“Honey - she only has the flu. If we take her to the hospital they’ll want to quarantine the house until they get the tests back. If I don’t make it to work for three days I’m going to lose my job, and we’ve got bills to pay. Let’s just see if it runs it’s course.”
And that level of thinking applies to all levels of people. Substitute “lose my job” to “seal that $2 million deal”.
Good points. The press is minimizing the Africa thing by calling these types of things "cultural" but we have the exact same cultural challenges just on a different level.