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Rail staff working during the pandemic: was the risk massive?

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nedchester

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In response to the thread generally, the original premise of the thread is incorrect, and simply isn’t borne out by the statistics. The fact is Covid presents an extremely low risk to the vast majority of people who catch it and railstaff don’t seem to have been affected any more seriously than many other groups.
On the other hand we have continued working throughout the pandemic with no cushy work from home option, and no option to sit at home being paid to do nothing (other than the small minority who were shielding). Certainly in the case of drivers, apart from a few weeks during the first lockdown when the service was pared back, the job has been little different.

There is certainly a lack of gratitude or acknowledgement of this fact, in contrast with all the ridiculous fawning over NHS “heros”. Sadly people seem to have very little respect for railway workers anyway, largely due to a lack of understanding of what we actually do, so perhaps that’s unsurprising.

I’d echo @bramling ’s comments above, there is a cohort of railway workers who are older, but not otherwise vulnerable, for whom going to work during the first weeks and months of the pandemic when the virus was more of an unknown quantity must have been a real worry. That shouldn’t be the case any longer now that the vaccine has arrived, and there are undoubtedly some staff (including a few at my depot) who seem to want to continue fear mongering, and are now throwing their toys out of the pram about masking requirements and one way systems being removed.
And those same fear mongering workers who want restrictions will be the same ones upset when the redundancy notices start being issued.
 
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VauxhallandI

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If 2020 gave us anything it was the lofty pedestal and the creation of the key worker. We were encouraged to clap and bang pots and pans for the 'heroes' of the NHS but all that did was divert from the fact that the instituion is underfunded and clearly not fit for purpose. They were undoubtedly key workers, we were in an unknown in those early stages and if you got seriously ill that's where you ended up. The problem was the term was used widely and therefore diluted. NHS staff, supermarket staff, rail workers and Doris in the corner shop on minimum wage selling Special Brew to the unmasked locals was a key worker too.

The issue now is how it is still being pushed today. Supermarket staff walking around wearing hi-viz effectively stating 'Back off i'm a Key Worker' can be seen around the country. Job adverts for even the most basic of roles are listed as 'Become a key worker today'.

Then just yesterday I saw an article about community housing being sold for £1, they proudly stated that a large percentage of these houses have gone to key workers. There was no context was given, just that key workers had received houses. Maybe it was £1 houses for Poundland workers, I have no idea.

Which brings us back to how this thread was diverted from the other. 'I'm striking because I put my life at risk and deserve a pay rise'. So does Doris in the corner shop because she was equally if not more at risk and the only hope she has of a wage rise is the next minimum wage increase. Whilst it's your right to fight your corner it's also unrealistic to demand and expect universal agreement on here just because it's a rail forum. These people can see it's an industry propped up by billions of pounds of public money, is culling thousands of jobs and needs to desperately entice people back to the trains to claw this deficit back. That ain't going to happen when unions are still shouting that the network is unsafe and services are decimated because of endless strikes.
Well put.

I have many colleagues who went into work all through this including the early stages. If they hadn't then there would have been the chance that the entire financial system of the UK would have collapsed. I mean no bank transactions, no financial transactions, no money in the cash machines - so all out bedlam on the streets compounded by foreign nation state attacks.

None of them have made a squeak about being unloved; maybe they should have moved to a career of moving boxes of fresh air along tracks.

When you bleat there is always a bigger bleater so its pointless.

Now the early unknowns are over I'd just (as I am) be glad to have a job and would now be working in a positive manner to ensure I still do in the future.
 

VauxhallandI

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This is something of a misnomer. Trains were lightly loaded, but they weren't empty by any means, especially once timetables were scaled down.

Even during April and May last year I rarely had a carriage to myself when travelling.
Fair enough I have seen that due to halving the lengths of trains has resulted in more crowded services. We have entered a chicken and egg situation regarding capacity unfortunately.

That said cordoned off and back cabs etc with no ticket checks means the bit in the middle was largely irrelevant. Heck we even have roped off areas on open air platforms for staff to stand in
 

Ediswan

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Then just yesterday I saw an article about community housing being sold for £1, they proudly stated that a large percentage of these houses have gone to key workers. There was no context was given, just that key workers had received houses. Maybe it was £1 houses for Poundland workers, I have no idea.
It is a council run rental scheme with a "right to buy" for £1 after 25 years, or get some cash back, so not really a house for £1. The article is not totally clear, but they seem to be buying houses from commercial developers, rather than selling off community housing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-58933011
A formerly homeless couple have a chance to buy a house for £1 under a scheme to help key workers and others on to the property ladder.

NHS staff and other key workers are also among the first 32 tenants to receive the keys to their new homes under the initiative.

So far, 86 of the houses have been offered to successful applicants, and more than 41% of the homes will go to a key worker, according to those behind the scheme.
 
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Darandio

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It is a council run rental scheme with a "right to buy" for £1 after 25 years, or get some cash back, so not really a house for £1. The article is not totally clear, but they seem to be buying houses from commercial developers, rather than selling off community housing.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-58933011

Ah okay. My point still stands in terms of this thread about their boast of 41% of homes going to a key worker though, it makes little sense other than as another way of incorrectly using the term for what it was intended. It should have no relevance on being eligible for any such scheme.
 

yorkie

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Yorkie, curious to know, did you work front line during the pandemic in a front facing capacity and did you or have you worked as a TE or guard?
I never stopped working during the pandemic however, like many others (including many on the railways), I was not required to do as many 'front facing' hours. However I volunteered to do as many 'front facing' hours as required but unfortunately I was required to spend rather more time 'working from home' than I wanted in the first few months of the pandemic.


Not everyone is you. At the time, plenty of people thought they were taking some element of risk, perhaps because they were older, or perhaps simply that had watched the television news and seen the graphic images of intensive care units in Italy. It may well be the case that some of this turned out to be over-played, but people weren't to know that *at the time*, which is the context anyone's judgement of risk-taking is based on.

Had you been using the railway during that time, you'd have been hearing announcements using language like "Coronavirus is a national emergency", "affects all ages and backgrounds", "for your own safety, you must stay at home if you can", "only go out for absolutely essential reasons".
The messaging was absolutely appalling and tried to suggest that young healthy people were at risk, and induced a sense of fear that caused all sorts of mental health issues, which is now translating into physical health problems. But in retrospect I do not think it is right to go back now and say the risk was "massive". As you said earlier, "unknown" is a better term.

It did seem to create a two-tier society of "key" workers vs others, and looking back it really was very wrong.

I don't think you can blame people for feeling they were taking a risk, and the risk is based on what they knew *then*, not what might be known *now*.
I really blame the government and media messaging for potraying the risk as far greater than it was for the average person.

Is "massive" an overstatement?
Yes.

Again going back to the scenes being seen on the news, and the general atmosphere and mood during March, for many people it's fair to say it probably felt quite a big thing.


I know plenty of apparently healthy middle-aged (or in a few cases younger!) people in numerous varied occupations who essentially stopped going to work and locked themselves up indoors. Likewise it would have been pretty scary for anyone with, for example, and elderly or infirm relative - even if they didn't feel at "massive risk" themselves.
The reality is though you could have got footage from bad 'flu years; in some years not so long ago many tens of thousands of (mostly older) people died from 'flu and hospitals have been threatened with being overwhelmed on numerous occasions. Those who delved a bit deeper into understanding the true level of risk would have realised that the risk to the average person was very small. I agree that it is not the average person who is to blame; the messaging was the fault of the media and the Government.

But we can look back now and say yes, the risk was overstated.

....The issue now is how it is still being pushed today. Supermarket staff walking around wearing hi-viz effectively stating 'Back off i'm a Key Worker' can be seen around the country. Job adverts for even the most basic of roles are listed as 'Become a key worker today'....
The concept of key workers is one that rapidly became outdated, in my opinion.....
Yes, I wasn't entirely comfortable with the idea that 'key workers' were somehow deemed to be more important / heroic than other people, and I say that a someone who was designated as a 'key worker' myself and was entitled to discuounts at my local supermarket for a time as a result.
 

bramling

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Fair enough I have seen that due to halving the lengths of trains has resulted in more crowded services. We have entered a chicken and egg situation regarding capacity unfortunately.

That said cordoned off and back cabs etc with no ticket checks means the bit in the middle was largely irrelevant. Heck we even have roped off areas on open air platforms for staff to stand in

The bit in the middle wasn’t irrelevant if a handle was pulled, a piece of equipment needed to be accessed, or someone needed assistance. Remember at this time we were being told to keep 2 metres from anyone come what may, no PPE was available, and there was the widespread view that simply touching a surface could lead to infection.

It’s also worth adding that it didn’t take too long before leisure use came back. Certainly by around late May it was quite typical to find trains quite well loaded with teenagers and young people, who had clocked on to the reality that the “do not travel unless essential” wasn’t really enforced.
 

Darandio

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It did seem to create a two-tier society of "key" workers vs others, and looking back it really was very wrong.

Yet they have continued to present this whole two-tier society today. Key workers vs other workers as above, masked vs unmasked, vaccinated vs unvaccinated. Even things like not being able to order online shopping because others were being prioritised became divisive.

All very convenient though and almost as if it was meticulously planned. Get the population fighting and arguing against each other in the hope that they won't notice the repeated burying of bad news.
 

Goldfish62

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Taking the number of drivers as around 20,000 (ASLEF membership), 4 deaths equates to 20 per 100,000. That's about a tenth of the total rate for the UK to date which is over 200 per 100,000 population.

Edit: that includes the elderly who were most likely to die of Covid, so looking at the working population (see table 3 here), the rate amongst train drivers is lower than all but one category.
And in the year to March 2021 51 London bus drivers died of Covid, equating to approx 210 per 100,000.
 

bramling

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The messaging was absolutely appalling and tried to suggest that young healthy people were at risk, and induced a sense of fear that caused all sorts of mental health issues, which is now translating into physical health problems. But in retrospect I do not think it is right to go back now and say the risk was "massive".

The key there is retrospect. Neither of us knows what information the government was privy to at the time, so it isn't possible to judge whether it was fearmongering or not. My hunch is it probably was, but we don't really know. Certainly the scenes coming out of Italy were disturbing, and the media was very much in full-on doom mode. It will certainly be something for the inquiry to seriously look at.


It did seem to create a two-tier society of "key" workers vs others, and looking back it really was very wrong.

It was very clumsily handled for sure, which is unfortunately typical for this prime minister and his government. If you're going to spend billions cushioning up one group of people at home, you need to do a very good job of reassuring those who you are expecting to go to work essentially as normal. None of this happened, we know Downing Street was busy with its own crises around this time (remember stuff like BJ in intensive care or Cummings running out of No.10?!), however part of the reason for having a government not a presidential system is to be able to handle situations like this. They made a complete pig's ear of it.

The reality is though you could have got footage from bad 'flu years; in some years not so long ago many tens of thousands of (mostly older) people died from 'flu and hospitals have been threatened with being overwhelmed on numerous occasions. Those who delved a bit deeper into understanding the true level of risk would have realised that the risk to the average person was very small. I agree that it is not the average person who is to blame; the messaging was the fault of the media and the Government.

Whilst I agree with the premise of this, at that time I'm not sure it was that easy for the average person to access data which allowed them to analyse their personal level of risk. Remember the "people of all ages" announcements.

If you're telling people that things are *bad*, one can hardly blame them for feeling they're taking a risk. A massive risk that this virus isn't quite as bad as is being made out? That's still a risk.

But we can look back now and say yes, the risk was overstated.

I completely agree that if one looks back *now* this is undoubtedly the case. I'm less convinced we were equipped to make that judgement at the time.

Where things went wrong is Boris bottled it during the summer. The focus should have soon moved to "let's get back to a managed normal". Instead it was essentially more of the same medicine right through until July 2021 in varying doses. The cost of the first lockdown was immense, and the main purpose should have been to buy time, if nothing else to allow us to avoid subsequent ones. I feel this was to some extent squandered.
 
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nlogax

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The key there is retrospect. Neither of us knows what information the government was privy to at the time, so it isn't possible to judge whether it was fearmongering or not. My hunch is it probably was, but we don't really know. Certainly the scenes coming out of Italy were disturbing, and the media was certainly in full-on doom mode. It will certainly be something for the inquiry to seriously look at.

Completely agree. I have a hunch that the forthcoming inquiry will be the most closely followed and scrutinised since Leveson.
 

MikeWM

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Whilst I agree with the premise of this, at that time I'm not sure it was that easy for the average person to access data which allowed them to analyse their personal level of risk. Remember the "people of all ages" announcements.

As far as I was concerned, I think there was sufficient evidence that the 'at-risk' population was broadly similar to that of flu by the time we reached mid-March - looking back, I wrote on 13th March in an email that 'Chances are you'll get it at some point and it won't be much fun, but I wouldn't get too hung up on death rates - if you're already reasonably healthy, you'll almost certainly be fine.' I can't remember what specific evidence I was basing that on but I don't believe I was just being blase.

Indeed, in his press conference of the 12th of March, Johnson specifically said

Because this disease is particularly dangerous for you, for older people, even though the vast majority this will be a mild to moderate illness, I know that many people will be very worried.
(bold mine)

It was *after* that press conference that things started to go badly wrong, and we instead got tripe like the government adverts that were all over the TV by April, such as this one which you're probably referring to

(narrator : 'Coronavirus is a national emergency, life-threatening for people of all ages, everywhere in the UK.')

But I do agree that after about the 15th March or therebouts, you did have to start digging in order to work out the likely risk - stuff like this advert started to predominate.
 

Richard Scott

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Are you a virologist? Are you saying the virus isn't airborne and that if someone coughs or sneezes in a poorly ventilated area without a mask it isn't risky to be in that area at the time or just afterwards?

So low they are almost nil yet people have died from it, any many others who haven't have had debilitating long covid. And the constant worry about passing it to family or friends.

So because the risk of death is low that's fine, is it?
No but I am scientist and can do research and assess outcomes. I also work with people who can talk about virology on a high level.
If you're going to go down the I don't think low risk is fine then consider the following, everyone should live in bungalows as people die due to falling down stairs, stop driving cars as people die in car accidents (and people are killed by trains every year), perhaps we should only have liquid food in case we choke? Where do you draw the line?
 

VauxhallandI

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No but I am scientist and can do research and assess outcomes. I also work with people who can talk about virology on a high level.
If you're going to go down the I don't think low risk is fine then consider the following, everyone should live in bungalows as people die due to falling down stairs, stop driving cars as people die in car accidents (and people are killed by trains every year), perhaps we should only have liquid food in case we choke? Where do you draw the line?
I suspect the line will be drawn exactly where they want it to be and the world should change and agree to that line.

How did we get to this point entertaining these fantasies of fear.
 

bramling

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How did we get to this point entertaining these fantasies of fear.

Possibly at the point where the government need to justify £70bn just on the furlough scheme alone...

Such exceptional and costly measures don't exactly shout out "low risk" to the wider population.

Most current issues trace back to this government and its dire communications.
 

greyman42

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What point are you trying to make here? Maybe that somehow the measure of bus driver Covid-related deaths is different to railway deaths????
Not at all. The point i was trying to make is that the two figures are different, regardless of anyone's occupation.
 

VauxhallandI

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Possibly at the point where the government need to justify £70bn just on the furlough scheme alone...

Such exceptional and costly measures don't exactly shout out "low risk" to the wider population.

Most current issues trace back to this government and its dire communications.
I know it’s even crazier to think half the things they have done are to justify previous decisions.

All in order to save their political skin, well actually it just reinforces what we thought but to a whole new level of selfishness

It’s not like most of them need the salary; it’s pure power and ego.

Bring back hanging
 

bramling

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Not at all. The point i was trying to make is that the two figures are different, regardless of anyone's occupation.

A relevant factor for bus drivers is quite probably that many won't have been in perfect health to start with, due to the sedentary nature of the job combined with it being shiftwork. I'm not sure it's clear if their risk factor was elevated due to the nature of their actual role when on the bus (i.e. coming face-to-face with people when boarding, or having people sat in close proximity), or whether infections were more likely to happen elsewhere for example in the messroom or canteen.

Some of this can apply to train drivers, of course, as well as many other "key workers", specifically the point about shiftwork.
 

Horizon22

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A relevant factor for bus drivers is quite probably that many won't have been in perfect health to start with, due to the sedentary nature of the job combined with it being shiftwork. I'm not sure it's clear if their risk factor was elevated due to the nature of their actual role when on the bus (i.e. coming face-to-face with people when boarding, or having people sat in close proximity), or whether infections were more likely to happen elsewhere for example in the messroom or canteen.

Some of this can apply to train drivers, of course, as well as many other "key workers", specifically the point about shiftwork.

I also believe there is a higher proportion of bus drivers that are BAME compared to train drivers, which again was another increased risk factor.
 

Goldfish62

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Not at all. The point i was trying to make is that the two figures are different, regardless of anyone's occupation.
This is true, but I can only assume that the official data uses
A relevant factor for bus drivers is quite probably that many won't have been in perfect health to start with, due to the sedentary nature of the job combined with it being shiftwork. I'm not sure it's clear if their risk factor was elevated due to the nature of their actual role when on the bus (i.e. coming face-to-face with people when boarding, or having people sat in close proximity), or whether infections were more likely to happen elsewhere for example in the messroom or canteen.

Some of this can apply to train drivers, of course, as well as many other "key workers", specifically the point about shiftwork.
Yes, agreed on all that, especially re shift work.
 

43066

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I also believe there is a higher proportion of bus drivers that are BAME compared to train drivers, which again was another increased risk factor.

I think it was established that more BAME people doing front line jobs such as bus driving was what caused ethnic minorities to be more affected by Covid, rather than there being any evidence of a biological pre disposition based on ethnicity. As always it has been politicised to the point where it can no longer be rationally discussed.
 

Horizon22

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I think it was established that more BAME people doing front line jobs such as bus driving was what caused ethnic minorities to be more affected by Covid, rather than there being any evidence of a biological pre disposition based on ethnicity. As always it has been politicised to the point where it can no longer be rationally discussed.

Ah okay the causation v correlation factor. I couldn't remember which way it was.
 

VauxhallandI

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I also find it a little odd we automatically connect someones pace of work as the cast iron cause of them catching Covid. Now I'm sure it is a factor due to the length of time in that place but we cant take the exact number for real?
 

yorkie

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I think it was established that more BAME people doing front line jobs such as bus driving was what caused ethnic minorities to be more affected by Covid, rather than there being any evidence of a biological pre disposition based on ethnicity. As always it has been politicised to the point where it can no longer be rationally discussed.
Agreed, but also higher density housing and other factors.

...I completely agree that if one looks back *now* this is undoubtedly the case. I'm less convinced we were equipped to make that judgement at the time....
The original point seemed to be that it was a massive risk, and that is the reason cited for justifying large pay rises, but the debate has turned to whether or not people thought it was a massive risk at the time, and the perception vs the reality, which is subtly different.
 

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I also believe there is a higher proportion of bus drivers that are BAME compared to train drivers, which again was another increased risk factor.
People weren't higher risk because of their race. The virus does not discriminate on the basis of race.

The increased BAME case and death rate was because they tend to work in jobs where covid protections were low or non-existent. Like bus driving, as opposed to train driving, or working in fast food restaurants, driving taxis, factory working, and so on.
 

Horizon22

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People weren't higher risk because of their race. The virus does not discriminate on the basis of race.

The increased BAME case and death rate was because they tend to work in jobs where covid protections were low or non-existent. Like bus driving, as opposed to train driving, or working in fast food restaurants, driving taxis, factory working, and so on.

Yes we've ascertained that now. Although unrelated to Covid, there's surely a possibly that a virus could impact certain ethnicities more than others.
 

bramling

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The original point seemed to be that it was a massive risk, and that is the reason cited for justifying large pay rises, but the debate has turned to whether or not people thought it was a massive risk at the time, and the perception vs the reality, which is subtly different.

Whether it justifies a pay rise or not I don't really have a strong opinion either way. However I don't think it's an unreasonable position to essentially say "we were expected to walk down a dark alley not knowing if we'd come out the other end, and for that we expect some level of appreciation", which is my reading of this. Part of being able to effectively assess risk is having decent and reliable data in order to be able to make that assessment, and I think we'd all agree this wasn't really available at the time.

As I've alluded to before, and I think we are generally in agreement, this really goes back to the way politicians have handled this, which has been clumsy at best. This isn't just in relation to key workers or whatever, I don't really sense an ounce of humility from Boris Johnson over the fact he has presided over 130,000+ deaths, he just bumbles on in his usual arrogant and objectionable manner. I tend to feel this is where our anger should be directed.
 
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