Posted on 10/11/2023 12:48:14 PM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
At this point, life in the U.S. has largely returned to pre-pandemic normal. The COVID-19 public health emergency is over, mask mandates are mostly gone, and offices and schools are open again.
But one hallmark of the pandemic remains in place: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) still directs anyone who tests positive for COVID-19 to isolate themselves from other people for at least five full days. Once those five days are up, the CDC recommends wearing a high-quality mask, such as an N95 or KN95, around other people when indoors for an additional five days.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
If you’ve got something contagious stay home as much as you can. Doesn’t matter what it is. Cold, flu, covid, whatever, stop spreading diseases. There’s nothing noble about “toughing it out” and making other people sick.
That is not a problem for people that can work from home or have plenty of sick leave. People that work paycheck to paycheck can't afford not to work when they come down with something.
It’s true, some folks have a work environment that’s less conducive, which is part of my “as much as you can”. Which is really a problem with the companies. My company has uncapped sick time, and my boss is hypochondriac. So long before covid we all had it beaten into our heads “don’t come in sick”. Which in the long run is good for the company. Because then we weren’t getting each other sick. Less over all lost time to sickness, not to mention the lost productivity of people trying to “work through it”.
So companies need to be smarter. But so do people. I know how my company works wouldn’t where my wife works. They accrue sick time like vacation, and a lot of the company just use it that way. “I want a day off so I’m calling in”. Then when they do get sick they got not time accrued. And if they were uncapped you’d never see them again. So both sides need to comprehend the value of not turning the office into a petri dish.
I've been retired for some years now so I am not up to date on current sick leave policy and thinking. That said, during my working career I can count on one hand how times I had to take time off because I felt like crap after catching a bug. It wasn't for 14 days or even 5 days as suggested in the article. The worst bug I've had I cleared in about 3 days..
High quality mask...
KN-95s?
🤣🤣🤣🤣
A week ago I was in a crowded room with over 1,000 GA government bureaucrats, mostly healthcare.
We did a stupid HR type exercise where we stood uncomfortably close to another person face to face.
Many of us had a high fever for a couple hours that night. Then it passed and we went to work the next day as normal.
An event of natural immunity. You don’t have to do it. But understand what happens when a crowd gives out a minor inconvenience to prevent a major event later.
My wife had it twice and I didn’t catch it. I had it once and my wife never caught it. We are inseparable most of the time;-)
But how many times did you get sick and “battle through”? And how many did you spread it too? How many of them took sick days? How many people did they make sick? And how much better would everybody have been if the person who gave it to you had stayed the hell home and kept their germs to themselves?
If you have COVID (or the flu or any other infectious condition) and you do not try to stay away from others, you’re an inconsiderate ass.
That sounds more like psychosomatic than actually getting exposed to anything. Almost nothing out there is going to give you a fever hours later, incubation periods are 2 to 3 days. That whole thing sounds like a BS exercise to get people back in the silly “tough it out” mentality.
Also a problem for people who have “PTO” which bundles sick and vacation days.
Stay home sick now, lose vacation later.
Incentivizes working while sick.
Back in the day people didn’t take sick leave for having the sniffles. They took off when they felt like crap. I’ve gone to work feeling fine in the morning and then by mid afternoon felt like crap and took off. I’d return to work in a day or so when I felt better. I had enough sick leave that I could have dealt with lengthy covid downtimes. Many people don’t. Sick leave isn’t mandated in many states and the the states that do don’t require more than a few days.
Ditto..
Yeah, back in the day we considered demonstrating our dedication to the Protestant Work Ethic more important than other people’s health. And that was dumb. Because people die from these things. We get thousands of flu deaths every year. Heck my brother-in-law, whose immune system had already been weakened from a couple bouts with cancer, got a summer cold that he couldn’t shake, eventually it turned to pneumonia and he died. And everybody who’s ever died from these things got it from somebody else, somewhere in the chain that led to them being sick is somebody who didn’t have to go out and expose others to their germs, but they did. And somebody died because of it. Maybe not somebody they gave it to directly, but they kept the chain going.
I don’t care what states mandate. It’s the smart move from the companies. Companies should not want their work environments to be disease pits. And people should not want to be disease spreaders.
It is easy to stay at home if one is in the laptop class and have generous sick leave and vacation time. I don’t mean to be uncaring, but you can’t just shutdown a business or the economy because immune deficient people are at an increased risk of major health issues and death.
You keep going off into a land that has NOTHING to do with what I’m saying.
The math is very simple:
Companies that don’t give employees ample sick time are doing the wrong thing
People that have good access to sick time and don’t use it avoid spreading disease are doing the wrong thing
People that don’t have good access to sick time, refer back to point 1, find a better job
It’s especially true when you realize that the jobs most likely to not have good sick policies are food service. How screwed up is it that 1 job a society would benefit the most from not having sick people show is the most likely to force sick people to show up.
I said NOTHING about shutting down business or the economy. I’m saying people (including the people in charge of companies) should use the power of ENLIGHTENED SELF INTEREST and DO THE RIGHT THING.
Look at the countries that didn’t lock down in 2020. Most of those countries have a strong level of social pressure to not spread your illness. It’s already very standard in Japan and Sweden to recognize that just because you’re not very sick doesn’t mean that people you expose to it won’t get much sicker, so don’t be a vector. If you want to not have lock downs step 1 is get buy in for the social contract. For most jobs nobody is going to die if you don’t go to work for a couple days. But if you keep spreading a cold or flu eventually it will find somebody to kill.
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