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Licensed
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Bless
you! Feeling achy? Fevery? Shouldn’t you be at home? I mean,
after all, you wouldn’t want to spread swine flu to your coworkers
or customers, would you? Would you?
There are a lot of unknowns about the current outbreak of
swine flu: Whether the death rate is really as high in Mexico
as is being claimed; whether it will become a pandemic; how
fast we can make a vaccine; why it’s spreading now, outside
of the usual flu season. It’s scary, of course, as unknowns
always are, but it’s also not time to start heading for the
basement bunkers.
In some ways we couldn’t have been prepared for this, and
in other ways we are doing well. Governmental response has
been swift and fairly competent. International cooperation
has been high. Drugs are available and being distributed to
the states. But whatever the details of the current virus’
genome are, in certain key ways, we could have been ready
and are woefully not.
Not in any high-tech, disease research kind of way. I’m talking,
of course, about paid sick days.
Everyone who is taking a non-panicked look at the swine flu
question has a couple of basic recommendations: Wash your
hands a lot, cover your mouth when you cough, and if you’re
sick, stay home from work and see a doctor.
The former, we can do. I wish I had stock in Purell about
now.
The latter? Easier said than done for many of us, unfortunately.
As activist group Moms Rising points out, over half of U.S.
workers don’t have a single paid sick day. For workers in
positions to be serious disease vectors, it’s even worse:
92 percent of waiters and waitresses, and 79 percent of child
care workers aren’t allowed to earn any paid sick days.
It’s all well and good to think that if you know you have
some dread disease you should take one for the team and take
some unpaid time off to head off Global Pandemic, but we all
know full well that that’s not necessarily available either,
even if you could afford it. And these days, fewer and fewer
people can afford it.
Besides, if you wait until you’re sure you’re really sick,
as opposed to when you’re starting to come down with something,
which could be a cold or The Flu or something else, it’s probably
too late.
Not to mention waiting to go back until you’re all the way
better. Health officials told the Wall Street Journal
that people with possible swine flu should stay home for 48
hours after the symptoms have passed. Good luck trying
to pull that off. Although, maybe the panic will be a good
thing for a few ill people who can claim that whatever they
have is swine flu in order to get the rest/time off they need.
I’d take it a step further and say sick days are essential,
but by themselves not quite enough. If you have no personal
days or vacation and a small handful of sick days, you’ve
probably already blown many of them on a mix of mental health
days and urgent life crises. Don’t tell me you don’t know
what I’m talking about. Life happens.
So it sucks to not have paid time off. It’s one of those things
that activists agitate for, and it seems nice, but kind of
expensive and luxurious as a policy goal, especially in economic
hard times. And then something like swine flu comes along,
and it suddenly becomes really important to everyone that
everyone else take care of themselves.
Interesting. It’s like there’s a little break in the clouds
reminding people that many of those “bleeding heart liberal”
policies have actually got a certain self-interested pragmatism
about them. At least for the 99.9 percent of us who can’t/don’t
want to hole up in our penthouse with black market Tamiflu
and get fed sterilized meals through the dumb waiter. (And
in fact, it should be noted that isolating yourself from social
contact actually weakens your immune system and is generally
a bad way to stay healthy in all but the worst pandemic situations.)
So will we take notice? Will we take the opportunity to make
something good happen out of a swine flu outbreak? Or will
we let sexy technological stuff—like vaccine development and
super-duper antiviral meds—overshadow the kind of prosaic,
humanitarian public health policy choices (not to mention,
of course, health care reform) that could probably make a
greater difference for a greater number of people in the long
run?
Moms Rising has a petition calling for action to ensure paid
sick days. I signed it. And now I’m going to bed. I have a
long work week and I can’t afford to get sick.
—Miriam
Axel-Lute
www.mjoy.org
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