Its such a weird topic.
One one hand, I don't like that a ton of folks out there have had their careers seemingly put on hold indefinitely. I don't care what the CPC population says (me included), but that does effect compensation, retirement, etc. Saying 'shut up and enjoy your free vacation' is a cop out statement in my opinion and doesn't sit well with me. I'm at the point personally where I want more money as opposed to time off. There absolutely should be hazard pay if it is deemed too dangerous for nonessential to come to work. Either it's too dangerous to come to work or its not. We are still facing mass retirements and this training backlog, whenever it does start again, is only going to make it worse.
I'd love to see training start again soon, and it should be a facility by facility decision on how to implement it. But there are obviously things that trainees now won't see that they previously did. It might be harder for me to give a recommendation based on current traffic. How can I teach feeding the guy working the final when everything is always combined? How can I teach speed control when there are barely sequences to sequence anymore? If anything, I think there needs to be more of an emphasis on lab training, where trainees can actually see these things. It should be more of a do or die regiment than it is at many places.
On the other hand, there are CPCs out there, including at my facility, who come to work completely paranoid everyday about getting the 'rona. You have to respect those wishes too.
The fact that the virus has been completely polarized and politicized has been really detrimental. I still believe if we weren't in an election cycle the overreaction to C19 wouldn't have been anywhere near as drastic. There would have been an emphasis on hand washing/hygiene and keeping old folks at home but everything would have stayed open. Now we've seemingly had a race between state/local/gov't officials to see who can me the most restrictive. We have made the cure far worse than the actual virus.