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Comment by leptons | Hacker News Reader

Before covid, my coworkers would get half the office sick, including me, about 4 or 5 times a year. Back then it was just taken for granted that getting sick was a part of life. Well I haven't been sick in 3 and a half years since working from home, and masking, hand sanitizing, etc. Covid changed me, and I don't regret any of it.

I've lived the excesses of over-funded startups - I don't need the catered breakfasts and lunches, I don't need the endless snacks and drinks, I don't need the fancy desk chairs or fancy desks - I need to not get deathly ill several times a year.

That's the absolute #1 top reason why I won't go back to an office. It's not just about covid - it's about all viruses and illnesses that coworkers spread around the office. Heck no I don't want any of that in my life anymore. No thank you.

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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/

This attitude is more dystopia than any micromanaging over the shoulder boss.

"Companies should pay an employees a stipend for the risk of..... human contact!"

I already lament the world where parents are fined and sometimes jailed for letting their kids exist independent of surveillance, and we do not need to take further steps into isolation and atomization

Indeed, besides the obvious social damage it does (you're basically chopping people up to be fodder to amoral adtech industries) there's something to be said for the hygiene hypothesis and its continuation throughout life.

Casual and constant exposure to infectious agents (natural ones, not those transmitted over TCP/IP) develops and maintains an immune response. It's not just the brain wired to have interactions with others, it's the whole gestalt.

The alternative is Europe, where people take off when they're sick.

i work in europe and people still go to the office while sick; the famous "eh, it's nothing!" when it's in fact, something.

Sounds like a truly horrible alternative indeed.

Don't get me started on all the vacation you have to take or how quick it is to pop over to anywhere from Kingston to Istanbul

Most people at my office seem to get sick from their kids who in turn get it from daycare. Should employees pay for that as well? I guess the alternative is to just never employ parents.

the alternative is letting people work from home if they want

I have worked in open offices and private ones and there is maybe a factor 4 of more sick days in the open office according to my guesstimation.

It is mainly the long air sharing I believe that can be a difference. You still go to the same toilettes and touch the same doorhandles.

It almost always comes from either the employees that have to travel a lot for their jobs OR people with kids... because of course kids, younger more so, trade the illnesses around and also help them mutate and spread more.

> Before covid, my coworkers would get half the office sick, including me, about 4 or 5 times a year. Back then it was just taken for granted that getting sick was a part of life.

Any thoughts on how this happened? Did not have this experience in a diverse 40-year job history

People feel they have to come in if they’re mildly sick for a variety of reasons.

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