[eyelidlessness]

I’ve been remote most of my >20y career, and my team now is fully remote. So I’m admittedly biased in favor of remote. That said…

My housemate recently started a not-remote job. They don’t go out much otherwise, and yet we’ve both been down with covid just shy of a month in. Sending people to work in person will inevitably spread this disease and others. I understand that some people are willing to take that risk for their own sake, but my housemate didn’t have a choice and neither did I. The effect of these kinds of policies for inherently remote-capable work is to prioritize whatever perceived or real benefits of physical presence over disease prevention. And the effect of that is inevitably a higher rate of spread of disease.

Some jobs must be done in person, and I think we can all generally accept that. But it’s reasonable to question the impact of some other jobs which could be remote arbitrarily demanding physical presence. Whatever the reasoning, if your policy is that people who could work remote mustn’t, your policy is choosing to risk infection of those workers and people in contact with them. Choose carefully.

(Of course I know no one making these policies is choosing carefully. They’re choosing to risk infecting their workers and anyone around them be it Joe Grocer or Grandma)