Quote:
Originally Posted by Flint
Since people are fascinated by comparisons to the flu, remember-- we do everything we can in response to the flu.
Every year, as a healthcare worker, you MUST get a flu vaccine or you are NOT ALLOWED to show up to work. Employee health will send you home and dock your pay. For the general public-- an awareness campaign of "get your flu vaccine" is broadcast to the public by every means possible, and you can go to the pharmacy, drugstore, many places to get the vaccine.
That's because we HAVE a vaccine for the flu. That's the tool we have.
For coronavirus, we are using the tools we have. It's the exact same thing-- the exact same response. A full-court press using the best tools available.
The best takeaway is that the flu response should be MORE robust-- we should focus MORE on hand hygiene, we should do MORE* to make sure workers are not showing up sick. If we are serious about public health, we could reduce the flu deaths.
*anything
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This! This a thousand times.
It has been a constant source of frustration to me that standard absence management systems in most major companies inexorably lead to people attending work when ill -
Points based systems and 3 strikes and you lose your bonus type systems - regardless of whether all those absences were legitimate or not.
So - maybe you hurt back and have a couple of days off work, then a couple months later you catch a stomach bug - and then when flu season hits and you end up with a mild to moderate case of flu, do you call in sick to protect your colleagues, and in doing so potentially face a disciplinary warning and loss of your annual bonus - or, do you take lemsip or other flu meds to alleviate the worst of the symptoms and struggle on through the week til you can rest at the weekend?
We are so blase about seasonal flu, yet it kills thousands of people every year - and we just pass it around the office soldiering through the week with very little thought to how that virus may affect one of the people we pass it to, or the people they pass it to.