I don't know about the rules in California, but in most places you're not supposed to go back to work for at least a week if you've tested positive regardless of your symptoms. This is to prevent further spread, of course.

It's quite likely that most of the workers in question aren't worse off than with a "normal" flu, but they're still going to be away from work for a while.

FYI: A so called "normal flu" is usually not a flu, just a bad cold. If you get the flu it's normally a lot worse than bad cold.

Agreed.

Someone defined the difference as "if you think you're going to die, and feel that dying might be better than staying sick - then you have the flu. Otherwise you have a cold.".

At some point you have pneumonia.

Was super sick once. Was informed that a child was pouring chocolate milk on my laptop. I couldn’t have cared less at that point.

I don't think these people can afford to take that week off. Most of these people are paid by the hour. If you aren't working, you aren't making money to pay bills and get groceries.

I am making some assumptions here, but I would venture to guess a lot of these people just fake it and grind through it just to stay employed.

COVID probably won't _kill_ you if you are young and fit -- but it can certainly leave you sick in bed for a week or so.

I had it mildly (as in I didn't feel in mortal danger) early on, and it completely knocked me out for over a week. I'm a software developer and couldn't even have considered getting out of bed and working for the majority of that time, there's no way in hell someone who does actual labour for a living is going to manage it.

Not to mention what's called "long covid" - basically even if you are an athlete, you risk lung damage to an extent even a life of chain smoking can't achieve, and there have been reports of coronavirus passing the blood-brain barrier and damaging the central nerve system.

Coronavirus has many, many, MANY ways of affecting a person for decades to come, and we're learning more about it every day.

Edit: since I'm getting downvoted, I assume this comes from people who want sources, so here they are:

- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-lungs-scarring-smokers-lu...

- https://www.helmholtz.de/en/health/what-damage-is-potentiall...

It's not yet clear that covid can result in lung damage more severe than a life of chain smoking, this kind of long term research hasn't been done yet.

Is the answer to ignore anecdotes until long term data has been done? Sometimes science doesn't have the needed solution quickly enough to minimize damage. Being overly cautious in times of uncertainty has always been a human risk minimalization technique, might as well wield it, in moderation of course.

No, but it's similarly unwise to over-index on them.

Can you restate your point in non programmer jargon? The downside is chronic health problems, the upside is minimal. Theres not much unwise about waiting for more info and staying cautious.

>It's not yet clear that covid can result in lung damage more severe than a life of chain smoking

that seems like a very low bar to set

Not really sure if either can cause more severe lung damage then they do. The worst case end scenarios of both are your lungs being so damaged that it kills you. Hard to make it worse than that.

Though one manages it in a few weeks while the other takes decades.

There are multiple reports of extremely damaged post-COVID lungs already, see my edit. Of course, the amount of these cases is low - but even if it turns out to be one in a million cases, I'd never gamble on these odds.

Why have I heard that it's possible to spread without any symptoms at all? Is that wrong?

Generally the rules are that if you have COVID you stay home to avoid transmitting it to other people (who may be more vulnerable or who may themselves transmit it)

Ah so its effectively like a flu wave but possibly more infectious, and with longer sick leave. Makes sense that this leads to labor shortages.

Like a flu... but with all the differences.

A bike is like a car. It has wheels and you ride it from point A to B.

> While the true mortality of COVID-19 will take some time to fully understand, the data we have so far indicate that the crude mortality ratio (the number of reported deaths divided by the reported cases) is between 3-4%, the infection mortality rate (the number of reported deaths divided by the number of infections) will be lower. For seasonal influenza, mortality is usually well below 0.1%. However, mortality is to a large extent determined by access to and quality of health care.

> While the range of symptoms for the two viruses is similar, the fraction with severe disease appears to be different. For COVID-19, data to date suggest that 80% of infections are mild or asymptomatic, 15% are severe infection, requiring oxygen and 5% are critical infections, requiring ventilation. These fractions of severe and critical infection would be higher than what is observed for influenza infection.

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2...

And aside from that, a large problem with covid-19 is the DDoS on the health care system stemming from the severe infection rates, which can create large second order effects.

Almost 0.1% of the US population has died from COVID so far, coupled with changes in total capacity due to COVID restrictions and changes to how workplaces operate, it's a lot more impactful than a flu wave to business operations.

I feel you are being willfully ignorant, and I have to suggest you look into the severity of COVID and the statistics so far. It's been going on for over a year now, the information is out there.

Almost 0.1% of the US population has died with COVID.

Check excess mortality for 2020: ourworldindata.org doesn't have the figures for Dec yet, but we'll end up with something close to 440k additional deaths compared to the average 2015-19.

So 0.1% probably is the correct order of magnitude.

If anything, it’s an underestimate. Regular flu deaths are way down for 2020 (masks and social distancing work!), but are included at their normal rate in the baseline for excess mortality.

Same applies at smaller scale for other factors in baseline mortality, like traffic deaths and industrial accidents, that have also been suppressed by policy and behavior changes due to the pandemic.