This is a point employers often overlook: working with other people means exchanging bacteria, viruses etc.
The more people there are and the higher the turnaround, the higher the likelihood of disease. Covid has finally shed a light on this.
A friend of mine gives tours at a museum of modern art; he says what you say: it's almost a part of the job to get sick at least once per year, typically in flu season in winter.
Employers should be forces to either guarantee there only a very small and stable team of people you meet on a daily basis -- or pay employees premium for the risk they incur because of diseases.
The alternative is to live like people live in Japan where everyone wears a mask all the time during flu season. But people in the west are often too lazy and "individual" for that. I don't really like to be overly broad and generalize, but the COVID stats prove it clearly:
https://pandem-ic.com/japan-and-us-are-worlds-apart-on-pande...
This attitude is more dystopia than any micromanaging over the shoulder boss.
"Companies should pay an employees a stipend for the risk of..... human contact!"
I already lament the world where parents are fined and sometimes jailed for letting their kids exist independent of surveillance, and we do not need to take further steps into isolation and atomization
Indeed, besides the obvious social damage it does (you're basically chopping people up to be fodder to amoral adtech industries) there's something to be said for the hygiene hypothesis and its continuation throughout life.
Casual and constant exposure to infectious agents (natural ones, not those transmitted over TCP/IP) develops and maintains an immune response. It's not just the brain wired to have interactions with others, it's the whole gestalt.
Most people at my office seem to get sick from their kids who in turn get it from daycare. Should employees pay for that as well? I guess the alternative is to just never employ parents.
A friend of mine gives tours at a museum of modern art; he says what you say: it's almost a part of the job to get sick at least once per year, typically in flu season in winter.
Employers should be forces to either guarantee there only a very small and stable team of people you meet on a daily basis -- or pay employees premium for the risk they incur because of diseases.
The alternative is to live like people live in Japan where everyone wears a mask all the time during flu season. But people in the west are often too lazy and "individual" for that. I don't really like to be overly broad and generalize, but the COVID stats prove it clearly: https://pandem-ic.com/japan-and-us-are-worlds-apart-on-pande...
/rant over/