generalspeaking

Party Like There's No Tomorrow -- and There May Not Be

"[There are concerning reports from France and Italy about] young people getting seriously ill and very seriously ill in the ICUs."
"[There are] disproportionate number[s] of infections among that group [younger generations]."
Deborah Birx, response co-ordinator, U.S. coronavirus task force

"We don't want them gathering, and I see they do gather, including on beaches and in restaurants, young people."
"They don't realize, and they're feeling invincible."
U.S.President Donald Trump

"These preliminary data also demonstrate that severe illness leading to hospitalization, including ICU admission and death, can occur in adults of any age with COVID-19."
Researchers

Beaches in Florida are finally closing due to coronavirus concerns after local governments took action as spring breakers partied until the last moment

People in the United States in younger age groups refuse to take the threat of contagion of the novel coronavirus seriously. Spring break is spring break, and many youth have the attitude that first things first, and their spontaneity and enjoyment of life has precedence over any inconvenience brought on by a virus that they have been informed targets the older generation and the elderly. They're immune by reason of youth to anything that might imperil their need to party.

While public health officials urge the need for social distancing, the young and the hip crowded out of bars on Bourbon Street, hopped on flights elsewhere, happily tweeting about the bargain airfares. And they pack onto beaches in hordes of happy vacationers determined to make the most of life even if, in the process, they're shortening it. Some have been heard to declaim one version or another of: "if I get coronavirus, I get coronavirus". And they undoubtedly will.

Either putting up a brave front before their peers, defying pressure and concern from their elders, or simply being, as  youth often is, foolhardy in the belief that nothing imperils them, and nothing will deter them from having their way at a beach party. Early data that came out of China suggested the novel coronavirus appeared to seriously strike or kill the elderly, while sparing the young, but new data from the U.S. and Europe appears to conclude otherwise.

Visitors were still coming to Miami's South Beach (pictured), despite it being closed

It would appear that 38 percent of those ill enough to be hospitalized were under the age of 55 years, according to an analysis of U.S. cases from February 12 to March 15 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Wednesday. French health ministry official Jerome Salomon earlier this week stated that half the 300 to 400 cornavirus patients treated in ICUs in Paris were under the age of 65 while half the ICU patients in the Netherlands were under age 50.

As in China, the highest percentage of severe outcomes were seen among the elderly and roughly 80 percent of those who died were 65 years and older. Similarly the CDC report studied a total of 4,225 COVID-19 cases, most of the data from the outbreaks among older adults in assisted living. The percentage with more moderate or severe disease requiring hospitalization however, is more evenly distributed between the elderly and the young; 53 percent of those placed in ICUs and 45 percent hospitalized 65 years and older.

In the U.S. those 19 years and younger who had been tested had milder illness with almost no hospitalizations, while a much larger sample of children in China had mild to moderate illness, as detailed in the journal Pediatrics. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute on Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the U.S. commented that some of the younger patients had underlying conditions that could make them vulnerable.

University students in Miami beach, Florida, continued to meet despite warnings from authorities that they should not congregate because of the threat posed by coronavirus

As the global impact of the virus continues to skyrocket, a total of 427 deaths was registered in Italy over the previous 24 hours, bringing the nationwide total to 3,405 since its outbreak beginning February 21, while China recorded 3,245 deaths since early January (if their figures can be relied upon). Over ten thousand people so far across the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and over 100 have died from it.