From a pile of blankets in Denny's Den - Denny Scott editorial

Last Friday, I sat in my den wrapped in every blanket in the house because that seemed to be the only way to fight off the preternatural chill that had set into my bones. I was fighting off some kind of cold/flu that someone had been kind enough to bring home with them and share with the family. (How do I know? Well, I wasn’t the first person to battle it.) As I sat, sipping lukewarm water, I reflected on what a difference a couple of years can make when it comes to self-care and maturity.

 

Last Friday was my first day of work after putting the newspaper together the previous Wednesday. After that, I was feeling run down, so, after lunch, I decided to have a nap. I slept for three hours until an alarm woke me to go get my daughter off the bus. After that, I spent the rest of Wednesday and most of Thursday in bed trying to get healthy, which was a new experience for me.
Sure, if I’ve fallen ill on a weekend or a holiday, I’d take my time in getting better and get better acquainted with a pillow while some old television sitcom was on in the background. However, any other time, even if I was were only able to manage sitting up with some sort of blanket tying me to my chair, I’d keep on working.

 

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and its associated lockdowns, all but the most savage illnesses would keep me from working. I may have worked from home, but to actually stay in bed for most of a day and focus on being healthy? Well, that just wasn’t something I was programmed to do.

 

Sometime during that pandemic, however, I started to realize (and I even wrote a time or two here) that it’s in my own best interest to give my body time to heal, just like it’s in everybody else’s best interest for me to limit my outside exposure.
And yes - as someone pointed out to me, not everyone has the option to stay home when they’re sick. They might not be able to afford it or they may be a business owner whose business just doesn’t run without them. My revelation certainly isn’t a one-size fits all solution.

 

But it should be, shouldn’t it? I mean, this may look a little left-leaning, and not following the  centralism that I claim to follow, but shouldn’t the government be making it so people can afford to not come to work sick and spread diseases?

 

Before anyone starts calling me a Pinko Lefty or a Communist or a Socialist (I was never sure how that last one is supposed to be an insult), I’m suggesting this based on a purely fiscal evaluation (see, centrist).

 

Let’s take a look at something as simple as influenza (which I may have had) and something as complicated as COVID-19, since the latter is the hot topic of our times (which I did not, according to the tests, have). According to the Canadian Institute for Health, it costs the Ontario health care system $23,000 for an average hospitalization based on COVID-19, four times more than $5,000, the average cost for hospitalization due to influenza.

 

As a matter of fact, it cost the country nearly $1 billion in health care costs to take care of people with COVID-19 as of September of last year (so that number has likely gone up).

 

That is, of course, completely ignoring the cost in human lives that COVID-19 cost the country and the world.
Would some kind of universal, guaranteed sick day benefit stop COVID-19 or the flu in its tracks? No. But it could have helped, and it could still help prevent people from spreading other viruses.

 

Did you know that in Canada, every year, there are 12,200 hospitalizations due to influenza? It might not sound like much compared to COVID-19, but that means we’re spending, as taxpayers, an average of $61 million annually to treat the flu in hospitals (and that doesn’t take into account how much we spend on free flu shots). 

 

Ontario’s average daily individual income is around $144 a day, meaning that, if we could stop, say, 90 per cent of hospitalizations by taking the stigma out of taking a sick day, we could provide over 200,000 people a few sick days a year for when the flu does hit. Sure, that may not seem like much compared to the near 15 million people in Ontario, but it could certainly help the one third of Ontario residents who are considered vulnerable workers. That’s just from the flu. Imagine if we were able to stop the spread of COVID-19 earlier on, before we even required a lockdown or vaccine mandates. 
Just a little something to think about.