Cross-posted from Washington Policy Watch:

A growing body of evidence shows that a minimum standard for paid sick days would not only improve people’s health – it would also save the nation’s bottom line.

According to a recent report published by the National Institutes of Health:

the absence of certain workplace policies, such as paid sick leave, confers a population-attributable risk of 5 million additional cases of influenza-like illness (ILI) in the general population and 1.2 million cases among Hispanics. Federal mandates for sick leave could have significant health impacts by reducing morbidity from ILI, especially in Hispanics.

What’s more, access to paid sick days could save up to $1 billion in medical costs every year, according to a report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research(IWPR):

This includes $500 million in taxpayer-funded public health care programs for children, elders, and low-income Americans. Currently, more than 44 million American workers do not have access to paid sick days, and more are unable to use time off to take care of sick children or other family members.

Have you heard about the highly contagious Koala flu that turns people into horrifying, albeit adorable, zombie marsupials who subsist only on human thigh meat and eucalyptus leaves?

No, you haven’t, because it hasn’t happened — yet. When it does, we’re probably all going to get it because of annoying co-workers who insist on coming to the office when they’re sick.

Yep, humanity will meet its end thanks to Marge down in accounts receivable, who figured, despite the bad fever and hunger for human flesh, she’d suck it up and come to work.

That apocalyptic scenario might be slightly exaggerated, but it gets to the heart of a recent question from a reader who has had it with the socialist redistribution of germs: What is it about the modern-day work environment that encourages disease-carrying co-workers to come in and spread their viruses around the office park?

Turns out there are a couple things at play here.

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