“It’s not just a message to those who have the high-profile jobs,” says Ellen Bravo, a longtime paid-leave advocate, about a celebrity’s impulse to work through an illness—especially now, when many workers with truly essential jobs face pressure to do the same. “It’s also people on the front lines who are being punished by that mentality that: ‘You’re so important, we can’t do without you,’ rather than: ‘You’re so important, we have to make sure you take care of yourself and your loved ones.’”

Cuomo’s insistence on working while sick—and, as energetic as he seems on the air, he’s definitely sick—ties into two American mythologies. The first is a fabled American industriousness: the idea that devotion to the job, measured in hours clocked and personal sacrifices made, is a workplace’s highest value. CNN media critic Brian Stelter voiced that idea in a “Reliable Sources” newsletter last week, after noting that Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, had recommended that Cuomo take time off. “I respect the suggestion,” Stelter gushed, “but I respect the work ethic more!”

The impulse to prove an uncommon work ethic isn’t limited to pandemics. It’s on display when Elon Musk brags about working 120 hours a week, or when a high-powered female executive goes back to work within days or weeks of delivering a baby. When then-Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer set up a nursery beside her office in 2013—and, not long afterward, rescinded the company’s work-from-home policies—she wasn’t just demonstrating the broad inequities in access to child care in America. She was sending her staff, and the entire tech world, a not-so-subtle message about how she measured dedication to the company.

The second myth Cuomo embodies is the notion that the best of us are fighters. This is the kind of tough talk that drives football players to carry on through concussions, or prompts the use of war metaphors to talk about patients with cancer—as if inner spirit is all you need to fight an encroaching disease. Last week, Cuomo repeatedly referred to himself as a “warrior,” facing a microscopic threat head-on, describing his darkest Covid-19 moments in colorful terms. “You have these wicked phantasmagorical experiences that are not dreams,” he told Gupta and Anderson Cooper on Thursday, recalling hallucinations of his father, the late New York Governor Mario Cuomo, sitting at the edge of his bed, and his brother Andrew appearing in a ballet costume with a wand. He recounted sweats that caused him to lose 13 pounds in three days, a temperature of “101-ish” even during a live broadcast. Still, he said, he wanted to offer a positive outlook: “It's not a cakewalk, but we can get through it.”

In the world of top-level TV anchordom, taking physical risks for the sake of the story has become an accepted virtue. Standing waist-deep in water during a hurricane is practically a CNN trope. And it’s true that a journalist’s job is often to bear witness when others can’t; we all benefit from investigative reporters who persist in the face of personal threats, and war correspondents who bravely put themselves in harm’s way.

That’s clearly how CNN is positioning Cuomo now: as a kind of war correspondent of the human interior, reporting on his body with trademark wit and a showman’s ability to get a message across. But does he really have to be the messenger? There is no shortage of Covid-19 testimonials in the news right now, delivered by people who have already recovered, or by their caregivers, or by the many other journalists who are covering the crisis.

“Chris Cuomo, with all due respect, is not the only one who can deliver the news,” says Bravo, who is a strategic adviser to Family Values @ Work, a network of state coalitions fighting for paid leave laws. In fact, she says, a truly sensible attitude toward sick leave would create, for every worker, the redundancies that Cuomo is lucky enough to have at his own company: paid time off and a bench full of skilled players who can fill in until he gets better. “That’s the perspective we need: Everyone is special and no one is indispensable,” Bravo says. “So everyone deserves protection, and everyone can have a backup.”

After all, many workers don’t have the luxury of choosing to lay low. Today, an uncommon burden falls on front-line health care workers, delivery workers and grocery store clerks. But long before the coronavirus hit, American workers who fell ill faced pressure to stay on the job. Many went to work sick because they lacked paid leave at all, and couldn’t afford a day without pay. But even for people with paid leave, the cultural pressures were strong: Many believed their jobs or careers would be in jeopardy if they took the time they were technically allowed. In an online survey of office workers last November by the staffing firm Accountemps, 90 percent of respondents said they went to the office with cold and flu symptoms—more than half of them because they believed they had too much work to do, a third because they felt pressure from their managers.

It’s unclear, so far, how Covid-19 will change the dynamics of sick time and family leave. Before the virus hit, paid-leave and sick-leave laws were gaining ground in state legislatures. After the pandemic, momentum could grow: a University of Maryland survey found that support for paid leave policies grew significantly between early and late March.

But Washington, so far, has given only partial help to sick workers and their caregivers. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act, a stimulus package signed by President Donald Trump on March 18, requires some companies to offer 12 weeks of paid leave, reimbursed by the government—but only for caregivers whose children’s schools have closed. And the law’s sick-pay provisions—up to two weeks of government-sponsored pay—don’t apply to companies with more than 500 employees, leaving ample room for loopholes. For instance, Bravo says, a big retailer could grant workers just enough hours to classify as part time, so the company’s paid-leave policies don’t apply.

The culture around working sick could also be slow to change—especially as technology makes it easier to be productive from home. When the current crisis wanes, what will become of white-collar workers who catch colds or the flu? Will they be granted days to fully rest, or be expected, like Cuomo, to be tough enough to push past the fever and get on that videoconference?

It’s here that CNN and Cuomo, with their outsize influence, could promote a different message: If you’re sick, the best thing to do, for you and your coworkers alike, is take a break. Gupta, a neurosurgeon, has repeatedly suggested as much when talking to Cuomo on live TV. “Chris, man, you know we love you,” he told Cuomo on Wednesday night. “I know you’re dreaming about this stuff, you’re fully engaged, but it’s OK to take a day off.”

Some others at CNN, it seems, are heeding that advice. On Friday, midday anchor Brooke Baldwin announced that she had tested positive for Covid-19, and was suffering from chills, aches and a fever. She didn’t suggest that she would be back on TV anytime soon.

Cuomo, though, has shown no indication that he’ll slow down. He is unquestionably making great TV, leaning into his persona, humanizing his notoriously stiff older brother, joshing around with Don Lemon. CNN executives surely recognize the gift. But if they really wanted to show viewers the best way to kick a virus—and send a meaningful signal about how to stay healthy in America, and deliver an act of kindness to a devoted employee—they’d order Cuomo to cut off the cameras and stay in bed.

