockdown was too late and too soft. Im terms of limiting the spread or fatalities the likliehood is it did very little.

To allow major events when they did was crazy. Especially when you had italy literally screaming at us saying not to do it.

[SlipperyP]

28 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

Do you?

I don't know why that's specifically important.

The failure of the government to ensure NHS staff are supplied with adequate PPE is not reason alone for a lockdown

I'll take that as a no.  

Sit doon, shut up, had your chance.