Barbara Peters Smith: Give young Floridians a break, and a better public health message

Jun. 30--After nearly four months of wandering through this ungodly corn maze we know as COVID-19, you'd think our fingers would be getting tired from being pointed at each other. The latest criminals against society: those blooming adults whose frontal lobes have not yet closed.

Our viral caseload is ratcheting up, we are told, due to the heedless audacity of Florida's young pleasure seekers, who insist on venturing out unmasked, casting their droplets before air conditioning vents in sweltering hot spots.

So the official auto-response is to try to get between them and their alcohol by shutting down bars across the state -- a public health precaution sanctioned by Gov. Ron DeSantis, even as he predicted that such a heavy-handed gesture won't have its intended effect because these irresponsible merrymakers are "going to do what they're going to do."

I've seen those reckless night life photos, too, and read the quotes tossed contemptuously at reporters who question the wisdom of rowdy patrons hanging out at beachfront dives, looking for summer love, not the least bit willing to cover their kissers.

The pandemic is a "hoax," the virus simply "the flu on steroids," a giggling source tells the Palm Beach Post, perhaps unconsciously echoing the political rhetoric that was deliberately fashioned into what we'd all love to believe -- if only we were that gullible.

So it's no surprise that these 18-to-34-year-old Floridians are the new target of our collective scorn. Their youthful assumptions of invulnerability, and their implied or blurted impressions that most 80-year-olds have probably taken up space on the planet quite long enough -- all this makes it so deliciously easy to hate them, and to blame them for keeping us inside for even longer than we thought humanly possible.

And yet. I know for a fact that plenty of folks in this age bracket are responsible social distancers, who take precautions when they're off the job because they want to keep their jobs. After all, journalists who go where young people congregate on a weekend night have about a 150% chance of finding young people willing to say and do dumb things. Hasn't that always been what these places are for?

I seem to remember being not so bright myself sometimes. And I wonder what it's like for them now, how it feels to have their educations and career prospects on pause, maybe to be robbed of that summer internship or travel they were counting on, maybe to believe -- because at that point in life it's easy to believe -- that nothing will ever get any better than it is right now.

Instead of "othering" these folks, and setting up more flimsy and divisive generational stereotypes, wouldn't it be smarter to come up with a message about public health that resonates with them?

Maybe something like this: As long as you fail to keep a distance, wear a mask, wash your hands, you are a zombie host keeping this virus alive. What are you personally willing to do about that?

Barbara Peters Smith is the Herald-Tribune's opinions editor.

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