Young People Are Causing the Spikes.
Dylan is in Texas, where coronavirus is ravaging the state. He’s there visiting his girlfriend, staying with her family, and staying home, at her house, while her family does the same.
It’s nerve-wracking, but I am handling it. I know he’s safe. I know he’s being responsible. From what I’ve seen in the news, Dylan’s in the minority amongst teens in this country. He wears a mask; he goes nowhere, except inside his own car. He washes or uses hand sanitizer constantly.
Yet in a month, Dylan is supposed to move back to Nashville, where he will be returning to college. In Nashville, this weekend’s spike of coronavirus cases was so high, no one should even travel there.
It’s obvious that the young people are causing the spikes in cases around the country. All of us “old” people know it. WKRN-TV (Nashville’s local news station) spells it out:
“We can put all the testing out there, we can put all the restrictions out there, but if people let their guard down which is what is happening, and they’re being selfish and they are causing this virus to get rampant in our city,” Dr. Alex Jahangir, chair of the Metro Coronavirus Task Force told News 2. … The average age of those testing positive in Nashville is now 25 to 34 years old and Jahangir says it’s because of complacency.
When the college kids get back to town, I bet the age drops to 18.
The charts for Davidson County, where Dylan is expected to return, show a youthful population out of control. Tourism is up. And Nashville – not just the Country Music Capital of the World anymore – is a serious party town. I’ve never seen so many drunks in one city in my life. It’s like spring break in Daytona – only without a beach in the background.
Worse yet, thousands of students from Dylan’s college have decided that, to “protect” themselves, they will move off campus.
So those students won’t be eating as many meals from the cafeteria, and they won’t be confronted with other students inside the dorms.
Most of them will still have roommates, because it’s too expensive to live in an apartment alone. So how does this help anyone?
Because those students will be shopping at the local grocery stores, visiting the local drug stores, getting takeout from the local restaurants – and doing God-knows-what-else in Nashville… then going to class on campus, and bringing all those germs with them.
Dylan’s plan is to stay inside his apartment – with his three roommates – and only visit his girlfriend – who is living with three other roommates. So he’ll only have contact with all of his roommates, and all of the people those roommates contact, and his girlfriend and all of her roommates and all of the people they contact. So … just about 1,000 people. On any given day.
Unless they come into contact with someone who’s recently walked 500 yards into Nashville proper, like an apartment-dweller. Then it’s about 10,000 people.
And the college just surges forward, making plans, saying they will clean the lobbies more regularly, and require masks for the students and professors and administrators. (According to locals, only about 50% of the people in Nashville are wearing the required masks.)
Oh, and the college is prepping one floor of one building as a “quarantine” area, for students who test positive, so they have somewhere to recover.
And hopefully to not die.