I heard on the radio a story about how a good deal of illness — and absenteeism — is caused by “presenteeism”: People coming to work sick. If people stayed home when they were sick, it would often be better for them, for coworkers, and for their employers. At the same time, there are obvious pressures to come into the office, and obvious barriers to employers’ making it easier for people to stay home: Among other things, if employers were more generous with sick days, more people would stay home even when they aren’t that sick, either because they’re deliberately faking it, or because they think they might be sick but really aren’t that sick.
I don’t claim to have any good answer to that problem, but I do think it would be helpful if one could somehow objectively measure just how contagious one is likely to be — perhaps some sort of quickie home saliva test or some such. Are such things available? Are they likely to be available soon?
I’d sure find it handy as an employee. And as an employer, I might be more willing to cut extra slack to trustworthy employees (i.e., ones who I think won’t just fake the results) who call in and say “Sorry, I can’t come in because my contagiousness level is [some high number]” than just those who say “Sorry, I can’t come in because I’m under the weather.” (In some situations, I might even demand that an employee who looks sniffly take a test, and go home if he’s too contagious.)
It might also be helpful for social purposes. I hate to infect my friends, but I also hate to stand up friends (especially for a small sit-down event such as a dinner party) when I’ve promised to join them. If I had an objective measurement of likely contagiousness, rather than just a subjective and imprecise measurement of how I’m feeling (which in any event is far from perfectly correlated with contagiousness), I’d feel much better either coming over or not coming over, whichever is right.
Of course, I realize that contagiousness may vary both with behavior — handwashing practices, closeness of contact, and the like — and with the nature of the disease. But I’m willing to consider crude estimates, if no more precise ones are conveniently available.
Oh, and finally, one other factor: I don’t want to infect my baby, but I also don’t want to stick my wife with all the baby-related work (and she doesn’t want that, either). If I had some decent measure of likely contagiousness, then perhaps I’d know better when I should avoid handly little Benjamin — and my wife would know that I’m not just coming up with an excuse to get out of baby duty.
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