In most (western, don't know otherwise) countries, you stay home when you're sick, and get paid because it's outside of your control. No matter if that is day 1 this year or day 20.

So employers need to be careful not to hire sickly people?

It's illegal to discriminate against someone because of their medical background or disability unless it's critical for the job. For medical background they wouldn't be able to get the information anyway.

Sickness is just part of the cost of doing business with people, not robots.

> So employers need to be careful not to hire sickly people?

Wow. O.o

So in US employers just whip sickly people into coming to work or how does that line of reasoning work?

Well here in the UK you don't have a limit on the number of sick days. You get sick you go off work. It's separate from normal PTO allocation.