Trends show young adults exposing elders to the virus

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Thu, 2020-07-30 11:18 — mike kraft

Young people are infecting older family members in shared homes Front-line caregivers are seeing more older people with covid-19. Young working adults and others who went to bars and restaurants are spreading the virus to relatives. Lenny Bernstein Washington Post

As the death toll escalates in coronavirus hot spots, evidence is growing that young people who work outside the home, or who surged into bars and restaurants when states relaxed shutdowns, are infecting their more vulnerable elders, especially family members.

Front-line caregivers, elected officials and experts in Houston, South Florida and elsewhere say they are seeing patterns of hospitalization and death that confirm fears this would happen, which were first raised in May and June. That was when Florida, Texas, Arizona, California and other states reopened in efforts to revive their flagging economies.

The emerging trend highlights the difficulty of relying on the Trump administration’s strategy of sheltering the most vulnerable while the young and healthy return to work and school. That approach runs the risk of transmitting the virus when two or three generations share the same home and when many lower-income workers have little choice but to brave exposure to do their jobs.

Young adults are among the essential workers who may be returning home to parents and grandparents. High school and college-age children may expose teachers, parents and grandparents.

Sooner or later, doctors said, most older people and those with underlying health problems will mix with the younger generation.

“We think when Texas started opening up, that was May 1, it was young people going to bars and restaurants, out and about, gathering socially,” said Pat Herlihy, chief of critical care at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center in Houston. “My hypothesis now is that they’re engaging with the larger families, they’re engaging with the 60- to 70-year-olds — parents uncles, aunts. They’re engaging much more with that vulnerable population.”

Ethnically diverse parts of the Sun Belt, where caseloads are climbing fast, are home to a larger share of multigenerational families who live together than other sections of the United States...

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