Every day around Toronto’s campuses young people are doing what young people do naturally. Clustering in groups, entwining on benches, panting on the playing fields. And all without masks, or a hint of social distancing.
In the outdoor cafes, 20-and-30-somethings are shoulder to shoulder, barefaced, talking and laughing loudly in each other’s faces. Inside some coffee shops they’re tapping on their devices for hours, alongside long-empty cups of coffee that justify going maskless.
And that’s only in the daytime, before the more perilous nightly parties, clubbing and binge drinking get into full swing. Not to mention predictable drugs and sex.
It’s unlikely that any of these young people are Trump ideologues, malevolent merchants of death, or brain-dead nitwits. They are simply celebrating being young. Yet they are the principal drivers of a prospective Ontario train wreck of COVID-19. And they’re not getting the message that this virus kills not only “older people” but their own life prospects and livelihoods.
As officials predict daily coronavirus infections to hit 1,000 a day by mid October — a possible total of 75,000 by the end of the year — they are bleating the same old warnings to the same audiences, who have already obeyed them for months.
The others, many under 40, have long since zoned them out, because talk of protecting their grandparents or “doing the right thing” is as irrelevant as their parents’ nagging back home.
The virus is now filtering into older age groups — a sign of out-of-control transmission. But unless political leaders mount an urgent social media blitz aimed at the demographics that listen least, the battle against COVID-19 will be catastrophically lost.
So far the politicians are fighting a Second World War battle against a 21st-century enemy, as though mom, dad and the three kids were huddled around the radio listening for the daily broadcast from Doug Ford and John Tory.
The messages they need to deliver now, through social media, are clear, raw and factual. They tell the young not just what to do, but why they have to do it — for their own welfare, not just the abstract ideal of being a good citizen.
First: you can’t gamble with the virus.
This is not your father’s flu. You may get sick for a week or two. Or sick enough to affect your health, education and job prospects into the future.
Second: If you refuse to follow the health rules — social distancing, staying out of crowds, wearing masks, washing hands — and spread the virus through the community, the economy will totter. The health care system will be strained to the breaking point. The benefits you depend on will dry up. A draconian lockdown will shrink your job and education prospects to zero. In a worst-case scenario you will be facing destitution and homelessness.
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These are grim messages, and it’s the responsibility of our political leaders to deliver them in a way that hits the target. They alone have the authority. Warning, pleading and incremental measures are useless if enough people simply continue careless behaviour because it doesn’t matter to them.
The clock is running down. The numbers are running up. Winter is coming.
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Only modern COVID-19 strategy can impact youth behaviour - Toronto Star
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