This is a time where it would be preferable to live somewhere that has good free/cheap health and social systems: if you're sick, you stay home and there are limited social or financial repercussions.

So many people where I am will just "soldier on" because they have no choice.

I'm living in such a place and if you have a cold it is normal to go to work even if you are sick, it's really hard to make people stay at home just because they feel a bit ill. Remote work has to be come more accepted.

There's still social stigma not being able to work 100%. Even if people were just clerks for eachother and total Waste, the stigma would still be there. People seem to not mind infecting others.. Except as dictated by political correctness.

There's a difference between going to work when you're sick because "you have to" and going to work when you're sick because "you feel mostly fine".

This is a virus that in it's milder forms generally just causes a cold. I've never stayed home from anything because of a cold. Colds are just a fact of life. I imagine a lot of people feel similarly.

You never stayed home with a cold? Your co-workers, if they could identify that it was you all those times getting them sick, would like to have a word with you.

Is this going to become like the anti-vaxx shit? Demanding freedom to get everyone around you sick, no matter the illness? Do we now have 40% of the US thinking it's a conspiracy that people infect each other with disease or something?!!?

Are showers now an uncool thing? Soap, are we gonna go backwards on soap due to some insane conspiracies peddled by sub-humans? Is this how humanity ends, in an irrecoverable stupid-spiral?

Thanks for always spreading those colds you had throughout your life. I am suuuuure everyone was only ever affected by it in exactly the same way it affected you (ie, you could still go into work). I mean, empathy is for suckers, am I rite?

Is it realistic to stay at home to prevent colds spreading? People with a cold are infectious for around two weeks, and get up to 4 cold on average a year. You may not be able to do your job from home easily, so that's 8 weeks of sick leave per year just to stop your coworkers getting a runny nose. Assuming you work 47 weeks a year, that's 17% of your work hours spent on sick leave, ignoring other illnesses.

In the UK you would not be entitled to pay for that sick leave unless you had a note from a doctor stating that you are unfit for work, which you would not be able to get for a cold. Moreover it is legal for you to be fired for taking too much sick leave, so you would be putting your ability to pay rent and, over the longer term, your job at risk.

> Thanks for always spreading those colds you had throughout your life.

Oddly enough, I heard a man on the radio speculate that the reason kids seem to be less affected by this than expected is because they have terrible hygiene and have built up immunity to many other coronaviruses floating around out there, giving them a leg up.

But also I think we must have different definitions of what a cold is.

What do you mean by "social repercussions"?

Many people at offices in the US look at taking sick time as lazy and bosses will pressure you to come in anyway

You mean, normal employees? That's weird.

And the "bosses" seem especially dumb. If one person is sick and contagious, you risk to get your entire team sick and then have to shut down operations.

>So many people where I am will just "soldier on" because they have no choice.

Soldiers, usually, don't go alone into the enemy territory. Commandos do. They go alone and fight against everyone.

"Soldier on" is a semi-commonly used phrase that I suspect most (at least Americans) reading the comment knew exactly what they meant.

Unsure if you were just unfamiliar with the phrase or wanted to point out something you felt was inaccurate about it.

> Soldier on

> v. To continue or persist, despite adversity or difficulty.

Commando would better fit the description of "Sabotaging the team, product and costumers"

The quoted text was:

> So many people where I am will just "soldier on" because they have no choice.

That seems to fit exactly with the definition you posted.

> v. To continue or persist, despite adversity or difficulty.

They don't have any choice but to go to work, so they go to work.

I honestly don't understand what you're getting at with your "commando" idea.

Could you BE any more pointlessly pedantic?

80% don’t require hospitalization, but a significant fraction of those still involve pneumonia (not to mention high fever, muscle soreness, etc.).

It kills the elderly, the immunosuppressed, those with heart disease, any pulmonary issues. You know people being treated for complicated diseases.