I remember how it was -- JR
UK: Teachers are NO more likely than other working age adults to be hospitalised with Covid or suffer a severe infection, study reveals
Teachers are no more likely than other working age adults to be hospitalised with Covid or suffer a severe infection, a study reveals.
The findings should 'reassure' teachers and their families as they return to class at the start of the new school year, researchers say.
The University of Glasgow scientists examined all 132,420 cases of coronavirus in 21 to 65-year-olds in Scotland from March 2020 to July 2021.
Each was compared with a sample of uninfected people of the same age and gender at the infected person's own GP practice.
Analysis revealed school teachers and others in their household were no more likely to be hospitalised with Covid or suffer a severe infection at any point during the last academic year.
This included periods when schools were fully open.
Over the year, the risk of being hospitalised with Covid was less than 1 per cent for teachers, healthcare workers and adults of working age among the general population.
Teachers were 23 per cent less likely to be admitted to hospital with Covid than other workers after adjusting for factors such as age, sex, general practice and ethnicity.
They were also 44 per cent less likely to suffer severe Covid, meaning serious enough to require admission to intensive care or dying within 28 days of a positive test.
Teachers' odds did worsen when schools were open, rising to the same level as the general working age population - but they were still half that of frontline health staff.
The scale of this rise was smaller in the summer term of 2021 than the autumn term of 2020, which is believed to be due to the success of the vaccine rollout.
The researchers concluded it was not possible to say why teachers are not at higher risk than the average working-age adult.
But they suggest it could be because teachers are generally healthier or take more care to avoid Covid than other occupations.
Ninety-two per cent of elderly adults tested positive for the Covid-fighting proteins in mid-August. This was down from a high of 95 per cent in May, according to results of a major blood-testing study.
Levels have also dipped for adults in their sixties and seventies.
Meanwhile, around eight in 10 young adults in the UK are now likely to have Covid antibodies.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) data comes amid calls for Britain to confirm its booster vaccine campaign, which ministers hoped would begin next Monday.
No10's advisers are still dithering over exactly who should be eligible — but a final decision is due imminently.
But MailOnline last week revealed the group is expected to only recommend third shots for people with severely weakened immune systems, which may only include several hundred thousand Britons.
This is despite real-world data which has already showed that vaccine efficacy can wane slightly over time.
US health chiefs last night released figures showing jabs now only cut the risk of hospitalisation by around 75 per cent against the Delta variant, compared to 95 per cent when the shots first became available — but they insisted the ability of vaccines to prevent serious disease was still high overall.
Most teachers were young, with an average age of 42, 80 per cent were women and 84 per cent had no existing conditions.
Writing in The BMJ, Dr David McAllister and colleagues said: 'In our study, most of the teachers were young, were women, and had few comorbidities and so were at low absolute risk of severe Covid and hospital admission with Covid.
'Furthermore, compared with healthcare workers and with other adults of working age who are otherwise similar, teachers showed no increased risk of hospital admission with Covid or severe Covid.
'These findings should reassure most adults engaged in in-person teaching.'
The findings come as education unions have warned that a relaxation of Covid safety measures this term could lead to rising infections in schools.
Schools in Scotland have already returned after the summer break and the reopening is believed to have contributed to a rise in cases north of the border.
Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: 'It is very good news and very reassuring that teachers have been found not to be at greater risk of hospitalisation because of Covid.
'The study cannot determine why this is the case - although the fact that teaching is generally a profession for younger people and a large majority of the profession are female, and that teachers were prompt in being vaccinated, appear to be a significant contributory factor to these positive outcomes.
'Nothing in this study, however, negates the importance of vigilance in suppressing Covid transmission in schools.'
She added: 'The NEU has consistently pointed to the issues of Covid in schools as being mainly about onward community transmission, a position belatedly adopted by the Prime Minister in January when he described schools as vectors of transmission.
'A spike in Covid infection in school-age children will lead to more children and staff missing school and run huge risks of viral transmission into the community where many adults do not share teachers' general youth or good health.
'We do remain concerned about our more vulnerable members, for example those who are registered as clinically extremely vulnerable or third-trimester pregnant women.
'We must ensure greater protection for the many thousands in these categories.
'The NEU calls on school and college leaders to give every reasonable dispensation to ensure those staff can continue to work safely.
'This will certainly help keep down the number of school staff in hospital.'
Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: 'While most staff will now have received coronavirus vaccinations, it needs to be remembered that the vast majority of pupils are unvaccinated.
'The Government has decided to make the control measures in the autumn term a great deal less stringent than previously and it will now be very important that it keeps this situation under review.'
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Psychiatry professor at UC Irvine sues over college's vax mandate saying previous COVID infection means he's immune
A professor in California is suing the university where he works over a COVID-19 vaccination mandate, saying that he already contracted the virus and is now 'naturally immune' to it.
Aaron Kheriaty, professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the University of California Irvine's School of Medicine, filed a lawsuit against the school, saying he caught COVID-19 in July 2020.
The University of California school system announced in July 2021 that all faculty, staff and students MUST be vaccinated against the virus two weeks before fall semester classes start.
'In fighting off the virus, his body created a robust natural immunity to every antigen on the COVID-19 virus, not just the spike protein of the virus as happens with the COVID-19 vaccines,' the lawsuit states.
'Nevertheless, UCI has told Plaintiff that he cannot return to his teaching position unless he receives a COVID-19 vaccine.'
'Thus, UC is treating him differently by refusing to readmit him to campus when other individuals who are considered immune to the virus are being admitted back simply because their immunity was created by a vaccine.'
A recent study from the University of Missouri, published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, said while there is a low risk of being re-infected with COVID-19, the stakes are higher for some.
According to the study, 63 people out of 9,119 - less than one percent - with severe COVID-19 symptoms got the virus again, in an average of three and a half months, after testing positive the first time.
Another study led by the University of Kentucky showed that COVID-19 vaccines offer better protection against reinfection, than natural immunity.
In a group of 740 people who tested positive for the coronavirus in the past, those who were still unvaccinated were more than twice as likely to contract the virus again than people who got double-jabbed.
Although research is ongoing to compare protection from vaccines and natural immunization from infection, experts still strongly advise getting a shot after infection.
'There's nothing deleterious about getting a boost to an immune response that you've had before,' Dr. Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, told The New York Times.
'You could get an actually even better immune response by boosting whatever immunity you had from the first infection by a vaccine.'
In the lawsuit, Kheriaty, who is a medical doctor, claims he is 'already naturally immune to the virus' and 'less likely to infect other individuals than are people who have been vaccinated.'
It labels the vaccine mandate as 'irrational' and says “by targeting people who have had the virus but remain unvaccinated, the mandate unfairly singles out one unpopular group for disparate treatment."
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More “Death” is Needed in Higher Ed: Bring on More Creative Destruction
By any rational way of measurement, on average competitive, market disciplined private enterprises are more efficient than our colleges and universities. Federal government data show that productivity per worker rises one or two percent annually over time for private American business, but my guess is that it is rising somewhere around zero for higher education.
Why? Is the higher ed sector populated by less hard working, less intelligent, inferior workers and capital resources? While possible, I think the single most important factor is that competitive private businesses constantly are literally fighting for their life, facing the very real and often present possibility of what Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction,” while universities rarely are “destroyed” or “die.”
The very real threat of the loss of employment and income security forces leaders of private businesses to mightily concentrate on doing a better job—building a better mousetrap (if that is the product made), cutting costs by using new technologies, etc. To be sure, creative destruction has been on the rise somewhat recently in higher education, but is not a real threat for the biggest, most prominent, and what are usually considered “the best” American colleges.
I had my ace student associate Braden Colegrove find the 25 top universities in 2000, using the US News & World Report rankings, as well as the 25 largest corporations, using the Fortune 500 largest corporation rankings. He then found the 2020 listings for each of these. There was widespread death or destruction among the largest companies—firms like Enron and Compaq Computer are long gone, and others like Chrysler have merged into other firms, losing their separate identify. Only eight of the companies that were in the top 25 in 2000 are still there today among the largest corporations. Some 68% of the biggest firms died, merged, or underwent major decline. And some of the survivors are shadows of their former selves. General Motors went bankrupt and, in reorganized form, fell from number one to number 20, but, far worse, its market value today is only one-ninth that of a competitor, Tesla, that did not even exist in 2000. Meanwhile, companies like Amazon, Alphabet (Google), and Apple entered the top 25. Changing tastes, innovations, and managerial abilities lead to constant change and companies battle hard just to stay afloat.
What about the universities? Of the top 25 universities in 2000, 23 were still in the top 25 list in 2020 and the others were also surviving, actually rather well. My guess is that if US News or Forbes or someone else were doing rankings in 1900 or, for that matter, even in 1800, Harvard, Yale and Princeton would have been in the top five, much less 25. With the exception of the Catholic Church and a few other religious or fraternal organizations, are there any other organizations that have endured for hundreds of years?
Why is this the case? Universities, unlike private companies, are not solely reliant on their customers for revenues. State governments, the federal government, private donors, and investments provide varying proportions of university revenues. Yale University, for example, has a $31 billion endowment to serve an institution with 12,000 students—about $2.5 million per student, or $100,000 each year if investments return four percent. Yale could stop collecting tuition or accepting private or public grants and still be an important institution 100 years from now with lots of high paid staff and beautiful buildings.
But is such lavish external support justified? Why should modest income taxpayers who never went to college be forced to provide subsidies to rich schools like Yale (through government research grants and the like)? Is this not perpetuating an credential-determined quasi-aristocracy rather than the American ideal of meritocracy centered around hard work, innovation, and shrewd investment?
Despite public subsidies, there has been a modest rise in college closings. Why? Ultimately the answer is that public university support is declining somewhat, enrollments have fallen, and more Americans question whether colleges deserve special support. As they are increasingly perceived to flout values cherished by most Americans and as the perceived return on a degree becomes more uncertain, decreasing public support will force colleges to face the creative destruction commonplace in the Real World.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13740&omhide=true
***********************************My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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