Thread by @mlipsitch

I'm quoted in this article as saying that prioritizing vaccines for teachers is not a way to reduce health inequities. Primary & secondary teachers are not the most disadvantaged in US - they have college degrees, middle-class salaries, health insurance. nytimes.com/2020/12/05/hea…

79% are white nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/i…. Those are facts. I support putting teachers above most other same-age adults because they perform a truly essential function in person that is much harder to perform remotely. Have said so publicly statnews.com/2020/12/02/how…

And was early to refer to them as essential workers nejm.org/doi/full/10.10… along with my coauthor and spouse @meiralevinson , who was a middle school teacher for 8y

My quote in the @nytimes piece slightly lacks this important context, but I stand by it -- remedying health inequities is not a good argument for prioritizing teachers, but essential work, best done in person, that affects the future through our children's development, is.

The prioritization of vaccine access is an incredibly complicated process of integrating science with many different, sometimes conflicting, values. Reasonable people can disagree on the best answer. But it is important to sort out which reasons support which decisions.

Last would add that I am absolutely supportive of increasing teacher salaries and respect for the profession (closely linked). Noting that teachers, unlike ~11% of Americans, have health insurance, does not deny that teachers are underpaid.

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Several have pointed out that in-person school is in itself a contributor to economic and social equity as those who suffer most from having schools remote are disproportionately the disadvantaged, something I agree with and have said in print nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…