Posted on 10/06/2020 10:59:03 AM PDT by Kaslin
As we slide into cold and flu season, it’s time to remind everyone that it’s most polite and sociable to keep yourself and your family home when you’re sick with something contagious.
Most social difficulties in life should be solved with simple politeness and consideration. One of the most basic ways we function together as a society is by caring about each other, working together as families and communities. As we slide into cold and flu season, it’s time to remind everyone that it’s most polite and sociable to keep yourself and your family home when you’re sick with something contagious.
It’s been a long-standing point of confusion for me that so many people go out in public when sick. I don’t mean allergies or a sinus infection, or something you’ve seen a doctor about and it’s clearly non-contagious. I’m referring to the people who come into their crowded office with a recent fever or vomiting.
Stop it. Sharing might be caring, but no one wants your stomach bug. I’m also baffled by the people who dose their children up on Tylenol or Motrin to bring down a fever, then send them off to school or group activities. You’re spreading sickness, with no way to control how many other people you’ll infect or how seriously it could affect them.
I understand it’s hard to miss work. It’s complicated lining up childcare, especially childcare that can handle sick little ones. It’s no fun missing out on fun events, family celebrations, or special days. Sickness comes at inconvenient times, at least in my experience, and often worsens over evenings and weekends.
But as hard as it is for you to deal with the fallout of being sick if you avoid staying home while ill it just passes the illness on to other families and forces them to make the same hard decisions and struggle to balance their lives.
Dragging yourself or your children out when you’re unwell isn’t a heroic service to the community but the exact opposite. It’s inconsiderate. It’s also possibly part of the reason your family got sick in the first place—other families with illnesses not staying home.
Talking about this issue recently with friends, we discussed a very serious side of going in public with illnesses that can be mild for most people: inadvertently infecting a family with an at-risk member. An inconvenience for many people can quickly become a tragedy for a family with a loved one undergoing chemo, or with an organ transplant, or a limited immune system. Suddenly that bothersome fever is no longer just an annoyance, but a scary and dangerous situation.
So many of us live with loved ones who are valuable and immensely important parts of our families and can’t weather colds and flu as well as others. Keeping sickness out of our homes, as much as possible, is an important way we show our love for them.
My feelings about keeping your germs at home aren’t new. I’m not unsympathetic to how long it can take for illness to work its way through families with multiple children, either. I have four kids, and when they were younger many times one got sick and passed it to the next, and we missed more than a week of normal life. I understand it’s hard. I’m not minimizing that.
But what I am asking is that we start considering each other. My first responsibility is absolutely to my family. I expect you to take care of your family as your first priority, too. And staying home when sick is part of taking care of your own family.
We all heal best with rest and time to recuperate. None of us get better quicker from illnesses of any sort by going out in public, going to school, or sitting through a workday. Pushing through illness doesn’t help us in the short or long term, and it doesn’t teach our kids any great lessons about care for their bodies or communities.
It’s not a benefit to the world to venture out when you’re sick. Stay home. Keep your feverish kids home. Have some really nice soup. But don’t come out and share your germs, because the rest of your community doesn’t need them.
Sharing your contagious illness with the rest of the world really isn’t doing any of us any favors, and it’s not helping those in your own home, either. Consider those around you who are more vulnerable, and just stay home. Get well.
And then come back out. The world will be there waiting for you.
People with contagious diseases should self-isolate, including colds and flu out of consideration for others.
Wrong. TO have a healthy immune system you must be exposed to disease. It is part of life. Now, I am not saying that people should intentionally be exposed to ebola or a disease that extreme but it is arguable that every person under 45, without a severe comorbidity, should be exposed to COVID. It would kill few and makes everyone more safe.
An open letter from Holly Sheer to Xi Jinping?
“People with contagious diseases should self-isolate, including colds and flu out of consideration for others.”
Agreed, but it’s difficult for those that have workaholic bosses who think they’re tough by coming to work when sick.
I know few people who are inconsiderate enough that they would go out and DELIBERATELY infect people when they know they are sick.
The whole problem with COVID has been that it’s largely asymptomatic and you don’t know.
If you fear dying, you fear living. You can’t take all the risk out of living. The Left and the Rats have gone bat$h!+ crazy over COVID. Trump is showing the way. Protect the vulnerable, but everybody else needs to be at school and at work. Vote for the Rats and the inmates will be running the asylum.
“Wrong. TO have a healthy immune system you must be exposed to disease. It is part of life. Now, I am not saying that people should intentionally be exposed to ebola or a disease that extreme but it is arguable that every person under 45, without a severe comorbidity, should be exposed to COVID. It would kill few and makes everyone more safe.”
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Exactly.
Kids should get it now before
they are older.
Ever heard of parents exposing their kids to chicken pox.
My immune system is exercising
when it’s fighting.
It makes it stronger.
I miss making mud pies
but working in the garden is similar.
Is dirt cleaner than a handrail?
“One of the most basic ways we function together as a society is by caring about each other, working together as families and communities.”
When did that ever happen?
On 50s and 60s TV.
Hey, Holly. Grow up,and grow a pair. There’s more germs on the inside of your mouth right now that floating around in the air.
I was weird as a kid, I loved playing in dirt. Dug deep holes in my yard and climbed inside to play. Crawled around under stairs outside and played with dirt and spiders. Me and my friends enjoyed exploring hills and bushes. As an old guy, I enjoy working my garden, and spreading compost and worms from my compost pile.
I rarely get sick, haven't had the flu for 4 or 5 years while others around me expose me to their sicknesses. Early exposure to germs helped, I guess.
Yep.
Used to be at my work you got sick days and vacation days. Five sick days a week that carried over and ten vacation days that did not. But they decided it would be easier just to ave PTO days instead. And none of them carried over
This planet of ours has had viruses on it that we all have lived our entire lives with. We catch many of them. Some people die from them; we ALL die from something, however..
How many years have YOU (whoever) been on earth? If you’re reading this, you’ve survived THAT many years while living among viruses like Ebola, Swine flu, Bird flu, Measles, mumps, Chicken Pox, the Black Plague, etc.... Yet, you are STILL here Who DOESNT get sick now and then??? Since WHEN is that a societal threat?
I understand it’s hard to miss work.
Agreed, but it’s difficult for those that have workaholic bosses who think they’re tough by coming to work when sick.
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Long before China flu reared it’s ugly head, our church pastor repeatedly told the congregation to stay home, if you’re sick. We don’t want you here, if you are sick.
It seems that some people think they must go to church, no matter how sick or contagious they may be.
Five sick days a week that carried over
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I don’t think that you meant that. Maybe 5 per year?
ie. everyone should spend the rest of their natural lives walking on eggshells in perpetual fear of affecting another person no matter how remote.
You were expected to keep 15 days in your bank. After 3 weeks of sick leave STD kicked in.
To the author of the piece: SHUT UP, KAREN. Some of us have to make a living. Business owners don’t get “sick days.” Not everyone has a cushy job writing condescending, risk-averse, female-hormone puff pieces like this piece of virtual birdcage liner.
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