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If you have the flu -- the real flu -- you can barely lift your head from your pillow, and you sleep for days. This is nature's way of making you STAY HOME AND GO TO BED. I don't know how people find the strength to get up, get dressed, get in their cars, sit in a doctor's office, then drive to the pharmacy, etc. I guess it's the belief that this is all that will save them.
Some workplaces have switched to "PTO" banks that include sick time, doctor appt., personal time, and vacation time all in one. For those, they don't care at all why you're gone so there is no special reporting or documentation required unless you get into "family leave" or short term disability.
That's not the case at all.
I work for an organization that has a PTO bank like you describe, and we can only have four unscheduled absences a year. The fourth day is an oral warning. The fifth day is a written warning. A doctor's note doesn't matter. Funnily enough, we do accrue so many hours of "medical leave" per pay period, but can only take that after the fourth consecutive day off! It is rarely used except for something like a scheduled surgery approved well in advance.
If you were down all week with the flu, you could take a "scheduled" day off, but that has to be approved at least two days in advance - so I could get approved off for Thursday, with it being Tuesday today. Otherwise, you'd receive a written warning.
To the bolded: Where I work everyone, from the cleaners on up the tenured professors and the deans have to provide medical documentation for sick absences that exceed 4 days. That includes their own absences and those needed to care for a sick household member.
My workplace required this as well, but what satisfied them was pretty broad. If you were so ill you shouldn't or couldn't get to the provider's office they would accept a call from your provider, or provide the note after the fact with proof of an office visit. The point was, they wanted someone to back up your claim to illness. I suppose your reputation as a malingerer or a dutiful employee helps quite a bit.
So if a truly lethal contagious disease were decimating the population, would employers still require that people venture out for doctor's excuses and would people still consider that a legitimate reason to spread the germs? My point is that we need to stop doing what makes an epidemic worse and start doing (or rather doing as we did in the past) what contains and limits it.
I work for an organization that has a PTO bank like you describe, and we can only have four unscheduled absences a year. The fourth day is an oral warning. The fifth day is a written warning. A doctor's note doesn't matter. Funnily enough, we do accrue so many hours of "medical leave" per pay period, but can only take that after the fourth consecutive day off! It is rarely used except for something like a scheduled surgery approved well in advance.
If you were down all week with the flu, you could take a "scheduled" day off, but that has to be approved at least two days in advance - so I could get approved off for Thursday, with it being Tuesday today. Otherwise, you'd receive a written warning.
I have not worked in a long time, but recall my work life and the worry about taking off days whether sick or not or sick of working. TOo bad the U.S. isn't close to European countries and the sick time they give their people. I can remember some jobs just made me sick so I stayed home to veg out. One job I had one almost had to be dead, if you were not real sick the boss's calls made one more sick.
My workplace required this as well, but what satisfied them was pretty broad. If you were so ill you shouldn't or couldn't get to the provider's office they would accept a call from your provider, or provide the note after the fact with proof of an office visit. The point was, they wanted someone to back up your claim to illness. I suppose your reputation as a malingerer or a dutiful employee helps quite a bit.
That's the thing: it's a workplace with over 30,000 employees. To the department who collects documentation for absences, the employee is just a name on a spreadsheet, amongst a couple hundred other employees who exceeded 4 consecutive sick days.
I think sick days is a whole other discussion, although obviously it plays into this phenomenon. We still have babies, young children not yet in school, and the elderly being dragged out of their sick beds to go contaminate a doctor's office and then pharmacy or grocery store in order to be "tested" and then "treated" at great expense to the health care system and for dubious rewards versus risks because a drug commercial on TV has told them this is necessary when it isn't...
Do you have a link showing that you deaths have been declining?
They are now inflating these flu deaths from other causes (Strep??) to place fear in the public to increase Flu Shot uptake for those not under Mandatory vaccination (Children and Health Care Workers). "It is still not too late get your (90% ineffective) Flu vaccination. Marketing 101 from someone who worked for a Big Pharm.
Take it from an Elderly, Vulnerable person who MUST her vaccination and DEMAND the younger generation not be SELFISH and get their's to protect us and the children.
Come on. You cannot see the Marketing Strategy? When purely selfish you yourself doesn't work, use guilt to protect others.
We aren't really debating the flu vaccine -- or weren't.
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