I always wondered about this. For COVID, the recommendation is that you have to be symptom free for 14 days before you are considered not contagious. Adding another 7-10 days of actual disease, you will be asking people to take 21-24 days off for a disease ? That is simply not accepted in American corporate culture, where many mothers return to work 2 weeks after giving birth
Then we need to start accepting it. Those that don't will be the assholes who kill their employees and co-workers. Legislating sick time off, like every other developed country in the world and many that aren't, is what we really need to do. Along with healthcare for everyone. But it all starts by not accepting the assholes at the office trying to kill you as normal.
Realistically, I mean symptomatic (coughing and sneezing). It’s not perfect but people are typically most contagious while they have symptoms.
Plus, when you don’t need bed rest, you can still do any work that can reasonably be done from a remote location. Most companies haven’t done much to push that boundary in the past, and that’s a good idea, but it’s not a complete solution by any means.