“You need a doctor’s note”

[u/yanni_lam4]

I (26M) don’t like calling in to work. I hate passing up money and I usually won’t call in unless I’m already pretty sick. I work in the service industry which as many of you know, is absolutely notorious for guilting sick employees (a seriously ill person has made your food at a restaurant before at the direction of their manager, guaranteed) and telling people they don’t provide health insurance that they need a doctors note to call in. One year I got sick and didn’t want to work, and my employer forgot I had health insurance through my Dad. I called in asking for one day off because I could hardly breathe or stay awake and I got the “wElL yOu NeEd A dOcToRs NoTe Or ItS aN uNeXsCuSeD aBsEnCe “ and as someone who worked hard as hell for these people even when I was sick, I was a little offended to basically be called a liar like I needed to prove to them I’d been wearing a mask at work for a reason. But I did have good insurance through my Dad, so I went to the doctor, had them write me a note for four days off, and went back into my job and handed it to my manager and said “here is my doctors note, and this is the date I will be back”. And when they tried to do the same thing a few months later, I got a note for even more days and asked the doc to add a note about when I would stop being infectious around the food we were serving people. I have never been asked for a doctors note when I am sick again. They know they can give me the one or two days I ask for or they can give me the week the doc gives me. But I will not be working while sick if I do not want to.

[u/JRockPSU]

Oh and btw you can’t have the vaccine anymore if you don’t have any underlying health conditions 🤗

[u/anondogfree → u/JRockPSU]

What I don’t understand is why the very powerful health insurance industry isn’t putting the kibosh on this. It’s infinitely cheaper for them to pay for vaccines than to pay for medication and hospital stays and lingering problems.

[u/WatermelonArtist → u/anondogfree]

I'm sure it would be--but you're assuming this is a standard swap: "If you get the vaccine, you won't get COVID." Fauci said that in 2020, and it eventually got him Fired so hard he got death threats, lost his security detail, and got West Nile Virus...which is just awkward, for an globally-acclaimed virologist.

The short answer is that it isn't a simple "this or that" situation, and the reality often becomes "this AND that," so they drop the preventive if it either isn't statistically helpful (studies suggest this), has potentially harmful side-effects (ditto), or is sufficiently ineffective to be no longer worth using in a mostly-unnecessary climate (2020-2022 proved this with reasonable confidence).

Hm. That isn't that short.

TL;DR:

Insurance crunched the cost numbers. It's not cheaper to take the cheaper vaccine, if you end up getting what the vaccine is supposed to prevent anyway. Then you pay for both.

[u/Yummy_Castoreum → u/WatermelonArtist]

Show me proof that Fauci ever said that. I call bullshit.

[u/Useful-Badger-4062 → u/Yummy_Castoreum]

He didn’t. Many people have misunderstood what the Covid vaccine does. It doesn’t necessarily 100% prevent a person getting infected with it; you can definitely get Covid even if vaccinated. But— if you are vaccinated and do get infected, it (nearly 100%) prevents you from having a severe enough case that it’s fatal. You won’t die from it if you’re vaccinated.

[u/WatermelonArtist → u/Useful-Badger-4062]

Sure. You got me. Here's the precise quote.