In today’s version of “tweet your unpopular opinion”, I want to talk about the call to vaccinate teachers.
First, let’s lay out some givens:
1.Alberta has screwed up the rollout of vaccinations, and it’s shameful how far behind the rest of the world we are. 1/

2.EVERYONE deserves to be vaccinated. Nobody deserves it more than anybody else.
3.High-risk groups should get vaccinated first, as they have been.

But here’s the thing: what are we saying when we say “high-risk”? People with disabilities, yes, certainly. 2/

Health-care workers, certainly, because without them we’d literally all be dead. Folks who work in pharmacy or grocery, sure, because we have to eat and take our medications. Here is my unpopular opinion: Teachers don’t fall into this category. 3/

Of COURSE teachers work harder than they get credit for, I’m not here to say that they don’t! But we have the power to close down schools to in-person learning, thereby eliminating the risk to teachers as a whole. We have done it before, with way lower case numbers. 4/

It is NOT ideal, but neither is anything else about this situation. Being a teacher is not a disability. The only risk to teachers as a group (not as individuals) is that they are forced to be teaching in-person, in schools. 5/

And perhaps the only reason that schools need to be open to in-person learning is because with no CERB or support for parents to stay home; they need their kids in school in person so they can go to work. 6/

Bc our government values the economy more than it values the lives of its citizens. Closing schools to in-person teaching takes away the COVID risk factor for teachers as a group. Disabled&chronically ill folks cannot have their risk factors erased by a stay-at-home order. 7/

Their risk will ALWAYS be there.
So I think the thing we should actually be calling for is for the government to prioritize human lives over the economy. 8/

Please provide financial support for people to stay home from work, please provide rent and mortgage relief, and please don’t keep schools open just because parents need their children supervised so they can go to work. 9/

Eliminate the risk for teachers by closing schools and limiting spread.
Again ... not to say that teachers shouldn’t get vaccinated - they should. EVERYONE should. 10/

And TBH it’s probably more likely that this government will choose to add teachers to the priority list instead of closing schools and businesses again, so I guess in the spirit of harm reduction, I’d support that. 11/

But, the reason we’ve had to call for teachers to be a priority group in the first place is because our government doesn’t care how many people die as long as the economy gets back on track. 12/

And that’s a FAR worse indictment of the values this government holds than where they rank teachers on a vaccine priority list. #ableg 13/13