[rhynie]

You never stayed home with a cold? Your co-workers, if they could identify that it was you all those times getting them sick, would like to have a word with you.

Is this going to become like the anti-vaxx shit? Demanding freedom to get everyone around you sick, no matter the illness? Do we now have 40% of the US thinking it's a conspiracy that people infect each other with disease or something?!!?

Are showers now an uncool thing? Soap, are we gonna go backwards on soap due to some insane conspiracies peddled by sub-humans? Is this how humanity ends, in an irrecoverable stupid-spiral?

Thanks for always spreading those colds you had throughout your life. I am suuuuure everyone was only ever affected by it in exactly the same way it affected you (ie, you could still go into work). I mean, empathy is for suckers, am I rite?

[ubercow13]

Is it realistic to stay at home to prevent colds spreading? People with a cold are infectious for around two weeks, and get up to 4 cold on average a year. You may not be able to do your job from home easily, so that's 8 weeks of sick leave per year just to stop your coworkers getting a runny nose. Assuming you work 47 weeks a year, that's 17% of your work hours spent on sick leave, ignoring other illnesses.

In the UK you would not be entitled to pay for that sick leave unless you had a note from a doctor stating that you are unfit for work, which you would not be able to get for a cold. Moreover it is legal for you to be fired for taking too much sick leave, so you would be putting your ability to pay rent and, over the longer term, your job at risk.

[war1025]

> Thanks for always spreading those colds you had throughout your life.

Oddly enough, I heard a man on the radio speculate that the reason kids seem to be less affected by this than expected is because they have terrible hygiene and have built up immunity to many other coronaviruses floating around out there, giving them a leg up.

But also I think we must have different definitions of what a cold is.