I want to point out a few things that EVEN the youths should be concerned about:
Some young people are immunocompromised or have other conditions like asthma, diabetes or others they may not even know about especially in countries like the u.s. where health care is not great.
People who can survive if treated soon may not be able to get treated. That’s because the u.s. is not flattening the curve. There are not enough beds doctors or equipment for the number of cases that will soon require hospitalization- it’s the rice on the chessboard thing.
People who survive serious cases may have life-altering injuries and conditions resulting from the illness.
Recommended social distance means that two people should not be able to reach each other with arms stretched out at full length. It was thought at one point to only travel in droplets but now it’s increasingly seen as generally airborne, i.e. if you’re breathing you can transmit it. Shit and other bodily fluids seem to carry it too.
Asymptomatic young people seem to be a major factor in the spread. So even if you feel fine you need to stay away from *all* other humans as much as possible. This is one of a number of factors that are also producing a mental health crisis.
A lot is not known with certainty because it’s all so new and happening so fast. What we do know already is pretty bad. I’m not going to get into the political side of it too much because I will blow a gasket but suffice to say the response in the u.s. has been/is being totally botched. This is why we basically all should be social distancing and sheltering in place right now. It’s here, it’s everywhere or it will be soon and if everyone gets it all at once it’s much worse for them.
And finally it’s NOT the flu- symptoms are flu like but the similarity pretty much ends there. It’s far deadlier, about 30x (though estimates vary because again it’s all super chaotic right now) and at least twice as contagious. The flu has been around for millennia so not only do vaccines exist but so does a certain level of natural herd immunity that has built up over at least 100 generations. This bug is not even remotely related to flu basically aside from just being a virus. There is no vaccine and no immunity.
It’s probably not the end of the world but it’s definitely not hysteria. It’s a bona fide Huge Fucking Deal that is just getting started. The social effects are making life harder for everyone which in turn contributes to the spread and the inaccessibility of care.
It will not be over soon. It will either be too much all at once, or a lot going on for what will seem like forever. Either way the timescale is part of it. No one should be expecting a return to normal. I think a LOT is going to change while it’s happening. A different society will emerge. We will all be traumatized by this for the rest of our lives. We will all lose people we know. We will almost certainly, all of us, sooner or later, be infected. China and South Korea flattened the curve. The u.s. and
Europe seem to be going in the opposite direction. Containment has utterly failed. Despite the shutdown of so many places, people continue to be packed into prisons and ICE facilities which are already becoming new epicenters of the disease, which will spread back out through the staff. It’s the age of corona.
Everyone please be super careful out there. This is not a fucking drill. It is an out of control global disaster and each one of us can make choices that will impact the outcome in our lives and those around us. Be brave, be strong, be aware, be careful; take care of yourselves and each other.