I think mainly though it would help if parents didn't send their children to school when they weren't that well and if schools stop sending letters to parents who keep their children at home when ill
Still doesn't solve the childcare problem it produces though. Lots of people can't afford unpaid leave nor will employers allow it. And this is particularly so for some small businesses and the self employed.
There's no enough slack in the system to accommodate this. Nor do people have support from extended family locally which they might have had in the past.
Keeping kids off school for longer will also be disproportionately the burden of women (and single parents in general). And this will hit jobs which predominantly have female workers.
Like... nurses... and carers.
The issue here is our entire system of society is based on people just getting on with things if the have a common cold. You are not going to be able to restructure this in a few weeks in response to an emergency and politically and economically this isn't a priority (especially when you consider that more nurses is a current top political priority)
I'm not sure if it's realistic even if there was political will for a lot of people too. If you have an immune system which is weaker would it mean you were stigmatised - could this mean it harder to get a job for example ? Remembering we are entering an age where our health records are being sold by stealth to various data companies (see example of health records going to a phone company supposedly to help over depression and how questionable this is).
And economically what support would there be for self employed and small businesses owners?
I don't know what the solution is. It's all very well saying these things about how we should be doing x, y and z but paying no attention or passing no comment about just how far reaching the implications and consequences of changing that are entrenched and how the burden of those changes will be disproportionately spread.
It's idealistic pie in the sky nonsense.
The reality to a certain extent is that we have a society where mild ill health is accepted as normal. The problems are really not about that, but really about our lack of response ability to crisis and the lack of resources to support that. That's about planning, investment and research at state level. Something that's been massively stripped in the last 12 years.
Anyway I'll park this incoherent ramble at that. I just want people to think things through and identify the real structural failures here rather than coming up with almost virtue signalling comments about what we should all be doing. How about considering the real barriers about why that's not feasible or straightforward at the same time.
I think this is why I'm fairly resigned to the course of things, because frustratingly when it comes down to it there's so many restrictions on what you do on a practical level. It's almost as if we are already locked into events. And have been for years.