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Notes -
Do you know men who get "man flu"? Are you a guy who gets "man flu"? If you don't know what man flu is, my understanding is that it's the idea that men are lazier than women when they're sick. I heard this and wrote it off, like most gender war stuff. Men don't help around the house enough, women earn less than men for doing the same work. But I keep seeing guys defending the idea that viruses make them sicker than women.
This is completely anathema to me. My father would go years without taking a sick day. He would get sick every few years during his busiest work event of the year, when he'd be pulling 12-hour-plus days. Growing up, I don't recall ever hearing about anything being put off in our social circle because a man was sick. My mom, on the other hand, was down all the time with one thing or another.
My father-in-law is the same. In 2021, he clearly had COVID. His wife was in the bedroom for days; he was out shoveling snow, cooking, and then making everyone play cards with him.
The only time I take "medicine" is when I'm at work events pretending I'm not sick. Afrin and a constant supply of cough suppressants..
Maybe I'm that guy? I try not to be a bitch about it, and probably call out sick a day every year or so, but I'm prone to being whiny about being sick in a way that I'm not about being, say, physically injured.
Like, I'm sick right now, have been since waking up with a sore throat on Tuesday, and things have been trending more worse than better over the last few days. It's not worth going to a doctor (stocking up on real sudafed and maybe some throat spray, on the other hand, is on the to-do list for tomorrow) over, and I'm not seriously ill, but this sucks and is a crappy way to spend my vacation. My throat/tonsils are sore as fuck, I'm still freezing under this blanket, and the super dry conditions (visiting family in the desert when I live in the humid South) plus nasal congestion are not a nice mix.
Oddly enough, I don't think I ever caught Covid in spite of having a roommate hospitalized with it in the pre-vaccine days. If I did it was a light enough case that I couldn't distinguish it from "generic flu-like illness that's over in a day or so", or a really bad hangover.
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Women do actually have generally stronger immune responses than men. This paper I found interprets the difference through a evolutionary biology lens: males pursue a higher variance strategy compared to females, prioritizing competitive attributes like size/strength over more conservative survival traits like resistance to infection. Interestingly, there seems to be a concomitant downside: women are also more prone to autoimmune disorders than men.
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So apparently, according to a random article I read a while back, testosterone does increase the severity of illness (I’m on my phone or I’d dig up the citation). For the record, no one in my family except my brother gets super sick (minus migraines, which everyone but my father and sister get).
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It's not that men get sicker, but that when they do need to be taken care of or take a load off, the contrast is more stark. Let's say a husband and a wife are both under the weather 10 days in a year, with 2 being ugly. If the man takes those 2, and quietly shoulders the rest, while the wife, is at various levels still in commission for her remaining 8, one might misread the batting average.
My wife is open that she needs to lean on me more than I am allowed to lean on her because she's the woman (generally, not about being sick). (I agree!). She's self-possessed enough to recognize that gender dynamics aren't even. So the thing is that occassionally, a man gets knocked on his ass, and it looks like he's being a bitch.
As an aside, I cannot recall the last time I took a sick day at work, if perhaps ever. However, the person who took the most I ever met was a former male boss. Nice guy but extreme stereotype of a leftist. Used phrases like 'adulting'. So maybe it's also about the type of company the type of person who uses the phrase keeps?
Me neither. I basically never get sick.
Banking sick days is good in the case that I do come down with a sudden case of multipleinterviewswithadifferentcompanyitis that will take too much time beyond a “dentist” or “doctor’s appointment.”
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The "no sick day" pride thing is confusing to me. My employer allows a certain number of sick days, why would I not take advantage of those for days when my productivity would be affected by being sick or my recovery would be impaired by working? Not to mention knock on effects of getting my co-workers sick.
There's no bonus for not using any sick days.
Unless your company is unusually weird, you have to lie to take advantage of them though -- which you kind of should do anyways, but it's not great.
Why do you have to lie?
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