Amusing to read the responses here, and the speculation about the manager's health - see my separate thread, in which my question about Pearson's long-term health results in getting slaughtered.
What's Gould supposed to say? By law, you can't get rid of someone who's legitimately ill without their consent. And there's a lot of uncertainty and unknowns about long COVID (if that's what it is*). So he's hardly going to announce on air that we're binning an employee.
*Source: I've got it