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I’ve seen a lot of comments like this one - simple “whataboutism” that is intended to justify sending teachers back to school full time because “essential workers” have had to work this whole time. So let’s unpack this a minute (a thread).
This comment is making some assumptions (which isn’t surprising because it’s not a well-reasoned argument). First, the comment assumes that essential workers have been working this whole time *and they are fine.* Nothing could be further from the truth.
As of June 26, @UFCW had reported that 238 of their members across the US had died of #COVID__19. They have 1.5 million members in the food service, health care and retail industry. https://www.google.com/amp/s/nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2020/06/essential-workers-are-still-dying-from-coronavirus.html
Close to 1000 front line health care workers have died of coronavirus infections. You can read their obituaries here: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/85867
Millions of essential workers don’t belong to unions because companies like @Walmart @amazon and @HyVee bust unions and fire workers who try to organize. So we have no good data on how many of their lives have been taken.
As of May 21, eight Amazon employees had died though. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1212546
The second dumb assumption is that teachers “aren’t working” - as though this pandemic has been a 4.5 month long luxury vacation for them. How quickly we forget teachers did a hard pivot in mid-March to completely revamp their method of work. And continued to do their jobs.
This summer I have watched as my teacher friends have attended online workshops, completely remodeled their classrooms, read, studied, built tools, torn them down and built them again but most of all WORRIED about, prayed for and reached out to their students daily.
unlike the bulk of essential workers, teachers are unionized and they have access to more resources to push back. That’s why they are standing up. They see what has been done to those deemed “essential” and they aren’t going that way.
Since the pandemic began 37,000 meat packing workers have tested positive for #COVID-19. 168 have died. *that we know of* Many packing plants are not fully testing their employees. Even those who are could be manipulating their data since Trump demanded they stay open.
