" ... People are still congregating, that is just unacceptable," Michigan Chief Medical Executive Dr. Joneigh S. Khaldun said during a coronavirus update Thursday, April 2. “You can be 25 years old, healthy, no medical problems. You can easily get the coronavirus and you could potentially die.”
Younger segments of the population may exhibit mild or no symptoms and still pass the virus to others who will die or become severely sick, elected officials and medical professionals emphasize.
“(The virus is) obviously more serious than you think,” Grand Blanc High School football coach Clint Alexander told MLive. “... Young kids think you can live forever, and now they realize this thing is pretty scary.”
Alexander’s comment came following Sunday’s coronavirus-related death of his former player, a 2018 Grand Blanc High School graduate, 20-year-old Freddie Brown Jr., and a day after Kalamazoo County health officials confirmed the death of 25-year-old Western Michigan University student Bassey Offiong, also from COVID-19.
State Rep. Isaac Robinson, a 44-year-old whom friends and relatives suspect had the coronavirus,died on Sunday. A 38-year-old Detroit Police Department 911 dispatcher died of the coronavirus on March 23.
Those are some of Michigan’s 400-plus suspected or confirmed coronavirus-related deaths involving young or middle-aged victims, the ones who made the news. Many more haven’t.
Nearly 11%, or 45 of Michigan’s 417 COVID-19 deaths involve people between 20 and 49, according to themost recent data published by the state Thursday, April 2.
The average age of death is 71.3 years old with those over 70 accounting for 59%, or 246 of the 417 deaths.
While the majority of deaths have impacted the elderly, younger patients account for a vast number of cases.
As of the most recent coronavirus case data released in Michigan on Thursday, 40%, or 4,316 of Michigan’s 10,791 confirmed cases, involved patients between ages 20 and 49.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday said daily increases in new deaths and confirmed cases won’t likely slow until late April or early May.
One person may infect 40
As many as 1 in 4 people infected with the cornavirus may not know it, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told NPR this week.“This virus moves easily from person to person," Whitmer said during a press conference Thursday. "Even if you don’t feel sick, you could be carrying it. "
The governor cited the death of a 30-year-old special education teacher who died Thursday as an example of how varied symptoms can be between carriers of the virus. His wife tested positive but “hardly had a fever.”
“Each of us responds differently to this disease and that’s why we all must act as though we may be carrying it and stay home,” Whitmer said. “Just one person with this virus can infect another 40, and then in turn, they can infect thousands more.”
Dr. Dennis Cunningham, who manages the COVID-19 response for Grand Blanc-based McLaren Health Care, said spread of the virus by asymptomatic carriers is “certainly a problem.”
“People don’t realize they’re infected, yet they’re spreading the virus out there,” he said. “That is why social distancing is so essential.”
Cunningham said there is insufficient data to determine if younger patients are more likely than their older counterparts to carry the virus without exhibiting symptoms.
McClaren Health Care is treating numerous young and middle-aged COVID-19 patients, Cunningham said.
While patients between 20 and 50 “are less likely to get severe disease than those who are much older ... there’s still a risk there," Cunningham said. "Some people have been very sick ... There have been deaths in that age group across the country.
Royal Oak Beaumont Hospital Dr. Trini A. Mathew, an infectious disease specialist, said younger patients who die or become very ill often have underlying health issues, sometimes ones they’re unaware of, such as kidney disease, lung or heart conditions.
As for “who might be at the highest risk of death ... that belongs to anyone, unfortunately, of any age group," she said.
Dr. Anthony Ognjan, an infectious disease doctor, works at McClaren Hospital in Macomb, where his unit is treating nearly 40 COVID-19 patients who range from about 22 years old to 93.
The patients in the 20-49 range “usually have underlying medical factors, although we’ve had a couple relatively young people in their 30s and 40s who’ve come in and don’t have a whole lot of medical co-factors,” Ognjan said. “On a (COVID-19) floor we have varying intensities of severity of disease, anywhere from people who are having oxygenation problems and some people who have real problems where they need ventilators.”
Ognjan estimates only about 5% of people who contract the coronavirus require hospitalization and it’s usually initiated due to shortness of breath.
“The vast majority of those people, the (other 95%) who have the disease, it’s relatively mild,” he said. “They walk around not even knowing it. Those are probably the people who are spreading it.”
Heeding the warning
President Donald Trump at a press conference Tuesday presented a disturbing death graph.It forecast between 100,000 and 240,000 Americans will lose their lives before the pandemic subsides. The estimate takes into account Trump’s extension of social distancing guidelines through April 30. Without intervention, the graph predicts between 1.5 million and 2.2 million deaths.
Tyler Carter, a 23-year-old from Detroit, said he and many peers didn’t initially understand or respect the life-altering power of the coronavirus. It hadn’t yet consumed daily life when Carter left Michigan March 9 on spring break to visit a friend in Houston, Texas.
While he was gone, everything changed, but it would take his father, state Rep. Tyrone Carter, contracting the virus -- and multiple people he knows dying -- to halt his nonchalance.
Whitmer declared a State of Emergency on March 10. Two days later, Wayne State University, where Tyler Carter is pursuing a music engineering degree, announced an extended spring break.
Tyler Carter is part of a generation that some have accused of not taking the virus seriously, one that’s been the focus of news stories about alcohol-induced spring break revelry and reckless behavior that’s helping stoke the pandemic’s spread.
Last week, a technology company created a viral video using cell phone tracking data to show how far and wide a group of Florida spring-breakers could potentially spread the virus when the party ends.
Tyler Carter said, as time moves on, businesses close, jobs are lost and the death toll rises, the jokes and levity among his age group seem to seem to be dwindling.
“It’s just been hitting a lot people a lot closer to home,” Tyler Carter said. In his case, that’s an understatement.
Several days after he returned from spring break on March 17 to a new world of face masks, hand-washing and social distancing, his father tested positive for the coronavirus.
Tyler Carter said he’s remained under quarantine with his family ever since.
While his father is recovering and no longer exhibiting symptoms, the family remains under strict quarantine and spend most of their time separately in different sections of the house.
“The number of confirmed cases keep going up, along with the deaths," Tyler Carter said. Young people “are starting to pay attention."
CORONAVIRUS PREVENTION TIPS
In addition to washing hands regularly and not touching your face, officials recommend practicing social distancing, assuming anyone may be carrying the virus. Health officials say you should be staying at least 6 feet away from others and working from home, if possible. Carry hand sanitizer with you, and use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and when you go into places like stores.———
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