Older Adults and the Coronavirus

When I was first made aware of the Great Barrington Declaration by my girlfriend, I quickly dismissed it. But today I decided to actually listen to the videos on the website to get a better understanding of why so many prominent epidemiologists and public health scientists have recommended this approach to the Coronavirus plague that we’ve lived since for most of this year. After doing so, I now agree that the ideas in this declaration are worth considering, but have concerns about how it would be implemented.

This declaration affirms that younger people – especially children, even when they get COVID-19, are much less likely to become gravely ill. For that reason, they should be able to continue living a normal life.

For older adults, however, since they experience much more serious consequences when they get sick, we should ‘protect the vulnerable’ by ‘shielding’ them from younger people. The declaration’s authors assure that this would be a short-term approach until we are able to reach herd immunity (listen to the videos to fully understand this concept) or until we have a vaccine, hopefully by next spring.

Having worked with older adults for many years, I fear that implementing this strategy would result in their being even further segregated from society than they are now. Only because of their chronological age, seniors are often encouraged or forced to retire from full time employment and to disengage from life. The health consequences of social isolation for older adults is well documented, most recently addressed in this recent online summit. While the authors explain that their approach would be short-term and would result in fewer COVID-19 deaths over the long term, I fear that this will only make it more difficult for older adults to continue to contribute to society, even after the pandemic has past.

The authors acknowledge that this approach should not be mandated, that every person will need to make their own decision of what level of risk they are willing to accept. (For example, even if it is infrequent, there are younger people who have become gravely ill after getting infected.)

At what level of infection would be reach herd infection? The authors don’t address this, but there is some debate about what level of infection would be required. And how would we handle the issue of preexisting health conditions? For a 30 or 40 year old with diabetes and high blood pressure, should they take the precautions normally recommended for a 65 year old?

Keep in mind that the decision about how best to respond to the pandemic is not about politics. It’s about how we can minimize the long-term damage to our lives while reducing deaths. I encourage you to be open to other ideas than what you may currently believe by reading this declaration. But remember also the importance of keeping older adults in the mainstream of society, so we can continue to take advantage of the wisdom and experience they can offer to others.