24 United States The EconomistMarch 28th 2020
21over 65,000. The cdchas not updated its
figures on hospitalisation. There are some
reasons why, at least in the early stages of
the epidemic, young people might have
been particularly affected. The spread in
America has been concentrated in big cit-
ies like New York, which tend to be younger
than the rest of the country. Before lock-
downs were implemented, young people
were more likely to crowd into bars, restau-
rants and subway carriages where the dis-
ease can spread easily. As it spreads further,
it is likely that older people will make up a
larger share of those in hospitals.
But there are some reasons to remainconcerned about younger Americans. Re-
search on the virus in China suggests that
obese people, those with high blood pres-
sure and those with pre-existing condi-
tions such as diabetes may be more vulner-
able. All those factors are especially
prevalent in America. In Italy around 20%
of people are obese; in America the figure is
36%. Over a tenth of Americans suffer from
diabetes. Not all are old. On March 18th Do-
nald Trump said he worried that many
young people “don’t realise” the danger
“and they’re feeling invincible.” His other
statements have probably not helped with
that, but his words ring true. 7F
or trevor barnes, a 27-year-old
teacher from Hershey, Pennsylvania,
quarantine could be terrible. He lives on
his own in an apartment attached to the
boarding school he works at, and he is
fully locked down. For ten days he has
not been able to go outside even to buy
groceries. Yet Mr Barnes has discovered
that being cooped up inside at least does
not mean he has to give up his romantic
dreams. Over the past week he has met
several women, all by phone call and
video conference. “I go on a lot of dates
normally, from Tinder, Hinge, Bumble,
all that stuff,” he says, but has never
found somebody he really hit it off with.
“This has been a good way to figure out a
more serious approach,” he says.
Though older people will suffer the
brunt of the coronavirus, it is the foot-
loose young who will see their lives
turned upside down. But a generation
that is tied to its phones anyway is per-
haps also well-equipped to innovate
around some of the problems social
isolation imposes. And a lot of young
people are proving that just because you
cannot actually meet somebody in per-
son does not mean you cannot date.
One popular app, Hinge, says that
70% of its users have expressed an in-
terest in going on digital dates. Match
Group, the owners of Tinder, are giving
away some features of the app that usual-
ly cost money to reflect the fact that
people have more time to kill by swiping
left and right. All dating apps are encour-
aging users to try video dating. One
Instagram feed, called Love is Quaran-
tine, has taken off by parodying a popular
Netflix show called Love is Blind. Its
creators, Thi Lam and Rance Nix, who
share a flat in Brooklyn, New York, joke
that their invention has “gone viral”.It is not all easy, dating in a lockdown.
Kevin, a 26-year-old tech worker, says he
met somebody online recently. “After
work I set up a hammock in my tiny back
yard, grabbed a beer from my fridge and
we chatted for an hour,” he says. It went
well—he and his date are going to have a
walk around a local park next. But he
wonders what comes after that. “I am
comfortable adding one more person to
my isolation group if it comes to that,” he
says. Whether his three flatmates will be
equally comfortable is less clear.
Still, it could be worse. “It has brought
us back to an older way of connecting
with people, which is just talking, not all
these visual branding cues on profiles,”
says Katie Nelson, a journalist confined
to her parents’ home in Minneapolis. She
used to despair of men rushing to meet
up before she knew anything about
them. When lockdowns end, it may be
too much to hope that the return of slow
courtship will last. But by then some
people might have become experts at it.Love under lockdown
DatingUnder quarantine, video courtship replaces hookup cultureF
aced witha pandemic, officials rush to
close any place that threatens to become
a centre of transmission. If fewer people
mingle inside cruise ships, schools,
churches or retirement homes then the
risk of mass infections falls. Yet for more
than 2m Americans squeezed into jails and
prisons, along with many staff, a shutdown
is not an option. Instead, such places risk
becoming hotspots for disease. In 1918 the
Spanish flu raged through San Quentin pri-
son in California, infecting 500 of its 1,900
inmates in just two months.
Anxiety is rising by the day. The sheriff
of Harris County, Texas, has likened his
huge jail to “a perfect incubator” for co-
vid-19, saying an outbreak would spread
like “wildfire”. Inmates at an immigrant-
detention centre in New Jersey have
launched a hunger strike to demand soap.
At Rikers Island, in New York, prisoners
this week refused to leave their dormito-
ries, worrying about infections. Tom Dart,
sheriff of Cook County, who runs a large jail
in Chicago, warns he is “juggling with im-
pending disaster”. Some prisoners have the
virus, but he lacks tests for checking others
or even protective gear for staff.
“Universities and hotels you can close.
I’m left with people I can’t send home,”,
says Sheriff Dart. Instead he improvises. He
clumps new arrivals in cohorts by the day
they come in, hoping to isolate potentially
sick ones for at least a week to prevent any
infection spreading. Tents for quarantine
are now going up in place of a mental-
health centre. Staff take inmates’ tempera-
tures, quiz them about sickness in the fam-
ily and spray food trays with bleach water
more often than before.
Such efforts are well-meant but inade-
quate. The virus is already spreading be-
hind bars. Prisons in every state now ban
regular visitors. In 15 states even lawyers
are blocked. As staff and volunteers who
provide education, therapy and other ser-
vices also stay away, another risk is that
morale will fall, to be replaced by mounting
fear and frustration. That bodes ill for good
order. In Italy similar efforts to contain the
virus this month provoked at least 25 pri-
son riots and several deaths.
Inmates are often packed close and ob-
liged to buy their own soap—seen as a lux-
ury, not a basic need—from meagre earn-
ings. They will struggle to fend off
infection. Pam Oliver, a sociologist who
studies prisons in Wisconsin, calls the lackCHICAGO
The virus should speed efforts to
shrink the prison populationCovid-19 and the locked-upPushing on an
open door