# Rationale for priority to educators **URL:** \ **Category:** The Quarantine Zone\ **Tags:** covid-quarantine\ **Created:** [January 18, 2021, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826 "2021-01-18T19:01:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2021, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/121 "2021-01-23T01:36:30Z")
Medical professionals take the principal of “do no harm” pretty dang seriously. So, both. ---
**Author:** ![SayTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@SayTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SayTwo)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2021, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/122 "2021-01-23T01:40:30Z")
Is there consensus among medical professionals about the ethics of leaving the placebo control arm blinded during the test of a vaccine that has demonstrated efficacy? ---
**Author:** ![FigNorton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fignorton/32/5619_2.png) [@FigNorton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FigNorton)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2021, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/123 "2021-01-23T01:46:23Z")
There is a general principle that if you get great results then yes it’s considered unethical to continue business as normal with the study. But that’s balanced with supply and actual risk. ---
**Author:** ![SayTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@SayTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SayTwo)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2021, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/124 "2021-01-23T01:49:44Z")
And that’s because it’s unethical to leave those control-arm volunteers exposed to danger without a vaccine, correct? ---
**Author:** ![FigNorton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fignorton/32/5619_2.png) [@FigNorton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FigNorton)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2021, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/125 "2021-01-23T02:00:04Z")
No. Being unblinded doesn’t save you from covid. ---
**Author:** ![SayTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@SayTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SayTwo)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2021, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/126 "2021-01-23T02:08:02Z")
In that case, being unblinded would mean they are offered the vaccine, as I understand it. I’m not sure what relevance your comment has. ---
**Author:** ![FigNorton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fignorton/32/5619_2.png) [@FigNorton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FigNorton)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2021, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/127 "2021-01-23T02:12:58Z")
You are talking about specific contracts they had with the testers linking unblinding to access to the vaccine. That’s not medical ethics. If there’s limited supply, 20 yr old placebo guys aren’t ahead of nursing home residents or hospital staff. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [January 23, 2021, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/128 "2021-01-23T02:29:42Z")
> [@Dangerosa](#): > > The short answer - we need to get kids back to school. That really work, though, as the issue with having in-person classes is not primarily about the danger to the teachers. The reason places are avoiding in-person school is that kids spread the disease very well among themselves and then take it back home. Vaccinating the teachers won’t prevent that issue. So if it’s not safe enough to have in person classes now, vaccinating the teachers won’t change that calculation in any significant way. The reason to prioritize teachers above others is that they are on the front lines. And, yes, of course, if they qualify in other categories, that makes sense, too. I suspect the issue is just that many don’t want to deviate from the official plans. And the official plans, the ones recommended by the CDC, are assuming that there are at least some in-person classes for teachers. > [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > We aren’t immunizing people to save lives. We’re immunizing people so we can function as a society. 65+ aren’t really leading the pack in that department. If they’re worried about their health, they can lock themselves up in their own houses, like they’ve done all year. > > Likewise, I’ve seen no fact-based argument that immunizing 70 year olds is going to stem the tide of infections and stop people from getting **sick**. Which is the whole point of the vaccine. > > Here’s some cold, hard truth for you: You know why we’re vaccinating 30 year old bus drivers and not 70 year olds? We need the bus driver. Except we’re not, not at all. Those over 70 are among the first to be vaccinated. They’re in group 1B, so they go right after the healthcare workers, who need it to avoid killing patients. In my area, at least, 1B already started. We are in fact trying to minimize deaths. The entire system is built up to give to those who are most at risk. The primary reason for stopping someone from getting sick is that they might spread it to more people and thus increase the deaths. Or, in the case of medical staff, it’s so that we have enough medical people to be able to treat people, so fewer die. I also note that group 1C goes to people who are at risk but under 65, and anyone between 65 and 70. The whole thing is about who is at most risk. The whole thing is about minimizing deaths. You are thus factually wrong about everything you’ve said that I’ve read up to this point. > [@Babale](#): > > Although the 65+ crowd IS getting top priority, so it isn’t even really being rejected. Exactly. You guys are arguing a position that is not the one that is actually being enacted–one that’s different from what the experts decided was the best way. They are in fact prioritizing older people, right after the healthcare workers. No one is saying “we’re not vaccinating them first because they’re less useful to society.” > [@Chronos](#): > > > [@dauerbach1](#): > > > > They are being given very high priority in vaccination without the agreement or even suggestion that they will return to in person learning. > > Do you seriously think that we’d keep on teaching virtually, once we have the vaccine? We all know that distance learning isn’t as effective as face to face. We’re going to go back to face to face as soon as we possibly can, because we can all see the effect that pandemic-mitigation efforts are having on education, and we hate it. We don’t need deal-making on that front. They’d better, since, again, the whole reason for not having school in person has nothing to do with protecting the teachers. It’s about stopping the spread from one student to another. If teachers go back to school simply because they’re vaccinated, when none of the kids will be, then the virus will spread much further. Schools shut down to stop spread. * * * I was going to wait to post this until I got further down, to make sure my points hadn’t been made by others. But my post is becoming quite long. I checked to see if anyone else was replying to these posts, so I hope I’m making points that weren’t made already. But, just in general, it seems a lot of people are operating under false assumptions about the situation. ---
**Author:** ![echoreply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/echoreply/32/3641_2.png) [@echoreply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/echoreply)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2021, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/129 "2021-01-25T16:13:35Z")
Earlier in this thread there was some discussion over whether it was best to vaccinate older people first (prevent death) or younger people first (prevent spread). Here is a very on point [article](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/01/21/science.abe6959?rss=1) that just came out in _Science_ which modeled different approaches and concluded that vaccinating those over 60 first would usually save the most lives. Of course it is more complex than that, which is why they do all of this modeling, to be able to adjust things such as R0, vaccine efficacy, demographics, and other factors to see what is the best strategy under different conditions. Here is the abstract. > Limited initial supply of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine raises the question of how to prioritize available doses. Here, we used a mathematical model to compare five age-stratified prioritization strategies. A highly effective transmission-blocking vaccine prioritized to adults ages 20-49 years minimized cumulative incidence, but mortality and years of life lost were minimized in most scenarios when the vaccine was prioritized to adults over 60 years old. Use of individual-level serological tests to redirect doses to seronegative individuals improved the marginal impact of each dose while potentially reducing existing inequities in COVID-19 impact. While maximum impact prioritization strategies were broadly consistent across countries, transmission rates, vaccination rollout speeds, and estimates of naturally acquired immunity, this framework can be used to compare impacts of prioritization strategies across contexts. A [perspective article](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/01/21/science.abg2334?rss=1) in the same issue concludes with: > Although vaccinating younger people prevents the most infections for both viruses, the difference is that this strategy does not also avert the most deaths for COVID-19. To vanquish a pathogen that causes such steeply divergent case fatality rates as that of SARS-CoV-2, the optimal strategy is clear: Directly vaccinate those with greatest personal risk. ---
**Author:** ![BippityBoppityBoo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bippityboppityboo/32/5745_2.png) [@BippityBoppityBoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BippityBoppityBoo)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2021, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/130 "2021-01-25T16:14:53Z")
> [@echoreply](#): > > To vanquish a pathogen that causes such steeply divergent case fatality rates as that of SARS-CoV-2, the optimal strategy is clear: Directly vaccinate those with greatest personal risk. Someone needs to tell the powers that be. They keep vaccinating themselves instead. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2021, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/131 "2021-01-25T16:55:43Z")
> [@BippityBoppityBoo](#): > > Someone needs to tell the powers that be. They keep vaccinating themselves instead. True. The only upside is that the actual number of political or financial fatcats is fairly limited, a couple tens of thousands at most nationwide. They may well have arrogated priority 0 (the one above 1a) unto themselves. But soon enough that group will be exhausted and group 1a will get theirs in turn. I’m not for a moment saying this is righteous. Far from it. Just that it’s small in the grand scheme of things and probably inevitable given our mostly-chimp DNA. ---
**Author:** ![dauerbach1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dauerbach1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dauerbach1)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2021, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/132 "2021-01-25T19:26:54Z")
Now there is a group that deserves to be absolutely at the head of the line; those who volunteered for the study but were in the placebo arm. And yet some people argue that they should be inoculated with their age cohort. ---
**Author:** ![FigNorton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fignorton/32/5619_2.png) [@FigNorton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FigNorton)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2021, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/133 "2021-01-25T19:55:47Z")
If we are treating this as a health crisis then you can’t think of vaccines as rewards. They should be initially applied where they do the most good. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/134 "2021-01-26T02:28:17Z")
> [@Dr.Winston\_OBoogie](#): > > This. Giving an immunization to an 80-year-old protects one person. Giving an immunization to a 30-year-old healthcare worker statistically protects 50; giving it to a teacher protects 10. OK, I made those last two numbers up because I don’t think anyone has played 5-dimensional chess to calculate those numbers. But, this is still part of the “flatten the curve” strategy - keep people from contracting _AND SPREADING_ the virus. Had we properly screened / vetted / etc. the long-term-care workers, we would have saved thousands of lives. Lots of people have played the 5-dimensional chess, and modeled that. I don’t believe they have all gotten exactly the same answer, and there are a lot of fuzzy bits, like how to identify and round up people of type X to vaccinate them. (or just to set up the queue). Or how much vaccine will be available how fast – you make different choices with different availability. And then politics gets layered on top, of course. But I believe the current recommendations are based on those models. ---
**Author:** ![SayTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e56c9b/32.png) [@SayTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SayTwo)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2021, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/135 "2021-01-26T04:15:14Z")
I wonder which are the models that have performed best throughout all this. Seems like most of them have really struggled to make predictions that were then borne out by reality. Maybe it’s just more complex than even the most sophisticated models we can find. ---
**Author:** ![dauerbach1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dauerbach1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dauerbach1)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2021, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826/136 "2021-01-28T17:47:39Z")
In general you would be right, however, being willing to risk your health testing a never before utilized medical technology is a special case. Or not, but throw all the vaccinators who called up 30 year old friends and relatives to get “extra” doses in jail. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rationale-for-priority-to-educators/930826.md?page=6)