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CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC!
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Scientists say lack of alarm among young people could hinder the fight against the virus and endanger elders
Scientists and government officials fighting the coronavirus epidemic say they have a problem: Carefree youths.
As authorities moved to restrict social gatherings last week, bars and restaurants from New York to Berlin filled up with revelers, illegal “lockdown parties” popped up in France and Belgium, and campuses in the U.S. lit up for end-of-the-world dorm parties.
So far, most young Covid-19 patients have experienced mild or no symptoms from the virus, while more severe cases are concentrated among those aged 50 and over. Data released last week by the National Health Institute in Italy, currently the world’s worst-hit country, shows mortality rates starting at 0% for patients aged 0 to 29 and edging up to peak at 19% for those over 90.
Yet scientists say tests have shown children and young adults are no less likely than older people to get infected and transmit the virus. Epidemiologists are growing concerned that the millennial pushback against social-distancing measures—and an emerging generational divide about how the disease is perceived—could undo all efforts to slow the spread of the virus and put vulnerable people at high risk.
President Trump on Monday stressed that young people can spread the virus even if they only have mild symptoms and recommended that Americans avoid restaurants and gatherings of more than 10 people. French President Emmanuel Macron went further, announcing a nationwide lockdown and punishment for those who violate the rules.
So far, the young don’t seem to be listening.
After social media became filled with reports of packed bars and restaurants in New York, 30-year-old Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) tweeted to her millions of followers on Saturday.
“To everyone in NYC but ESPECIALLY healthy people & people under 40, (bc from what I’m observing that’s who needs to hear this again), PLEASE stop crowding bars, restaurants, and public spaces right now. Eat your meals at home.”
After Princeton University said last week it would move classroom instruction on-line on March 19 and send most of its students home, the campus saw an explosion in gatherings and parties, according to students and staff.
“People were not ready to give up their lifestyle without one last hurrah,” said Ben Weissenbach, a Princeton undergraduate English major who was critical of the partying. “At a really privileged place like Princeton, we don’t tend to even consider the possibility that our bubble could be popped.”
In an email to all students on Friday, the university announced stricter measures and penalties for offenders, saying “we are disheartened to see that so many students are failing to heed these protective measures and engaging in disruptive behavior.”
In a display of juvenile gallows humor, the hashtag #BoomerRemover, a nickname for the novel coronavirus, briefly trended on Twitter last weekend.
Across Europe, where social life is shutting down faster than in the U.S., a divide is spreading between the young, many of whom say they don’t fear the virus, and their elders, including politicians and scientists, whose alarm about the illness is growing by the day.
In Berlin, a European clubbing hot spot, authorities ordered the closure of all bars and clubs on Saturday. Yet many establishments ignored the decree, forcing police to forcibly shut down some 63 establishments across the city.
That night, the Ernst basement bar in the trendy district of Kreuzberg was packed with patrons enjoying loud electronica. “Beware: Coronavirus” was sprayed on a bench near the entrance.
Inside the stylish Wagemut cocktail bar, a young woman pretended to sneeze in someone’s face, unleashing thunderous laughter.
On Sunday, Berlin health officials said 42 people were thought to have infected themselves in Berlin clubs. Some of those were club-hopping, spreading the virus as they went.
“This is the attitude of people who are part of this nightlife,” said Lutz Leichsenring, a director of the association of Berlin club owners. “So what? You get the flu, you’re not going to die.”
Last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel herself, in her first press conference on the epidemic, urged young people to respect the new social restrictions for their grandparents’ sake.
Despite the pointed fingers and occasional excesses, many young people bristle at the accusation of selfishness, saying the new social constraints are disproportionate and unfairly target their generation.
“They’re preventing us from living,” said Timothée Thierry, a 30-year-old statistician at France’s health ministry. He spoke on Sunday, after the government shut down bars but before it locked down the entire country.
In Italy, which has been on lockdown for days, young people, especially students, face a choice between returning to their parents’ homes or remaining cooped up in small apartments, desperate for a social outlet.
One student in the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy said she sneaked out of her apartment to attend a dinner party because she was feeling depressed from days of isolation. The party was only a 10-minute walk away. Once there she joined four other people, drinking wine and eating around the dinner table.
Just before midnight, the police knocked on the door and asked for the identification cards and phone numbers of everyone in the group. They ordered the revelers to return home, warning them that their information was being kept on file. Each person was subject to a hefty fine or jail-time for attending the party, the police said, according to the student.
Some say they are less frustrated by the prospect of extreme confinement than they are doubtful it could ever work in the West, which prizes individualism and freedom.
“If I get sick, I will spend some days at home to avoid spreading it to others,” said Monica Rubio, 19, who was having a late breakfast with three friends late last week in Barcelona, Spain, one of Europe’s most heavily affected countries.
“Otherwise I won’t change my life because of it. I can’t imagine people would stop shaking hands, kissing or hugging. It is deeply entrenched in our society.”
In Asia, there have been fewer complaints from authorities about younger people flouting social-distancing rules, but with the epicenter of the pandemic now shifting to Europe, the sense of urgency, palpable at the peak of the Chinese epidemic, has begun to recede in the East.
Mong Kok, a busy shopping hub in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district, has been noticeably busier than in previous weeks, with many young people tentatively returning to their pre-coronavirus weekend routines. Despite the greater crowds, many youthful bystanders still wear surgical masks and keep hand sanitizer close to hand, even attached to rucksacks.
“I think it’s quite boring staying inside. Teens and young people you see, they’re stuck at home and out of the office. It’s quite hard,” said Hailey Cheng, 27, as a street performer tried to fire up a lackluster audience nearby.
On a recent night in the semiautonomous city, Peel Street, a thoroughfare lined with bars and popular with expats, thronged with hundreds of maskless drinkers. A band played in the lower half of the street, where people stood shoulder to shoulder.
“I stayed at home for two months. I’m not staying any more,” said Ryan, 26, who was walking with his friends down the main strip of nearby Lan Kwai Fong, a series of streets filled with bars and clubs. “Life goes on.”
“We worry,” said Nicole, 25. “But either you worry yourself to death or you drink yourself to death.”
William Boston and Mike Bird contributed to this article.
Write to Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com and Stacy Meichtry stacy.meichtry@wsj.com
PUBLIC HEALTH
The country has the second-oldest population on Earth. Its young tend to mingle more often with elderly loved ones.
With the world descending deeper and deeper into coronavirus chaos, we all face unnerving unknowns: How long we’ll have to remain in isolation; when the pandemic will peak; the depths to which the stock market will tumble. But what’s abundantly clear is that this novel disease is most deadly for the elderly. The young may not present any symptoms at all, and this is especially dangerous to their elders, because they can pass the virus on to them without realizing it.
Italy has been hit particularly hard, with some 2,000 deaths thus far. Overwhelmed hospital staffers have had to make devastating decisions about who to treat and who they must let perish. The reason why Italy is suffering so badly, write University of Oxford researchers in a new paper in the journal Demographic Science, may be twofold: The country has the second-oldest population on Earth, and its young tend to mingle more often with the elderly, like their grandparents. Such demographic research will be critical in facing down the threat elsewhere, as more countries grapple with a deadly pandemic that’s just getting started and learn more about how the virus is transmitted within families and communities.
In Italy, 23 percent of the population is over age 65, compared to the US, where that population is 16 percent. “Extended longevity has played some role in changing the population structure,” says University of Oxford demographer and epidemiologist Jennifer Beam Dowd, lead author of the new paper. “But it actually has most to do with how rapid the decline in fertility has been in a population.” That is, it’s affected more by Italians having having fewer children than it is by them living longer.
At the same time, young Italians tend to interact a lot with their elders. Dowd’s Italian coauthors note that young folks might live with their parents and grandparents in rural areas, but commute to work in cities like Milan. Data on the composition of Italian households bears out this familial arrangement, too.
The study’s authors argue that this frequent travel between cities and family homes may have exacerbated the “silent” spread of the novel coronavirus. Young people working and socializing in urban areas interact with large crowds, where they may pick up the disease and take it home. If they have no symptoms, they’ll have no clue that they’re infecting their elders, the most vulnerable population.
“We know now that the mortality is higher in older individuals, but what’s not clear yet is: Why?” asks Carlos Del Rio, executive associate dean of the Emory School of Medicine at Grady Health System, who wasn’t involved in this research. For example, it could be a matter of older people having weaker respiratory systems, which could also lead to a higher mortality rate among seniors for diseases like pneumonia.
Other researchers studying why children don’t seem to get that sick from Covid-19 have pointed out the corollary: Kids tend to have “pristine” lungs that have not already been damaged by a lifetime of inflammation caused by allergies, pollutants, and diseases. This might make them more resistant to attack by the new virus.
Despite a full lockdown in place in Italy since the weekend, the virus has already spread far and wide. But with this kind of demographic knowledge, public health officials can better confront the threat elsewhere, Dowd says. “One of the points that we were trying to make is that it’s not necessarily just about isolating the older population—we are identifying that they’re the most vulnerable—but the general social distancing that’s being encouraged to flatten the curve,” says Dowd. Flattening the curve means slowing the rate of new infections, buying researchers time to develop treatments and vaccines, and giving hospitals some respite. “I think our point was that’s actually more important, when you have a higher fraction of your population that is vulnerable,” she says.
But while separating younger and older people might work in theory, it can create practical problems. For example, desperate to flatten the curve, local officials in the US are closing schools. If parents can’t look after their children—because they’re still working out of the home, or because they’re ill themselves—that care might fall on grandparents.
To complicate matters even further, a study in Italy doesn’t exactly track with what we might expect in a massive country like the US, where the demographics vary greatly from place to place. Some cities might have far more young people than seniors, and some suburbs are likely just the opposite. Or think about Florida and its masses of retirees. “Florida is like an uber-Italy,” says Andrew Noymer, a demographer at the University of California, Irvine, who wasn’t involved in this research. “Florida is going to be a tough situation, I would predict.”
In a place with so many elderly people, many of them living close together in retirement homes, social distancing will be extra important to avoid disaster. “It’s not destiny to say Florida is going to be absolutely clobbered by this,” Noymer says. “There is time with social distancing to flatten the peak. Maybe we can make this the dog that didn’t bark, so to speak.”
An aging population doesn’t have to mean a devastating Covid-19 outbreak. In Japan, where over 28 percent of the population is over age 65, by March 16 there had been only 814 confirmed cases and 24 deaths, compared with Italy’s 24,747 cases and 1,809 deaths, according to WHO figures. Japan, along with neighbors including Hong Kong and Singapore, had rapidly ramped up testing in the early days of the outbreak and instituted strict travel controls.
But Dowd says we can use Italy’s example to take practical steps in fighting the pandemic. We might pinpoint areas with older populations, and try “to anticipate a little bit where the burden of care is going to be the most severe.”
After a long delay in the rollout of mass testing in the US, on Friday the FDA approved the use of two commercial coronavirus tests. This may help Americans keep infected young people and healthy elders apart. In the meantime, if you want to check in with your grandparents, do it by phone.
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Fauci Urges Americans to Stay Home Amid Coronavirus
Dr. Anthony Fauci says people should ‘hunker down’ and added that the nation’s ability to test people exhibiting symptoms is improving
WASHINGTON—The federal government’s leading voice on infectious diseases said Americans will need to do much more to prevent community spread of the novel coronavirus, urging them to stay home and avoid unnecessary public outings.
“Americans should be prepared that they are going to have to hunker down significantly more than we as a country are doing,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Dr. Fauci, appearing on several Sunday morning television shows, said communities that are already seeing the virus spread need to be vigorous in reducing interactions that are part of normal life. He urged people to practice “social distancing” in order to prevent a potentially catastrophic spike in infections. That advice applies to younger people, even though they appear to be less vulnerable to the disease, he said.
“I would like to see a dramatic diminution of the personal interaction that we see in restaurants and in bars,” Dr. Fauci said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that younger people could be endangering the lives of their grandparents or elderly relatives. He also warned that younger Americans aren’t immune from the virus and some could fall seriously ill.
“Everybody’s got to take this seriously, even the young,” he said.
Dr. Fauci said the nation’s ability to test people exhibiting symptoms of the novel coronavirus is improving, while he cautioned that the increase in the availability of testing won’t happen overnight.
“The ultimate goal is to get to a drive-through. Are we going to have it tomorrow? Unlikely. But will we have a much greater availability and implementation of testing in the very, very near future? The answer is yes,” Dr. Fauci said on CNN.
The infectious disease expert said on ABC’s “This Week” that it could be “several weeks to a few months” before life in the U.S. begins to return to normal.
Dr. Fauci played down the notion that domestic travel restrictions would be part of the national mitigation plan, saying they aren’t being seriously discussed at the moment.
“I don’t see that right now or in the immediate future,” Dr. Fauci said on ABC. “But remember, we are very open-minded about whatever it takes to preserve the health of the American public.”
The Trump administration said Saturday it was broadening travel restrictions from Europe to include the U.K. and Ireland, and Vice President Mike Pence said the White House was considering restrictions on domestic travel for areas hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak.
State and local officials also warned Sunday that the disruption to Americans’ lives will likely continue for months.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said on CNN that he has encouraged doctors, dentists and veterinarians not to perform elective surgeries to conserve medical supplies.
“We’re trying to store this up. We’re trying to get ready. But the most important thing I think we can do, in addition to that, is try to, as they say, flatten this curve and spread this out over a period of time,” he said.
Mr. DeWine, who has closed schools for three weeks in his state, said he wouldn’t be surprised if schools were closed for the remainder of this school year due to the virus.
But New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, said he was reluctant to shut down schools in his city.
“I’m very reticent to shut down schools for a variety of reasons, not just that that’s where a lot of kids get their only good meals, where they get adult supervision, especially teenagers who otherwise would be out on the streets,” he said. Mr. de Blasio also said closing schools could have health and safety ramifications because many first responders rely on schools so they can work.
Asked whether a government order for restaurants and bars to close was on the table, Mr. de Blasio said “every option is on the table.”
“We’ve never seen anything like this,“ he said. ”We’re going to constantly make new decisions.”
Write to Brent Kendall at brent.kendall@wsj.com and Chad Day at Chad.Day@wsj.com
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WORLD NEWS
MARCH 15, 2020 / 07:51 AM / UPDATED 12 HOURS AGO
Lockdowns and entry bans imposed around the world to fight coronavirus
(Reuters) – France and Spain joined Italy in imposing lockdowns on tens of millions of people, Australia ordered self-isolation of arriving foreigners and other countries extended entry bans as the world sought to contain the spreading coronavirus.
Panic buying in Australia, the United States and Britain saw leaders appeal for calm over the virus that has infected over 156,000 people globally and killed more than 5,800.
Several countries imposed bans on mass gathering, shuttered sporting, cultural and religious events, while medical experts urged people to practice “social distancing” to curb the spread.
Austria’s chancellor urged people to self-isolate and announced bans on gatherings of more than five people and further limits on who can enter the country.
All of Pope Francis’ Easter services next month will be held without the faithful attending, the Vatican said on Sunday, in a step believed to be unprecedented in modern times.
The services, four days of major events from Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday, usually draw tens of thousands of people to sites in Rome and in the Vatican.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said from midnight Sunday international travelers arriving in the country would need to isolate themselves for 14 days, and foreign cruise ships would be banned for 30 days, given a rise in imported cases.
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‘We’re basing this on science’:
Ohio emerges as leader in U.S. coronavirus response
10:57 am EDT Mar. 14, 2020
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Students won’t be in classrooms next week. Prominent sports events from March Madness to the Masters have been canceled or postponed. Churches and synagogues are live streaming services.
Life as we know it has changed in America.
And it’s changed, in large part, because of Ohio.
The Midwestern state has been leading the nation’s response to COVID-19, the infectious disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
While President Donald Trump was slow to shut down public events, including the Republican’s own campaign rallies, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration imposed the nation’s most restrictive ban on large gatherings. He then closed all schools for at least three weeks.
DeWine made those decisions before anyone died of COVID-19 in Ohio and with just a handful of confirmed cases concentrated in the northeastern part of the state.
Those decisions earned DeWine the ire of sports fans, frustrated parents and those who claimed coronavirus was a media-manufactured crisis. But they earned him praise from unlikely sources, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper, who ran against DeWine for state attorney general in 2014.
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“The approaches by DeWine and POTUS could not be more starkly different,” Pepper wrote on Twitter.
“This is certainly no ordinary time,” DeWine said Monday, when the state’s first three cases of coronavirus were confirmed. “It is important for us to take aggressive action to protect Ohioans. The actions that we take now will, in fact, save lives. That we are sure of.”
Ready to lead
On Monday, DeWine, 73, was running over an hour late to a news conference about a mental health pilot program. When he finally took the podium, he was flanked by Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Amy Acton in a crisp, white lab coat.
Three Ohioans had just tested positive for COVID-19.
Now, coronavirus wasn’t a problem for far-off Wuhan, China or even Washington state. It was an Ohio problem.
DeWine and Acton had been preparing for this moment for weeks – meeting with medical professionals, sounding the alarm at public appearances and studying Italy’s disastrous response.
In some ways, DeWine has been preparing for this moment for much longer. Acton was the last cabinet member DeWine selected in 2019, wanting to make sure he had “the right person.”
Before Acton, the state health department had been led by two directors who were not medical doctors. DeWine thought it was important to change that.
Acton, 54, earned her medical degree from Northeastern Ohio University, completed her internship and residency and then earned a master’s degree in public health. She spent seven years teaching global public health at Ohio State University.
In daily press briefings, Acton is DeWine’s explainer-in-chief. But, perhaps drawing on her days in the classroom, she does so with clarity and empathy, often sharing her own feelings and personal prevention steps.
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She’s explained complex health concepts with analogies: Swiss cheese, stars in space, extinguishing a fire on your stovetop. Friday’s public briefing included a short history lesson on planning for pandemics ranging from the Spanish flu to H1N1 in 2009.
“On the front end of a pandemic, you look a little bit like an alarmist. You look a little bit like a Chicken Little – the sky is falling,” Acton said. “On the back end of the pandemic, you didn’t do enough.”
For casual observers, it might seem DeWine is doing too much. But the state’s multi-step response – an expert panel, a statewide summit, ample media accessibility – is how he approaches big issues such as human trafficking and opioid abuse.
As a lifelong politician, DeWine has cultivated relationships with reporters across the state.
And he is no stranger to worldwide media firestorms.
In August, DeWine consoled a crowd of frustrated, grieving people yelling “Do Something” in Dayton after a mass shooting in the city’s Oregon District. He was in the spotlight as the state’s top cop when eight people from one family were killed in southern Ohio.
Advance prep
Ohio’s preparation for the novel coronavirus didn’t start this week.
In early February, two Miami University students who had visited China tested negative for coronavirus. Acton conveyed a cautionary message then: the risk is to those who have traveled abroad. She advised people who had traveled and felt ill to call their doctor.
In late February, Acton traveled to Washington, D.C. to meet with health officials from other states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the White House. By that point, Acton and DeWine were talking daily, sometimes multiple times a day.
Their message morphed into a guide to coronavirus symptoms – fever, cough, shortness of breath. Acton described the coronavirus as flu-like – many people will have it and just feel sick for a little while but some will need hospitalization.
Much was still unknown, the pair said at a Feb. 27 news conference in Cleveland, but they made a big promise that day: “We will communicate what we know when we know it.”
Soon after, DeWine convened a panel of 15 medical professionals including leaders from the state’s major hospitals. Now, the 31st floor of the Riffe Center, where the governor has his office, has transformed into a “war room,” with twice-daily conference calls with his panel and calls to a public-health expert in Boston to assess the pandemic and its threat.
As DeWine rolls out bans and closures and orders he notes that they are based on the advice of experts. The experts have been telling him the virus is here, but we’re not seeing it because there hasn’t been enough testing.
The aggressive measures are an attempt to slow the spread and reduce a big spike in infections that could overload the health care system, a concept professionals call “flattening the curve” that Acton revisits at each briefing.
“Mistakes that I have made throughout my career have generally been because I didn’t have enough facts, I didn’t dig deep enough,” DeWine said. “So, I made up my mind I was going to have the best information, the best data available.”
DeWine knows that other governors are watching what Ohio does. In today’s media environment, Kentucky or Indiana’s leaders might know Ohio’s actions within 30 seconds.
He doesn’t mind explaining why Ohio is taking these dramatic steps. He took a couple of national media interviews at the end of the week to break it down.
But really, the reasons are simple, he said: “We’re basing this on science.”
Contributing: The Columbus Dispatch. Follow Jessie Balmert and Jackie Borchardt on Twitter: @jbalmert and @JMBorchardt.