Michelle Durbano
I contracted one of these bugs while working in research at a hospital. This was over a decade ago. Although I didn't feel so sick that I could not commute in, I decided to stay home. However, my manager explained to me that there was a policy at the hospital: If you are too sick to go to work, you can work from home.
Although the rule's logic is sound, it could have had dangerous consequences. Many people would have gone to work to avoid being sick and risked transmission.
Although many companies have policies that prohibit employees from coming to work if they are ill, it took a pandemic to make clear what must be an ethical norm: individuals should be held responsible for reducing the chance of spreading the disease. The covid-19 pandemic taught us that public health is everyone's responsibility.
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No matter how unhappy they are, people feel pressure to work. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's 2021 report found that 75% of UK employees reported being presentees and continued to work despite being injured or sick in the workplace during the previous 12 months. Although presenteeism is a well-established phenomenon, it doesn't seem like a global pandemic will stop it.
The US and UK laws explicitly prohibit the intentional or reckless infliction of diseases on another person, including covid-19. Yet, many people continue working and exposing themselves to others when they are sick without any legal consequences.
These countries should consider prosecuting the majority of their working adults for violating the law. Or, decide that the behavior isn't clearly reckless. Both are acceptable, however.
It is not enough to change the legal framework. We need to create a culture shift that encourages employees, their families, and friends to get well before they can return to work. The role of companies must be expanded for sick leave protection and public safety, not just to benefit the employees who are sick.
Presenteeism, a form of presenteism, perpetuates the spread of the diseases that infect us each year. Flu is one example of how we live. Although many people only experience mild flu symptoms, 650,000 people are killed each year by seasonal flu. This is 6.5 million more deaths than the covid-19 epidemic has seen in just a decade. When Sajid Javid, UK health secretary, says that we should accept covid-19 as much as we do the flu, it is asking us to agree to millions of avoidable deaths.
Philosophers Julian Savulescu and Neil Levy, both from the University of Oxford, have published an article in Public Health Ethics earlier this year arguing that covid-19 is a way to highlight the social norms that we need to change when dealing with future pandemics or any other pathogens that could pose a threat to public health.
This is true regardless of whether or not covid-19 is here to stay. Avoiding contact with others, even if you are suffering from flu or other coronaviruses will help to prevent transmission.
Instead of treating covid-19 as flu, we should treat annual flu outbreaks and other pathogens like covid-19. It is a moral failing to allow viruses to spread that we don't consider fatal.
We don't change our contagion norms, which is a disrespect to the millions of lives lost in the last 18 months and the thousands more that are lost each year to other diseases.
