"I Think I'm Sick ... Time To Party!"

It's a cliché you see play out in virtually every zombie movie: A beloved side character's been bitten, but no one saw them get infected. So they naturally claim to be perfectly okay if anyone asks, hiding the wound and pending zombie conversion. Then, a bit later, at the worst possible time, the infection will take over, and the protagonist will have dramatically kill their friend to spare the whole group. 

That leaves us on the other side of the screen to yell our frustration at the TV: "No, don't hide it, you're not going to beat the zombie virus, just confess and don't screw over everyone else!" Because if we were infected with a horrible illness that would harm other people, we would absolutely tell the truth about it, right?

About that ... 

In a series of surveys spanning several thousand people, researchers from the University of Michigan found that 75% of people reported hiding an infectious illness from others and would do so again in the future. Health care workers, who you would hope recognize the risk of being sick around sick people, were better about hiding their own infectious diseases. But not by much. Just over 60% of health care workers reported hiding illnesses. Thanks for that one.

Naturally, in one of the sub-surveys where people were asked if, in a hypothetical situation where they were sick with a severe illness of minor, moderate, or severe chance of spreading infection, not many people said they'd hide their infection. But in another sub-survey where actual sick people were included, those were sick were much more likely to say they'd keep their social plans and cover up their illness than healthy people were.

Now, seeing as this is the United States we're talking about, home of sucking it up and doing your work anyway (or else you're fired), one might imagine that most people felt pressured into working through their illness because their actual ability to live depended on it. And yes, that is a motivating factor. Some people definitely had to fight through an illness at work because they didn't have sick leave. But the most-reported reason for hiding illnesses was because it would interfere with social plans like dating, boarding a plane, or going to a party. You know, really important, vital things that you couldn't possibly miss.

Of course, having been through the pandemic, this research is really confirming what we already knew: That people are kind of dumb and terrible. Even the researchers themselves say that "solutions to the problem of disease concealment may need to rely on more than just individual good will." And if that's not an inspiring thought to finish off your week, I don't know what is.