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...

/rant over/