Since the world went all pandemicky on us, a lot of us have been saying it's foolish to try to predict the return of normalcy. This is all so unprecedented and so many people are not doing what others would call "the logical thing" that most predictions have been pretty useless. When the wise folks who run Comic-Con International announced that their 2021 event — scheduled for last weekend — would be virtual and not in person, there were all these outcries: Surely COVID crisis would have abated by then, allowing us to convene in the flesh. Hasn't worked out that way, has it?
It's much, much better than it was before the vaccines but we ain't outta the woods yet on this one. I'm repeating my "no predictions" policy not to remind you it was right but to remind me it was right. I've forgotten it too many times lately.
Working at home for most of the last few decades, my life hasn't changed that much. Back when I was on staff on various TV shows, I had to get up in the morning, make myself fit to be around others and go to an office and be around others. There are many, many good things about that lifestyle just as there are many, many good things about working with few (if any) people around you. And there are downsides to both.
One of the downsides to my "staff" years was that there always seemed to be someone in the office who was sick. I don't mean "sick" like in "coronavirus sick." I mean "sick" like in "bad cold sick" or "flu sick." And due to some misguided notion of heroism and/or devotion to duty, they would not stay home when, it seemed to me and others, they should.
I remember an Associate Producer on one show. Her work was vital but I think she was afraid that if she took too many days off to get better, it would become dangerously apparent that others could cover her responsibilities. And I'll say this for that concern: The guy who owned the show was constantly thinking about how few people he could have on salary. Less people on the payroll meant more money for him and he sure liked more money for him. That factored into every decision he made.
So this A.P. was often coughing and congested…and also not functioning at 100%. She made a lot of us uncomfortable and while I couldn't prove direct causation, her presence at the office (instead of at home in bed) did seem to lead to others coming down with whatever the hell it was she had for a month or three. She got better but she never got all-the-way better.
A person with the power to do so finally ordered her to take a few days off and she did…but not enough of them. When she decided she was well enough to return to work, she was back — still coughing to punctuate every sentence, still sounding less like a thirty-something-year-old woman than like Lurch on The Addams Family. Someone who didn't have the power to send her home again said, "She thinks she's helping the show by working while ill but she's working half-speed and sending more and more people home."
I don't know if this is an old saying but people at that office were reminding each other, "When you think you're feeling well enough to go back to work, take at least one extra day off to make sure. Otherwise, you may just be prolonging the epidemic" — and they all used the word "epidemic." Maybe now that we have a real epidemic, we should err more on the side of caution before declaring it's behind us.