It has been a few years since COVID dominated the lives of most people around the world. For America, it marked a quick and messy cultural shift in how we act and interact. Now it feels as though we have somewhat shifted back to how we operated before the pandemic and personally, I don’t think this is a good thing. It is true that you are much more likely to see someone wearing a mask nowadays, but the sight is still relatively uncommon. I think we need to start giving diseases a little more respect. This would mean not only consistently wearing masks when one is sick in public, but also shifting our expectations of people who are afflicted with disease. I think that it should be the norm that if you’re sick, nine times out of ten you just stay home. 

You may think I am being a little dramatic; a cold, after all, is rarely very serious. The CDC reports that adults in the US get two to three colds a year on average, but I think we can get those numbers down. The average college student might be a little higher than that. Several of my friends have been sick this past week, which they so kindly decided to pass on to me. Something definitely seems to be going around here at EMU the past few weeks. For students this creates a dilemma. Do I go to class feeling terrible? Or do I stay home and rest? Unfortunately, oftentimes sickness is not considered an excused absence. Some professors are more understanding than others, but it really depends. I think that it is both unfair to students and detrimental to public health to have students going to class sick. The current system incentivises going to class even if you are sick because you are likely to fall behind and may even be penalized for it. This creates a situation where students are going to class with colds and giving them to other students, resulting in even more students potentially missing class.  I think that if students were encouraged to not go to class with a cold, it would result in less students missing class overall. 

School isn’t the only area I think this is a problem, however. Workers also are not given enough allowances for illness. All too often the culture in the US does not do enough to prevent the spread of illness. I think of the countries in Asia where wearing a mask was common even before the pandemic. I don’t know if something like that would ever happen again in America unless another COVID happened, which is why I think it is even more important to change expectations around sickness. Being in public while sick is bad for public health and your personal health, so why do we do it? We should all agree that it’s better to stay home and make the necessary changes to make that a feasible option so people don’t feel like they are forced to go back to work or to school.