money. People who had been
working in unpleasant or hostile
workplaces were now free from
disrespectful encounters.
The pandemic has taught many
people that the job does not have
to be the way it was. This realiza-
tion may be one reason that many
are not going back to their old jobs.
At the end of 2021, the service
provider and hospitality sectors
were facing major challenges in
enticing people back to these low-
paid, heavy-demand jobs, with
many positions remaining empty.
At the same time, 4.5 million Amer-
icans (3 percent of the workforce)
voluntarily quit their jobs in
November, reflecting both discon-
tent with their current positions
and the desire to find better
ones. But solving the burnout
problem cannot fall to individual
workers. The workplace must
change. People burn out because
their employers have not success-
fully managed chronic job stressors.
We must place a stronger focus
on modifying or redesigning work-
place conditions. How can job
environments be places that help
people thrive rather than wear ing
them down?
People whose work lives got
better over the past two years
can generally thank personal
re sources—a comfortable room
of one’s own—rather than fore-
sight from their employers. But
em ployers can learn a lot from
at tending to what helped people
be more productive and satisfied
during this time. For example,
workers were less distracted by
pointless meetings and open office
settings and were able to focus
on meaningful tasks rather than
being burdened by busywork.
Some companies are trying to
entice workers with higher pay
or time off. Im proving job condi-
tions has even more potential for
enduring impact.
Work takes up a lot of people’s
time, talent and potential—
and workers are increasingly
demanding that it offer a sustain-
able and rewarding quality
of life in return.Christina Maslach is a professor of psychology
at the University of California, Berkeley, and
creator of the Maslach Burnout Inventory,
a widely used psychological instrument.
She and Leiter co-authored the forthcoming
book The Burnout Challenge (Harvard
University Press, 2022).
Michael P. Leiter is an orga nizational
psychologist and president of Michael Leiter &
Associates, a consulting firm in Nova Scotia.Nasal Spray Preventives
Went into Development
COVID IS CREDITED WITH propelling clinical inno-
vation. But for a disease that seems to start in peo-
ple’s noses, none of the available drugs or vaccines
are delivered intranasally. Killing the virus before it
travels into our lower airways could prevent serious
illness. An intranasal vaccine could do this by stimu-
lating the immune system in the mucus of our noses.
And intranasal treatments, such as antibodies or
small-molecule antivirals, could stop the virus
before it infects enough cells to cause disease. Vac-
cinated health-care workers, for instance, could
take a puff of a virus-killing nasal spray after expo-
sure to protect against breakthrough infection.
So why aren’t intranasal pharmaceuticals here
yet? Drugmakers default to injectable vaccines and
treatments for a few reasons. Our muscles have lots
of blood vessels, so injections in arms are perhaps
the fastest way to get immune-stimulating vaccines
and therapeutic antibodies into the bloodstream.
From there these molecules can work their way to
the respiratory system (and other systems), where
the COVID virus is doing its dirty work. Similarly,
pills get absorbed into our circulation quickly. To
make existing drugs or vaccines work intranasally
may require reformulation and retesting. But a nasal
spray might have benefits that injectables and pills
do not: direct delivery to the earliest site of infection.
Several nasal vaccines are now in clinical trials.
Intranasals for prevention and treatment are also in
development. A scientist at the University of Hous-
ton, for example, has shown in animal models of
COVID that an intranasal antibody spray seems to
reduce viral load; the biotech company he co-
founded is working toward clinical trials. Depending
on how these methods perform, we may get new
tools for living amid this pervasive disease.Megha Satyanarayana is chief opinion editor at Scientific American
and has reported on COVID-related technologies.Illustration by James Olstein