Diseases of the upper respiratory system. Complications, and work.

The coronavirus pandemic poses a huge challenge for employers. Due to quarantine or an employee becoming ill, employers lose "hands on" work. It is not uncommon to have several pairs at one time. In today's post, we'll look at the report of the study "Return to work of recovered workers after COVID-19 and employers' attitudes toward their reported complications," conducted in cooperation between LB Medical Institute and SW Researchonad Research Agency. The attitude of businesses raises concerns. In telegraphic terms, it looks as follows: "either get well or lose your job."

The medal has two sides

The attitude of entrepreneurs, while firmly on a knife-edge, is not due to their bloodthirsty-capitalist approach to running their businesses. It is a very difficult situation for both sides. An employee faced with such an "ultimatum" experiences a drastic drop in simply trusting his boss. The drop in trust causes a lot of stress, and when livelihoods are at stake, the situation gets very tense which causes a significant drop in the immunity needed to fight off illness or possible complications, and the circle closes.

On the other hand, we have employers who have already moved heaven and earth for a very significant period of time to provide their employees with various additional medical packages, reduced working hours or paid sick days and often weeks. All this comes at a cost, and despite the best intentions of employers, the "bag" is not bottomless.

A handful of statistics

The above measures were declared by 24% of employers. However, 42.7 percent did not think to provide information about the condition to their employer, and 18.4 percent felt that this information was not important to the boss. In relation to simply having a job, 12 percent did not raise the issue with their boss, and 13.2 percent thought the symptoms would simply pass quickly. Due to illness for a period of 7-14 days, work was interrupted, as many as 30.4% of people, but for a period of 15-21 days slightly less at 26.2%. Only 4% did not take advantage of the work break. Added to this are other factors related to the disease itself but also the pandemic situation. We are talking about environmental depression. It is caused by just such a factor as the whole coronavirus situation. In connection with this fact, an increase in sick leave due to depressive episodes has been reported, by as much as 71% in 2020 compared to 2019. The sum of it all is tens of millions of days of absenteeism from work. That's a not inconsiderable cost to exhausted employers.

Upper respiratory diseases are complications

This group of diseases, leaves serious marks on a person's health after its course. Weakness, lack of energy, lowered mood, deterioration of memory are among the "milder" ones. We already know that the virus attacks the human nervous system which, in addition to the most common loss of smell and taste, is associated with human cognitive dysfunction. This is known as "brain fog." Also of concern is the increasingly reported post-vaccine thrombosis resulting directly from the administration of the vaccine. We can give many more traces of the course of the disease, but we just wanted to draw attention to the psychosocial and economic damage caused by the pandemic. This is a serious threat to the functioning of Polish companies and the entire economy of Our country. We would like to write something positive at the end of the entry, but how it will all unfold, simply neither we nor anyone knows.