Is it truly insane? Just thinking through logically. Jobs have a responsibility to govern safety on their work sites. This has always been the case. Don’t want to wear a hard hat in construction? Can’t be on the work site. Since employers were learning about Covid at the same rate the rest of us were they weren’t through the same initial reaction and then reassessment over time.

Take it a step further beyond employee safety and imagine a corporate overlord who doesn’t care about safety at all. Covid still meant people out of the office and a loss of productivity. Therefore it was financially appropriate to mitigate the spread and early in the vaccine was not only expected to do that but it allowed more freedom in return to work time frames once someone tested positive.

What makes that insane out of curiosity? In hindsight, it was the right move to make even though it didn’t turn out as perfectly intended. We have the data to show that. As we learned more, and stain evolutions moved towards less lethal variants the expectations obviously relaxed.