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Comment by cpeterso | Hacker News Reader

If you are sick enough to wear a mask in public, you should probably just stay home.

"According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the average number of paid sick days often corresponds directly with years of service. Here are the averages for workers in private industry: Workers receive 7 sick days per year with 1 to 5 years of service. Workers receive 8 sick days per year with 5 to 10 years of service."

"For colds, most individuals become contagious about a day before cold symptoms develop and remain contagious for about five to seven days." / "If you have the flu, you'll be contagious one day before developing symptoms and up to five to seven days after becoming ill."

One cold would take up all your sick days. By following your recommendation, someone falling sick more than once a year would have to quit their job.

The concept of "paid sick days" baffles me. It implies that when the doctor says you're too sick to work and hands you a certificate, you won't get paid by default or that it should even be legal to not pay you. No wonder Americans are so reluctant to see the doctor, if both the doctor is expensive and also they won't get paid if they're sick.

In most EU countries you are not allowed to work and your employer will get into trouble if he lets you work when you've got a sick cert. Your employer obviously also has to pay you and is not allowed to fire you for getting sick[1].

If this outbreak causes the US to update its workers protections for the 21st century, at least something good will come out of it.

[1]: in some countries you can receive a reduction in pay after being sick for X months in a row, usually to ~60%.

The service industry such as fast food has virtually no "paid sick days", and conveniently are jobs with lots of people interaction, poor pay, and poor if any health insurance.

So you "might" have the cold or coronavirus - do you go to the ER (costs hundreds even with insurance) and lose out on your pay? (Not to mention you'll likely have your hours cut as "punishment"). Or do you tough it out and keep making money that you need to pay for your rent?

Once worked for a Wall Street firm that had a "no sick days" policy. I came in every single day, sick as a dog or not, and as far as I can recall, everyone else did, too.

It's not just the poor--some of this really just is our (crazy) culture.

If that's the case, make sure you make the coffee / drinks / etc for as many decision makers as possible so they get the gunk from the glass.

In this thread about Japan, why are you ranting about the US? I think most people (at least Americans) have heard this before, and it would be more relevant and informative to describe the situation in Japan rather than the US or EU.

As someone who has worked in the service industry as a server, manager, and eventually part-owner, why should we burden the business owner with the responsibility to pay when someone is sick and unable to work? This is compounded by the fact that service industry often requires physical presence, which translates to the business having to pay both the sick worker and the worker's temporary replacement.

Doesn't this fall to the government to create some kind of aid? At the very least, the gov could offer a tax break for wages paid sick workers.

The business as an organization has a responsibility to value the humanity of the laborers they employ, which includes understanding that the greater benefit of paying wages is that now everyone has more money to spend on the business (assuming the business is actually good). Similarly, the business should be investing in making sure people are not coming into work sick, especially in the service industry! Spreading sickness to ones customers is a horrific idea. And lastly but not leastly, being able to treat people as humans actually saves the business money in turnover/training costs!

> As someone who has worked in the service industry as a server, manager, and eventually part-owner, why should we burden the business owner with the responsibility to pay when someone is sick and unable to work?

Because pooling risk results in more robust social systems.

The business owner can take the risk of losing a worker for a week much better than a worker can take the risk of not getting paid.

Because it aligns incentives properly.

If you don't get paid for not working while sick, and you need the money, you'll show up to work, and get other employees and customers sick. If the business has to pick up the tab for sick days, though, they are now incentivised to keep sick workers at home - lest they infect others.

I'd much rather have robust systems, with good public health incentives, then I am to see business owners pocket a few percentage points of profits.

You have not addressed why this is not a burden that should be shouldered by government versus business owners.

> I'd much rather have robust systems, with good public health incentives, then I am to see business owners pocket a few percentage points of profits.

For many small business owners, it can be the difference between paying yourself that week or not.

I think their point was it should be paid from a public fund instead of by the individual business, although I suppose most businesses must have sick pay insurance to pay this, do they not?

Although there are a number of socially related reasons - there are likely some significant immediate commercial reasons to do so.

If you're in a service related industry - do you want staff coming to work if they are (or recently) suffering from digestive illnesses? How would an outbreak of people getting sick after being at your facility look? It could potentially result in very very bad publicity - to the point of destroying your business.

If you're running a smaller business / facility - do you want an employee coming in and spreading the illness to your other workers in the early stages of being sick (and then later taking time off)? This could result in your business lacking sufficient staff to open if you can't use labor hire staff.

The reason why it might be good for businesses to provide an incentive (like sick pay) not to work when sick is that it reduces the risk of negative outcomes to the business.

There is nothing unique about American businesses that means they cannot pay sick pay. In the UK there is mandatory minimum amount that must be paid an employee is off sick for more than 4 days. So how many low paying jobs the statutory minimum is what they will get but many employers will offer your full-time wages for a certain amount for example the first 15 days or 10 days of sick per year. However if you are long term sick then you will eventually end up on statutory sick pay. But even that is better than nothing. And you should remember the many American companies that operate in the UK also offer this to their employees. Of course perhaps that is offset somewhat by not having them pay healthcare insurance for their employees (although there is National Insurance to pay for the NHS)

That's what insurance is for.

> why should we burden the business owner with the responsibility to pay when someone is sick and unable to work?

Is it really such burden to the business owner to see to the well-being of their employees?

> At the very least, the gov could offer a tax break for wages paid sick workers.

I like this idea, tbqh.

Not trying to argue the other side, but there are people who claim to be sick when they just want to be paid to not work. So an ideal system should also deal with that possibility.

There is a limit around where I live here in Eastern Europe. 15 days per year but there are exceptions such as pregnancy and whatnot. Plus they abolished a particular law so now the employer can fire you while you are on sick pay.

Wages paid are deductible business expenses already.

> Wages paid are deductible business expenses already.

Up to how much? I can't imagine wages paid are 100% deductible. Otherwise nothing's stopping people from starting businesses and paying wages to friends to reduce tax burdens...

Up to any amount, provided they are: Ordinary and necessary, Reasonable in amount, Paid for services actually provided, Paid for or incurred in the tax year. And the "any amount" has a limit beyond which you are found to not be operating a profit-seeking business.

(Those are the fairly standard tests for all business deductions, only the third is at all specific to wages.)

There's no way to "make money" by incurring additional expenses and deducting them. If you have $100 in deductible business expenses and your marginal rate is 35%, you are paying $100 in expenses and getting back $35 on your taxes, so you're still out of pocket $65.

"There's [usually] no way"

It’s 100% deductible just like most other businesses expenses given you only pay taxes on net profits, if it weren’t tax deductible you would end up with a higher tax burden than what your business makes and therefore can pay.

Paying family/friends wages counts as a business expense to the company and taxable revenue to the employee. The business can also incur additional overheads for having employees like payroll taxes, super, etc.

This is sad, but luckily, a lot of people in our industry can just work from home on sick days (even though, normally, working remote for them wouldn't be an option). On my team specifically (as well as my old team), you would be pretty much turned away and asked to stay home if you were sick, which is something I have come to heavily appreciate.

It's really fun to think about how Covid-19 will do in a country where the average worker has too few sick days, and where the cultural norm is to "just bear it" and continue working/attending school/being in public even when sick.

* applies to the US. And less developed nations.

Doesn't sound nice true.

How do you transmit the flu to others without symptoms like sneezing/running nose?

There exists a metric ton of other possible vectors for viruses to spread. It depends on the virus though.

We don't yet conclusively know what vectors this virus can use to spread.

I read on on alot, thank you.

> sick enough to wear a mask in public

As I understand it, the bar is really low on that. If you're coughing or sneezing, you should wear a mask. It doesn't matter if you otherwise feel fine. I don't think it's necessary to stay at home simply because you're sneezing, and I doubt it's a valid excuse to skip work or school.

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