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Comment by williamcotton | Hacker News Reader

Minor sniffles and sneezes should not result in anyone staying home.

The pandemic has clearly altered this mentality but it doesn’t seem like a good trajectory. A little cold is barely an inconvenience.

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No. Keep your kids home if they are sick. An screw every parent who thinks this way. My family got sick 6 times in the last 12 weeks because of this nonsense. If your kid is sick it's your fault if other kids catch what they have.

I dont care if it's "just the sniffles" It causes so much inconveniece for my family.

This is how it always was before covid and how it will always be if you send kids to germ factories (aka schools). Get the meds, drink water, go to sleep.

Part and parcel of living in modern society.

It doesn't have to be this way. Covid has nothing to do with it. I didn't like it then, and don't like it now.

Then move to the boondocks. You want the benefits of community without the consequences. It's not going to happen and no I'm not going to sequester myself or wear masks for everyone else's benefit.

Unfortunately even if you have a "zero sniffles and max masking" policy schools are just a breeding ground for germ transmission. You're usually "infectious" before you're symptomatic, so it spreads like wildfire anyway.

School sicknesses are so common that it might almost be argued that the point of public education is to make sure everyone is exposed to as many diseases as possible.

I completely disagree with this defeatist attitude, and I do not think it is supported by evidence.

Regularly washing your hands reduces spread of the flu by 30%. (Old study, not going to find it.)

I will believe anti-disease spread measures are effective until they are proven otherwise.

> You're usually "infectious" before you're symptomatic

This trait of Covid was what made it unusual. For the flu, the most infectious period days 1-3 with symptoms. ("Period of Contagiousness" in [1]... of course there are exceptions.)

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/keyfacts.htm

Sure, and you should take reasonable precautions (including not penalizing "sick days" in various ways), but if kids go to school they're going to get sick.

I agree with this but if you knowingly send your sick kid to school everyone should be united in being pissed off at you.

If you're sneezing and sniffling, please for the love of god, do not go to the office.

Even before the pandemic we had that policy, and it's a very good default. No, colds are not the end of the world, but they are genuinely miserable, and you will share it. And if money is all somebody cares about, well, colds also diminish work output, so one ne'er-do-well going in sick can screw up an entire department's metrics over the course of several months.

My office basically dictates that we show up regardless. Why? We work in legal services and our clients depend heavily on us and with massive consequences when we make mistakes. Court mandated deadlines don’t care about a runny nose.

I see no measurable impact on performance.

This is just another way of saying you're under-staffed so owners can capture more of the value of your labor. It's neither virtuous nor effective.

No, it isn’t. I work side-by-side the CEO and as a colleague and he works more hours than anyone else. He’s a great person and a friend.

We have multiple people in a company of about 15 who have worked there for over 20 years.

Who are you working for?

Maybe for somebody who doesn't make him go to the office when sick?

> Court mandated deadlines don’t care about a runny nose.

No, but whatever industry you work in and whoever your employer is, they should have enough staff to cover minor illnesses and absenses. If you are off sick and your company misses a court deadline thats on your companies poor staff management, not on you for being ill and staying home to avoid infecting coworkers.

Business isn’t always steady so it’s not tenable to have too many people onboard. Although we are hiring. It’s just hard to find experienced software engineers who can communicate with lawyers and are willing to do things like code inspections with nothing but a pad and pen. You certainly won’t be living the Googler lifestyle but it is way more meaningful, energizing and sociable.

Pretty much this. People keep kids home now for almost any reason at all and you'll get a chorus of replies telling you that your opinion is wrong.

People need to toughen up. Not every cold is covid.

Why do you care? Most public schools are so slow now you could miss a month and they would still have not covered more than a week of material

If you really think that, then you don't have a kid or worse: you have an abysmal school district.

Part and parcel why I purposefully bought a house where the district was highly rated. Missing several weeks is a serious blow.

I do have a kid in school. he’s a year ahead in Math simply by taking 1 class a week in supplement math school. Sure we have to do 15 homework day but that’s just an example of how slow they go. My kid is also pretty darn average so it’s not a natural talent thing. I have to drill flash cards with him cause school fails to teach those. All they seem to do is play games on the tablet. Maybe they learn something but it seems more like politically correct tv time.

Trust me, you're kid is smarter than average simply by virtue of you posting here.

Also- getting cold symptoms and simply not acknowledging that it could be covid doesn’t make it not covid.

There are so many cold critters out there that have always existed. Everyone blames covid when it's clearly the season flu, it's nonsense. It's time to move on.

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