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.
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.