Did the pandemic change our relationship to being sick?

I cringe when I remember how blasé I used to be about illness. I was that person who refused to stop going to work, the gym, or social events “just” because I had a cold.

The COVID-19 pandemic completely changed my outlook on what’s acceptable to do while sick. But has a similar change happened across the U.S. population? Signs point to no, as I report in my latest story.

While some experts feel the public has become more knowledgeable about and interested in health and disease, that attention hasn’t necessarily translated to drastically different behavior and cultural norms. Roughly the same percentage of U.S. workers have access to paid sick time now versus before the pandemic, and lots of people still show up to work sick, data show. Even a global pandemic, it seems, wasn’t enough to uproot long-standing ideas—like the ones I used to hold—that it’s best to suck it up and muscle through an illness.

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