if our safety depends on covidiots, we are screwed

i wrote about risk on monday and the emails continue to roll in on thursday, so let the proverbial beating begin.

by the time covid-19 showed up in canada, experts had some indication that young people were less likely to become severely ill. clearly, when we consider the crowds of mostly young people that now famously filled toronto’s trinity bellwoods park, one might wonder if these early messages have left them with the impression that the virus doesn’t pose a threat to their health much worth worrying about.

it’s true that younger populations are less likely to die from covid-19, or have severe complications. according to health canada’s daily epidemiological update, the lowest numbers of hospitalizations, icu admissions and deaths occur in younger age groups. so while crowding parks may not be about life or death for many younger people, they can still get sick. and that’s where a solid perception of risk becomes important — not for them — but in terms of how their actions impact the larger community.

at the time of writing, the number of covid-19 cases in canada in the under-19 group was six per cent. bump that up a year to the next age group, that of 20 to 39 year olds, and you have got the second highest number of cases in canada at 26 per cent. and it’s worth mentioning that the age demographic hit hardest is 40 to 59 year olds at 31 per cent, while those in the high-risk territory  — 60 to 79 — account for 18 per cent of cases.

many of the letters shared concerns about how not following preventative measures like physical distancing only increased the risk for the rest of us, meant a longer quarantine for everybody — i, for one, really want to get back to my life — and puts more pressure on healthcare workers who continue to put their lives on the line to treat covid patients.

other letters talked about how the “risk” isn’t real, that, in fact, concern around virus exposure is misplaced and we should actually be trying to get infected in order to increase immunity. one reader thought that those not in the vulnerable categories should be free to crowd parks at will, and he wondered why we were all surprised that those most unlikely to die from covid-19 were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on a sunny day. “why wouldn’t they?” he wrote. i could almost hear his exasperated sputtering.

but what i want to know is, how is it that months into a global pandemic, one in which the entire world is battling the same virus with similar outcomes, we can perceive it so differently?

it’s not the hundreds of people crowding a park that’s most concerning. it’s the fact that they did so despite the devastation that the virus continues to wreak in our cities and our world. i have no doubt that at least some of these park-goers considered risk as they were considering a day out. the frightening thing is that it was all about them.

and therein lies the real risk of covid-19. it isn’t all about them.

it’s about the essential workers risking their lives on the frontlines, the homeless who have no home to isolate in, seniors trapped in virus-infested long-term homes, people who have lost jobs or shuttered businesses. not to mention the skyrocketing numbers of suicide and domestic abuse cases.

although young people may be less likely to die from the virus, they can certainly spread it, which puts everyone else in danger. the idea of physical distancing is to avoid getting sick — but it’s also to prevent others from getting sick, especially the vulnerable.

you don’t have to look very hard to see the connection between a thousand kinds of devastation and those crowded parks.

lisa machado is the executive producer of healthing.ca.