Duke disease expert has a COVID-19 message for young people: You can protect others.

Dr. Cameron Wolfe, an infectious disease specialist at Duke University, brings a special perspective to COVID-19. As a scientist, he studies the nature of the virus in the lab. As a doctor at Duke University Hospital, he sees its devastating effects on people.

Given what he knows and what he sees, it is hard for Wolfe to watch scenes of young people gathering in large groups, filling up bars and taking the threat of COVID-19 lightly.

“I have to check myself to not get too frustrated because I see people bearing the brunt of this illness in a way that many people don’t,” he said. “Not everyone has seen a loved one die gasping for air.”

Young people who flout social distancing rules are not wrong in their assessment of the risk, Wolfe said.

“Age is the single biggest risk factor,” he said. “The 84-year-old is worse off than the 64-year-old, who is worse off than the 44-year-old.”

Yet there are caveats that affect even young adults, he said. Those who are obese or diabetic – sometimes without knowing it – can be hit hard by COVID-19. He also noted a surge in serious COVID-19 symptoms among Hispanic people.

Many young people who abandon social distancing to party don’t see the link between their behavior and the risk to others, the doctor said.

“Chances are those young people are not going to end up in the hospital. It’s their parents and grandparents who could get sick,” he said. “Or the Hispanic guy who worked in a shop and you were served by him. He’s in the hospital and you may not be. We’ve sort of missed that connection.”

This virus has the ability to not only subtly infect people, but also to divide them by age and politics. That has made it especially difficult for health officials and scientists to rally the public around a common response. Facing a new disease for which there is no immunity and no vaccine, infectious disease experts know that the only effective public response is a unified one. Instead, COVID-19 is running rampant through the divided states of America, largely because half of the new cases detected in recent weeks have been in adults younger than 35.

Wolfe is urging North Carolinians to unite in fighting a disease that is growing rapidly across the South and West.

“Even if you’re young and healthy, that doesn’t mean everyone around you is. We all have parents, grandparents, colleagues or friends who can suffer from this,” he said.

It’s a familiar message, but one worth repeating from a doctor who dons layers of protective gear to see COVID-19 patients who are fighting to breathe; one who has seen his colleagues fall ill and struggle; one who worries about his own health and how to protect his family’s health.

We see a lot of COVID-19 numbers and videos of people flouting social distancing rules. We don’t hear enough from people on the front lines, from those who’ve seen people cut off from family and gasping for breath, from those who survived but have lingering and perhaps permanent impairments. What matters isn’t that most young people can shake off COVID-19. What matters is those who can’t.

Wolfe understands why people want to get back to normal, back to parties and bars, but going back is proving a disastrous retreat. Until a vaccine is approved, he said, the new coronavirus needs a new resolve across all ages.

“We have to make this feel different; if it ends up feeling much like 2019, we’re going to fail,” he said. “This will continue to burn like a forest fire until we can block it. It will take everyone in the community chipping in to help every body else.”

This story was originally published July 1, 2020 at 9:09 AM with the headline "Duke disease expert has a COVID-19 message for young people: You can protect others.."