Teachers Should Get the Vaccine Last
How to Better Prioritize Vaccination
Covid vaccines are on their way and the topic of the day is of how we should prioritize their distribution. A popular thought is to prioritize vaccinating teachers first. I'd like to offer a contrarian position on prioritizing the vaccine for teachers. They shouldn't get it first, they should get it last.
If the main purpose of prioritizing the vaccine is to save the most lives the soonest, giving it to teachers early is a waste. The vast majority of teachers are not in high risk groups and teachers tend to be younger which puts them at substantially less risk compared with workers in many other sectors.
Furthermore, schools have been shown again and again in studies all year to be one of the safest workplaces, and have not been shown to be a significant vector of spread. (Regardless of what “Sleepy Joe” says in CNN interviews) In fact, based on surveys, teachers working in in-person classes have about the same rate of incident of Covid-19 as teachers doing remote learning, basically this means teachers are catching it from the community, not from the kids they teach. And there is not a single documented case, in the world, of an elementary school child spreading the virus to a teacher who later dies from it. It just does not happen.
This brings us to the other reason given for prioritizing teachers: To take away the excuse for why we can't get the kids back in school. The fact is this is just an excuse, and there are many states throughout the country where in person schooling is happening now. This isn't a scientific problem to be solved with a vaccine, it's a political problem to be solved by bold leaders (Like “Ronny D” in Florida). Schools can and should be open now, and to acquiesce to the teachers and their unions now would create a terrible moral hazard that will undoubtedly come to haunt us in the future.
Please do not reward cowardly teachers, unions, and districts for what they have done to our children this last year. Instead, prioritize the vaccine for the doctors, nurses, police, firefighters, grocery store and factory workers, waiters, and chefs who all come into contact everyday with other adults who can give them the virus. These are the men and women who have taken risks and actually done their jobs! Then when those people all have the vaccine, we can give it to the teachers.
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