Emergency measures have impacted just about everyone, people are having to deal with stresses they never before contemplated. With that being said it has certainly been worse for some, far worse than for others.
While everyone has felt the impact of physical distancing, (I now refuse to call it social distancing because there is nothing social about being distant) not everyone has had to deal with the economic impact. Many are still getting their regular pay, and are in fact saving money because there's less things to do now.
That is certainly true for government workers, which of course includes teachers. While millions of taxpayers who fund the educational system have seen businesses shuttered and jobs disappear, teachers and their public sector brothers and sisters haven't had to deal with economic uncertainty.
And of course now teacher unions are clamoring for smaller class sizes if they're going to be required to go back to work. It seems a reasonable request on the surface, but the niggling question of how to pay for it is never even addressed.
Somewhere around 4 million Canadians saw their jobs shut down for months, some never to reappear, or they had their hours severely reduced. To my way of thinking these are the real heros of this pandemic, they're sacrifcing far more than the majority of the population. Dealing with the stress of emergency measures is one thing, having financial insecurity heaped on top of it is more than some have been able to endure sadly.
Now, maybe it's time for teachers to sacrifice in the same manner, consider it yet another modest proposal. Dip into the Teacher's pension fund in order to meet the demands of educational workers for smaller class sizes. I wonder how many teachers, faced with seeing thier pensioable earnings reduced would continue to clamor for smaller class sizes if they were asked to make the kind of sacrifices millions of Canadians already have.
Not many is my guess.
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A note to anyone wishing to comment, don't misrepresent what I have written. I just deleted a post by an anonymous poster that claimed I said SARS-Cov-2 is "no worse" than the common flu, which is completely false. I have always said that Covid is worse than the flu, but I have questioned the messaging that Covid is at least 10x more deadly.
According to Statistics Canada influenza/pneumonia ranked as the 6th leading cause of death in 2018 (google it) with 8,511 Canadians falling victim. Canada has currently reported almost 9,000 deaths, so obviously Covid is worse.
With that being said Ontario Public Health has published Infection Fatality Rates (IFR) based on age and for children aged 0-9 years they peg IFR at 0.0022% which makes the flu more deadly for this specific demographic.
Opinion is fine, but back it up with facts and not emotion and don't misrepresent what I've written to prove a weak point.
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