Quote:
Originally Posted by BillyMac
If possible, stay home from work/school if you feel ill ...
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Back when I was teaching we had problems with "absenteeism" (playing hooky) but we also had problems with "presenteeism", students coming to school sick (colds, flu, pink eye, hand and mouth disease, fifth disease, lice, etc.), thus infecting others, including teachers. Mostly a problem caused by two parents working, with no baby sitter. And then there were students who prided themselves on their attendance, even when sick. For this reason I joined forces with the school nurse to do away with annual "perfect attendance" awards.
A classic case of hypocrisy, I was also an offender. Thirty years of teaching and I had only used one single sick day (influenza, despite getting the flu vaccine every year), even though I had accumulated the contracted maximum of 195 sick days. It was easier to come to work sick then it was to clean up the mess left in the wake of a substitute teacher. Almost every winter those "germ-ridden" kids would cough and sneeze in my "Petri dish" of a classroom and I would get a cold, often leading to bronchitis, or a sinus infection. I would get an antibiotic from a walk-in-clinic and be back in the classroom with no sick days.
After retiring from teaching, where I got at least one cold (usually two) every year for thirty years, I've only gotten a single cold over the past fifteen year since retiring (including working thirteen years as a chemist). I guess that being exposed to all sorts of rhinoviruses over thirty years (and noxious chemical fumes over thirteen years) gave me some type of natural immunity to colds. Of course, I'm no longer exposed to those "germ-ridden" kids.