If we lived in a non-influenza world that suddenly experienced influenza for the first time, we would think it's crazy to not only allow, but many times encourage, sick employees to come to work and basically take out the entire office. It's like just committing to losing a week's worth of productivity across the board.

One nice benefit of going more remote is that we can hopefully "personalize" the cold/flu experience vs. making it a de facto office-wide experience, and without the bizarre politics around vaccines/masks/sick-days/etc.

My objection is that it's generally creepy anytime an institution tries to control or monitor the inside of an individual's body. Same reason I find workplace drug tests extremely distasteful. Like you can give me all the arguments you want about why it's a utilitarian positive, but at the end of the day you're asking for a cup of my pee so you can sniff it. That's just fucking weird and dystopian.

And to be clear, I'm fully Covid vaccinated and get flu shots religiously. But when an impersonal institution is coercing and coaxing people into injecting something into their body that they don't want, I'm out. I won't vote for those politicians, I won't work with those companies, I won't cooperate with those federal agencies.

It's weird, it's creepy, it gives my lizard brain a bad vibe that screams "Get Away From Them FAST!" You can go on all you want about QALYs and ROIs and R0s. But that's about as convincing as a man with a pencil mustache and a windowless van explaining to me why he's qualified to babysit my kids. I'm sorry, I won't do it. I won't eat the bugs.