To expect people ill with Covid stay home?

[LakelandHiker]

This week, my manager and a friend who goes to my exercise class are ill with Covid. I don't know if they've tested, but they've both said they have it. However one is still coming into the office and the other still attending the exercise class. AIBU or overreacting here... but why don't they stay home until clear? Even if 'feeling 95% better' wouldn't you wait until potentially exposing others? I can't help but feel mad at them both for being so selfish. I often look after an elderly relative and can't risk passing Covid on to her as she is frail. I get life can't be on pause forever but my manager can get paid sick leave and my friend can miss a class, it isn't like there's anything at stake...

Sat opposite someone unwell today, we only have to do 6 days per month so no real need to be in. The throat clearing every 30 seconds was annoying!

The world is full of bugs and illnesses.

You cannot expect people to stop working if they’re well enough to do so.

The responsibility lies with you in practising good hygiene and hoping for the best.

If everyone stayed home every time they were slightly poorly, or didn't wash their hands, or change their clothes after work etc ... there'd be nobody around!

It would indeed. But we just went through the peak of a pandemic where people could be criminalised for not isolating, whilst simultaneously not paid enough to keep a roof over their heads should they stop working. If that didn't do it, I don't know what will.

Its you yhat shoukd read the thread
You exoect people to potentially lose there jobs ?
Its not 2020 anymore people have no choice but to work HTH.

For many people covid is no more than a cold. You can't expect people to miss work for covid any more than they would for a cold. If people can miss work without other negatives, then yes take time off, but remember many people don't get sick pay etc, so missing work puts them and/or their company in a really difficult situation. You can't expect them to do that just in case they pass a vulnerable person. Who will presumably be vaccinated against both flu and covid anyway.

Going to work is one thing but don't to leisure activities/hobbies and spread it to others when you don't need to. That's just selfish.

yanbu, we have SIX people properly out sick at the moment after two people came in
last week complaining of headaches and feeling hot etc. I’d expect it in the same way I’d expect someone with a bug, chickenpox or a bad flu to stay home

Where did changing clothes come from??

If as many people who could stayed home when they were ill then there'd be an awful lot less illness around. It takes the ill people being out and about to keep the bugs going round. Etiquette that say try to avoid passing on illness if you can without losing your job etc. benefits everyone in the long run.

I do wonder if they genuinely know they have covid or have surmised from symptoms. Because I wouldn't have thought the venn diagram between people who go to the effort and expense of covid testing years after the end of free testing and of people who'd go to a presumably indoor exercise class knowingly positive has much overlap. It's not like 2020 where people had unlimited free stash access and could test to their hearts content for something to do, even if they weren't actually that bothered.

Woek places dont givr a shit.

Well fair enough but then why test and tell.people.you have covid in the first place. If my colleague came in with a cold id probably open a window and try not to get too close. Fine. If they came in the same but told us they had covid id be asking why theyd come in. Im not saying you have to stay home. I understand some people can't wfh BUT THEN WHY TEST AND TELL US??
Not you obviously- but thats the circumstances the OP is complaining about

Sure. My point was, if you are in the office and you are sneezing/coughing you tend to say something like “ sorry, I’ve got a cold”

I don’t think saying “sorry, I think I’ve got Covid” is an announcement, it’s just the sort of thing you say when you feel ill.

I wouldn’t, that was my point. This post was in response to someone else.

I agree testing and announcing it while out and about is daft

Yes it's like that where my husband works. I agree it's madness and no way to treat adults.

Exactly the same at my place

Another immunocompromised person here. Covid could make me seriously ill.
I also know of someone who died of Covid last week. Not prior illness, just caught it and it turned to pneumonia and they died. They were a colleague of my friend in a very public/people heavy role.
I know life has to go on these days but people are still impacted greatly.

Well they aren’t saying they’ve got a cold though, they saying/announcing they have Covid.

Well apparently at least some Boots stores have sold out of tests, so I think perhaps more people than you think are interested in knowing what they've got. Not people who've continuously tested every illness since 2020, just people wondering what's making them ill.

My take is it seems to have been particularly nasty so far this year, plus there's flu going around, and being more ill makes some people more curious.

I should add:

Manager can work remotely, we get sick pay too.
Friend has now told me she had tested positive. So yes, people do still test.

And yes they both announced they have it.

I can tell the difference between Covid and a cold - Covid gets right into my sinuses and I sneeze shitloads - but that’s just the way it presents in my body. I would try my best to keep my distance and definitely wouldn’t go to an exercise class, but otherwise I’d still go about my business. Life has to go on. My dd was extremely unwell and vulnerable as a baby - it never occurred to me to try and stop people living their lives and we took our own measures to keep her safe. Some of these were a bit bonkers, eg, dh stripping off on the doorstep before coming into the house when he got back from work. If we were planning to see friends and one of them had a cold we would choose to stay away, rather than ask them
to. You can’t expect others to care in the same way you do about your family - we are responsible for ourselves. I’m sure people will hop on with all sorts of what ifs, but it’s unreasonable to expect people to take measures that have a negative effect on their own family.

Well, hopefully none of us will be testing, and so we'll never know we have Covid! We'll assume that we have a cold, and we'll just carry on as normal - like we're supposed to.

People with any type of air or touch borne contagious illness should avoid others.

Whether it's upper/lower respiratory, cold, COVID, flu, TB, whooping cough, random viral or bacterial infection with no name yet.

Anything that can make others sick by close contact. But some people are so selfish. Or just thoughtless.

This exactly.

I'd much rather be at home if I'm unwell, I really would, unfortunately it's a punishable offence, and that's the culture that runs through employment to the point we needed to have legislation during covid to specifically stop employers bullying workers into going to work with covid.

There's your problem right there, not people being martyrs or anything else, but that culture in employment. Until that changes, which I doubt it will, people will still go out and to work with illnesses like covid because they're punished if they don't. Not hard to see why it happens.

Well then yeah theyre dickheads. What's the point in testing if youre going to do nothing with hat information other than potentially worry people