I think it is rude too. I hate when kids send their kids to daycare sick. I suppose the same goes for schools. The reason we all get sick so often is because people go to school, work or even church sick. I think it comes down to money and work. Parents do not want to lose a day's pay. They also do not want to keep their child home, again a missed day of work means no pay. There is no other reason why a kid should go to school sick.

That is what is so scary about different diseases possibly wiping out a huge amount of population. We are all so used to "sucking it up" and continuing on with life.

What we do not realize is that if we all stayed home and got better, we would end up getting sick less. We would stop passing everything back and forth.

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4070/4369627924_ccd7f6f7ff_m.jpg

It really doesn't bother me if people come to work with a cold or the flu. I eat a sensible natural diet, take my Echinacea tincture twice a year and therefore I won't catch whatever they are trying to bring into the office.

Prevention is better than cure and I prefer that. I'd rather spend a little bit of money every day extra for good food and herbal remedies and supplements than to be sick. I just don't see any advantage in being sick, so I prefer prevention.

This also saves me a lot of time as I don't have to hang around in doctor's surgeries or hospital emergency rooms or queue up in pharmacies and spend money there. I really can do without all that.

I don't like it, but I understand it. In my office, the official policy is "go ahead and stay home." But, everyone knows that a) no one is going to cover for them, and b) they are going to be held accountable for getting behind. So, there's an overt message that is completely counter to the covert message. It's sort of like someone encouraging you to take a cookie while holding a knife over the plate. In cases like that, people generally go with the covert, unspoken message. So, my guess is that a lot of people feel like they're in a lose-lose situation, and come into work to try to stay caught up and prove to the boss that they can suck it up and stick it out.

I keep hand sanitizer at my desk, and have found that if someone is sick, I generally don't catch it if I'm careful about my proximity to them and keeping my hands clean. I do think the responsible thing, though, is for work places to make it okay to stay home sick. If someone has a compromised immune system, it's not fair to expose them to sick people.