Is it unethical or immoral to not tell someone else you're contagious?

[credoconsolans]

A friend came to visit me from 500 miles away.

I was the only reason this person was in town. We planned a long weekend together.

The day after this person arrived I came down with a horrible cold.

I did not tell this person. What could I say? "Oh, thanks for coming, but now you need to turn around and go back home?"

I drugged myself up and managed to pass off my sinus-y sounds as 'allergies' and spent time with this person in close proximity.

Sure enough, after going home, within the normal incubation period of a rhinovirus, my friend came down ill.

Only thinking it was just allergies or mild, continued with their sports and then ended up in the ER deathly ill with bronchitis that doctors thought might have been pneumonia.

This person was normally healthy and athletic and in shape. Not immune suppressed or anything like that.

Should I have said something once I DID come down with something? It might have already been too late since the day they arrived, I still felt fine and we hung out.

It was just a bad cold that I was over in a week.

Thoughts?

 

[HaRaAYaH]

Yes, you should have said something and given the person the option.....

 

[Treedbear]

Is it unethical or immoral to not tell someone else you're contagious?

If he could reasonably make the assumption that you would have told him so, then it was unethical and therefore also immoral. What you need to do is ask yourself whether you would expect him to tell you if he was ever contagious. Also if he discovers you knew you were contagious but decided not to tell him would you still expect him to tell you if he becomes contagious in the future. Of course it depends on the severity of the malady. Would you warn him about shaking your hand if you had poison ivy? Probably. With a simple cold you might be excused for thinking it wasn't that serious, except that it seems that you consciously superceded his right to decide for himself.

 

[ronburgundy]

Is it just me, or are "colds" getting far more severe and long lasting? I am just getting over a 5 week "cold" that had me laid out for about 10 days of it.

Anyway, yeah, it is unethical not to tell someone. I made sure tell everyone and did my best to avoid shaking hands. In fact, I have been getting such bad colds each year that I'm on the verge of adopting a no hands shaking policy with anyone ever. I am pretty sure that my recent cold was actually 2 colds where just as I was recovering from the first, I caught the second one from a friend who didn't reveal until I called him on it when he blew his nose after cutting up some salami and cheese that we all shared.

 

[Treedbear]

It's amazing the difference in etiquette you see between western and eastern societies. Maybe it's not as typical as it appears on TV but it seems the asians all wear masks when they have a cold so they don't spread their germs as much. Perhaps bowing rather than a hand shake might have become their tradition for the same reason. In the west the standard seems to be you are under no obligation to look out for the community's health. And the idea of shaking hands as a sign of trust needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

 

[credoconsolans]

I feel bad about it.

What would you do if you planned a trip for months with a friend, took off from work, spent money on airfare and hotel, only to be told 24 hours after arriving that the person you are visiting is too sick to visit with you and you should go home now?

 

[Alcoholic Actuary]

I feel bad about it.

What would you do if you planned a trip for months with a friend, took off from work, spent money on airfare and hotel, only to be told 24 hours after arriving that the person you are visiting is too sick to visit with you and you should go home now?

Honestly, I wouldn't turn around and go home. But I would appreciate knowing the environment that I was entering and would take the opportunity to load up on vitamin C and Airborne etc. And then if I still got sick I would only have myself to blame (as opposed to mysterious contagious 'allergies')

aa

 

[Bronzeage]

Thoughts?

I'm going with unforeseeable consequences of circumstances.

The odds are better than even that your friend could have already have resistance to the virus that you had. It just so happened, it was a strain that knocked him out. As you said, he had no particular risk factors, so ordinary precautions should have been sufficient. If you had told him you had a cold, I can't imagine he would have run away.

None of the above would apply to a STD.

 

[Kharakov]

Thoughts?

If someone has something like TB, or some other potentially dangerous pathogen, they should be required to warn people.

 

[DBT]

Unethical (not necessarily in public places) when it comes to relatively moderate infections, flu, colds, in the workplace or at home, but criminal in relation to STD's and other possibly life threatening diseases that prospective partners may be exposed to.

 

[credoconsolans]

If STD or something lethal or potentially horrible, absolutely criminal if I didn't inform my friend.

But to me, my cold was something common, innocuous and just annoying. I've had bad colds before that knocked me out for a week, that simply caused sniffles in other people.

Since my friend was in much better shape than I, I hoped they could avoid it or it would be minor to them.

I was wrong.

 

[another1]

I don't mention hepatitis until a few weeks of fornication have passed. They usually get over it and we have a laugh about it. If I mention it right out the gate, potential for sex drops dramatically. People don't understand the disease.

 

[abaddon]

If STD or something lethal or potentially horrible, absolutely criminal if I didn't inform my friend.

But to me, my cold was something common, innocuous and just annoying. I've had bad colds before that knocked me out for a week, that simply caused sniffles in other people.

Since my friend was in much better shape than I, I hoped they could avoid it or it would be minor to them.

I was wrong.

This whole topic was answered in the very first response.

You stole someone's choice by lying when forthrightness could have benefited you both. Yes that's unethical. Learn from it and grow, don't feel guilty and sinful thus triggering your rationalization process into gear to resist the opportunity to learn and grow. It's not the first mistaken choices that define who a person is, it's the second-chances that are either accepted or refused that shapes them into who they are.

 

[credoconsolans]

If STD or something lethal or potentially horrible, absolutely criminal if I didn't inform my friend.

But to me, my cold was something common, innocuous and just annoying. I've had bad colds before that knocked me out for a week, that simply caused sniffles in other people.

Since my friend was in much better shape than I, I hoped they could avoid it or it would be minor to them.

I was wrong.

This whole topic was answered in the very first response.

You stole someone's choice by lying when forthrightness could have benefited you both. Yes that's unethical. Learn from it and grow, don't feel guilty and sinful thus triggering your rationalization process into gear to resist the opportunity to learn and grow. It's not the first mistaken choices that define who a person is, it's the second-chances that are either accepted or refused that shapes them into who they are.

How so?

Like I said, I didn't realize I was sick until 24 hours AFTER they arrived. I was already contagious when we first met up and spent the whole day together.

They might have already been infected the first day and their choice already gone.

 

[abaddon]

This whole topic was answered in the very first response.

You stole someone's choice by lying when forthrightness could have benefited you both. Yes that's unethical. Learn from it and grow, don't feel guilty and sinful thus triggering your rationalization process into gear to resist the opportunity to learn and grow. It's not the first mistaken choices that define who a person is, it's the second-chances that are either accepted or refused that shapes them into who they are.

How so?

Like I said, I didn't realize I was sick until 24 hours AFTER they arrived. I was already contagious when we first met up and spent the whole day together.

They might have already been infected the first day and their choice already gone.

The choice was not gone. Infected/not infected is not where the choice happens. The choice was stolen when you lied and said it was allergies.

If I were around a sick person I’d want them to not pretend it’s otherwise. What to do about it even after already being exposed is MY choice. I might stop putting my hand to my face till I’ve washed with soap along with other precautions, I might stop touching the person if that was part of what the visit's about, or I might even decide to leave. Probably I'd say "Oh well" and stay. But in all cases it is rightly MY choice. If I come down ill then I know the other person was forthright with me and so there's no problem.

If I found they’d lied to me then I would lose trust in them because that’s manipulation and I hate being manipulated, and I think a lot of people do.

The lying makes it a lose-lose scenario, whatever it is you feel you got by calling the sniffles an allergy. You’re here asking this because you’ve created a quandary that wouldn’t be there if you’d just been honest. “Got sick, told him, he decided to stay anyway” -> No problem! “Got sick, lied, he ended up in ER, now I don’t know if I was behaving ethically or not” -> Problem.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I don't mention hepatitis until a few weeks of fornication have passed. They usually get over it and we have a laugh about it. If I mention it right out the gate, potential for sex drops dramatically. People don't understand the disease.

This should be classed as attempted murder.

 

[another1]

Bleeding from the penis and vagina at the same time is the only way to spread hep c through causual sex. I've never had that happen, knock on wood. I'd never put myself in that situation. I shouldn't have to change my Facebook relationship status to "hep c", should I? Last time I checked, the liver is where the hep germs are stored, not in the penis.

 

[Toni]

Bleeding from the penis and vagina at the same time is the only way to spread hep c through causual sex. I've never had that happen, knock on wood. I'd never put myself in that situation. I shouldn't have to change my Facebook relationship status to "hep c", should I? Last time I checked, the liver is where the hep germs are stored, not in the penis.

You seem to be woefully--or willfully ignorant about your disease. Hep C is a blood borne virus. While it is more common to contract Hep C via blood to blood transmission such as through sharing needles, it is also possible although less common to transmit/contract during sex.

 

[Toni]

This whole topic was answered in the very first response.

You stole someone's choice by lying when forthrightness could have benefited you both. Yes that's unethical. Learn from it and grow, don't feel guilty and sinful thus triggering your rationalization process into gear to resist the opportunity to learn and grow. It's not the first mistaken choices that define who a person is, it's the second-chances that are either accepted or refused that shapes them into who they are.

How so?

Like I said, I didn't realize I was sick until 24 hours AFTER they arrived. I was already contagious when we first met up and spent the whole day together.

They might have already been infected the first day and their choice already gone.

They may have also contracted their bug from some other source, particularly since they traveled by air. The fact that they became much more ill than you did argues that perhaps they had a different virus.

But yes, it would have been better to have mentioned that you thought you were coming down with a bug as soon as you realized you might be coming down with a bug.

 

[credoconsolans]

How so?

Like I said, I didn't realize I was sick until 24 hours AFTER they arrived. I was already contagious when we first met up and spent the whole day together.

They might have already been infected the first day and their choice already gone.

The choice was not gone. Infected/not infected is not where the choice happens. The choice was stolen when you lied and said it was allergies.

If I were around a sick person I’d want them to not pretend it’s otherwise. What to do about it even after already being exposed is MY choice. I might stop putting my hand to my face till I’ve washed with soap along with other precautions, I might stop touching the person if that was part of what the visit's about, or I might even decide to leave. Probably I'd say "Oh well" and stay. But in all cases it is rightly MY choice. If I come down ill then I know the other person was forthright with me and so there's no problem.

If I found they’d lied to me then I would lose trust in them because that’s manipulation and I hate being manipulated, and I think a lot of people do.

The lying makes it a lose-lose scenario, whatever it is you feel you got by calling the sniffles an allergy. You’re here asking this because you’ve created a quandary that wouldn’t be there if you’d just been honest. “Got sick, told him, he decided to stay anyway” -> No problem! “Got sick, lied, he ended up in ER, now I don’t know if I was behaving ethically or not” -> Problem.

I don't think it was manipulation. Why would it be manipulation?

I didn't want my friend to get sick, heck, I didn't want to BE sick, but IMO, it was probably already too late.

So again, how would you feel if someone came up to see you, and then were told to leave a day later because of the possibility of infection? They might feel used, resentful, they might be just as angry at the loss of funds during the holiday season. Changing your airfare dates during the holiday season to leave is no small thing, and I was not in any financial position to help compensate them. I think my main line of thinking was to give them the holiday we'd planned for regardless of my condition.

How so?

Like I said, I didn't realize I was sick until 24 hours AFTER they arrived. I was already contagious when we first met up and spent the whole day together.

They might have already been infected the first day and their choice already gone.

They may have also contracted their bug from some other source, particularly since they traveled by air. The fact that they became much more ill than you did argues that perhaps they had a different virus.

But yes, it would have been better to have mentioned that you thought you were coming down with a bug as soon as you realized you might be coming down with a bug.

Possible. Didn't think about that.