Giving Compass' Take:

• Sarah Holder explains that the perception that COVID-19 is an older person's disease is causing people to neglect social distancing - putting people young and old at risk. 

• How can funders help to spread facts about COVID-19 to the public to improve the response from Americans? 

• Find COVID-19 Funds to support. 

In the early days of the U.S.’s coronavirus response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised everyone to steer clear of crowds and wash their hands more, urging “older adults” especially to stock up on food and medicine in case things got worse. The news from China was that Covid-19 had been more fatal among people who had underlying health conditions, and who were over 65 years old. The first wave of public health admonitions emphasized that strict social distancing measures were necessary to protect the vulnerable elderly.

But younger people, as is now well known, are hardly immune: Not only can heathy young adults be asymptomatic carriers that become vectors of the virus to parents and grandparents, they can also be victims of it; about a quarter of Covid-19 patients hospitalized in Italy are under 50.

Still, the lingering presumption that coronavirus is merely a disease of “old” people is having damaging consequences — witness, for example, the extremely poor social distancing adherence among Spring Breakers on the beaches of Florida this week. The calculus of pandemic suppression — and arguably, being a person in the world — means that everyone needs to be looking out for everyone, whether they’re old, young, sick or healthy. So far, the U.S. is failing this test.

Read the full article about ageism and COVID-19 by Sarah Holder at CityLab.