Young People and the Coronavirus: What We Know Now

In early March, 2020, 20-year-old author and owner of GenGuru.com John Stillman was diagnosed with the coronavirus after experiencing symptoms that began with a slight cough and sore throat, and then escalated to a high fever and body aches.

“It felt like I was in a horrible car accident almost,” Stillman said in an interview with TODAY. “I couldn’t move...the simplest of tasks would wind me.”

That week, 22-year-old Bjonda Haliti gained online attention for her tweet in which she outlined her coronavirus symptoms day-by-day, ranging from headaches, to dry cough and nausea, to shortness of breath. In her tweet she wrote:

“I’ve been debating on posting, but I want to share my experience especially with those around my age to help bring awareness, and to relieve any stress/anxiety some may have to the pandemic.”

Before it became a national pandemic, there was a notion that COVID-19 was more harmful and deadly to elderly people, people with underlying health conditions, and people with weakened immune systems than those who were young and healthy. The narrative from the media at the time was that young people who didn’t have weakened immune systems or underlying health conditions didn’t have to worry as much and only needed to take minor precautions to prevent them from unknowingly contracting and spreading COVID-19.

Yet, as of April 2020, we are seeing a different reality. On March 18, The New York Times reported that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) released data showing 40 percent of those being hospitalized for coronavirus were aged 20 to 54. Overall, the US now has over 500,000 cases of coronavirus with more than 20,000 deaths, and numbers are expected to rise.

All of this information begs the question: did the media play a role in alleviating young peoples’ fears of the coronavirus? And, could there have been a better way to keep young people safe from the coronavirus before it became a pandemic?

A lot of millenials and Gen Zers already think they’re invincible and are able to freely do whatever they want under any circumstance, no matter what the repercussions may be. So when faced with a threat that seems to only attack older people, it becomes much harder to get them to comply with what the CDC, World Health Organization (WHO), and local, state, and federal government tells them to do.

We’ve been seeing this play out for weeks as young people in many states have been ignoring stay-at-home orders set in place by their governors. Probably the most notable instances of this happening were the Florida beachgoers who, despite the threat of COVID-19, decided to ignore stay-at-home orders and flood the beaches to go enjoy their spring break.

Various media outlets reported on this, causing outrage from those who thought the Florida spring-breakers were putting vulnerable people at risk of getting COVID-19 by carelessly ignoring social distancing laws in favor of having a good time.

Governors from other states such as Gov. Cuomo from New York criticized the college students for their reckless behavior and used their rambunctious behavior as an example to urge New Yorkers not to defy rules or else the spread of coronavirus in their state could get much worse.

“These pictures of young people on beaches, these videos of young people saying, ‘This is my spring break, I’m out to party, this is my time to party,’ this is so unintelligent and reckless I can’t even begin to express it,” Gov. Cuomo said.

Before this happened, there was a narrative by the media that young people who were healthy were less likely to suffer and die from the virus, and more likely to unknowingly contract it and spread it to those who were elderly and had underlying health conditions. Outlets like Grunge have told young people that they are less likely to die from the virus due to their strong immune systems.

However, a contributor to The Atlantic, Kerry Kennedy Metzler, an internal medicine resident physician from New York, recently shared her story on treating too many young people with COVID-19. The 28-year-old said five of her patients were in their 20s and 30s, and that one of her patients was young and healthy, but had to be out on a ventilator only a day after being admitted for a dry cough and high fever.

Metzler believes that too many young people in the US are not taking the statistics put out by the CDC and our governors as seriously as they should. “But in spite of these alarming figures, too many young Americans have been slow to give up the false belief that they are safe from COVID-19,” Metzler said.

As the number of coronavirus cases continue to grow past 500,000 in the US, it is important for outlets/publications to keep up with the current science, as it pertains to COVID-19. So far, we’ve been witnessing the effects of what can happen when the media tries to play it safe. While the media seemed to miss the opportunity to warn young people about the dangers of COVID-19 early on, hopefully they will keep track of newer developments that can help young people as the virus continues to run rampant.