Letter: The young have a duty to protect against virus risks

As Professor Andrew Oswald rightly observes (Letters, July 18) younger people have a much lower mortality rate from Covid-19 than their older counterparts. But that does not mean they are “virtually invulnerable” to the disease, as he concludes. 

As cases continue to rise sharply in the US, as many as half the hospitalised patients in many states are under 40. And simply being “discharged” and surviving the disease does not mean coronavirus is finished with them. Symptoms are lingering in most discharged patients for months and as many as one in five younger patients are experiencing serious heart and lung problems, with the chance of permanent disability for some. 

Prof Oswald is also unduly confident in his knowledge of future death tolls from Covid-19. The disease has only been studied for six months and has thrown up a bevy of surprises already. His optimistic assessment tacitly relies upon an assumption of sustained immune resistance and the likelihood of a successful vaccine. But it is not out of the question that immunity will be brief and the search for a vaccine more prolonged than we expect. Should the disease have the chance to make multiple passes at unprotected populations of any age, the fatality rates may go up. 

And we've seen from many nations – the UK, the US and Sweden among them – that separating those least at risk from those that are more vulnerable is much easier to state on paper than to achieve in real life. Younger people should by no means be terrified by Covid-19, but they should be both wary and responsible.