THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, March 18, 2020 |A
wash your hands.”
But experts note the study was
done in controlled, artificial condi-
tions with a lot of the virus and
doesn’t necessarily translate to
real life where other factors—such
as sunlight and the degradation of
the virus—come into play.
They say the potential risks of
becoming infected with the virus
this way are very small. It’s primar-
ily person-to-person interaction that
is driving the Covid-19 outbreak,
rather than contact with objects.
“The risk of getting infected
from food delivery is pretty low
but not zero,” says Daniel Kuritz-
kes, chief of the division of infec-
tious diseases at Brigham and
Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Still, consumers like Atticus
Francken, a 25-year-old business
consultant in Chicago, say they
aren’t going to take the risk. “At this
point I’m avoiding most any kind of
food delivery,” says Mr. Francken.
“The virus could be on any sur-
face—packaging, bags, receipts. You
have the cooks preparing the food,
the staff handling the food, the de-livery drivers’ car who may also be
doing ride-sharing. Then the drivers
and delivery persons. There are too
many touchpoints.”
Among the steps that can be
taken to minimize exposures, ex-
perts say, is paying ahead of time
with a credit card, and including
tips, to avoid exchange of money. If
there is an option for “no-contact”
deliveries, select it. Services such as
DoorDash and Postmates are begin-
ning to offer customers such op-
tions in highly affected areas. In-
fected customers, of course, also
pose a risk to the delivery person.
Doordash’s website says deliv-
ery employees will text customers
a photo of the bag at the re-
quested drop-off location, back
away to a comfortable distance (at
least 6 feet away), and wait for the
customer to get their food.
Drey Dailey, a 32-year-old driver
from Los Angeles who delivers
mostly for Grubhub, said by Friday
most of his customers wanted
their orders left outside.
Dr. Kuritzkes says customers
GETTY IMAGES can wipe packages or boxes with
Who Are You Calling Elderly?
Coronavirus risk has baby boomers dealing with the idea that maybe 60 isn’t the new 40 after all
BYKATHLEENA.HUGHESFROM TOP: GETTY IMAGES; KATHLEEN HUGHESThe author with her daughter, Isabel, who ordered her not to go to a show.disinfectant wipes before handling
them, or use disposable kitchen
gloves. “You’re unlikely to get in-
fected that way, but I can’t say it’s
impossible,” he says.
Gregory Poland, director of the
Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research
Group in Rochester, Minn., says
cooked food is safer than uncooked
food because heat can kill the virus.
But Dr. Poland says no one has spe-
cifically studied whether the new
coronavirus can be delivered
through oral transmission—by eat-
ing food. He and others suspect
that gastric acid in the stomach
would kill it. “My own speculation
is that the GI route would be very
low likelihood compared to known
and efficient methods of infection,”
he says.
The small potential risk with
food itself, experts say, is if you
touched uncooked food like a salad
or sushi with live virus on it and
then touched your face. “There
may be some marginal benefit of
having cooked food over having
uncooked food, but I really don’t
think food is a major vector here,”
says Dr. Kuritzkes.
Some people still prefer to go to
the grocery store—and sometimes
you may need to as delivery win-
dows book up further in advance.
Dr. Kuritzkes says people can mini-
mize the risks by avoiding crowded
stores at busy times, and taking
other precautions: “Wash your
hands, don’t touch your eyes, nose,
or mouth when out and about, and
try to stay away from people who
are coughing and sneezing.”
Mr. Francken, in Chicago, says if
he has to go to the store, he makes
sure to wipe down the grocery
cart with disinfectant wipes and
he wears an N95 respirator mask
and disposable gloves. “I can con-
trol the touchpoints and directly
interact with the merchandise I’m
buying,” he says.Heather Haddon contributed to
this articleT
he text arrived on a
Friday night, March
6, just as I was head-
ing to a comedy show
in New York City.
“Don’t go,” my
daughter texted. “The CDC says
the elderly need to stay home.”
“That’s 60,” she added, in the
next text.
My daughter, meanwhile, at age
26, was heading out to a movie,
with very little concern about her
personal risk from the coronavirus.
Itookmycoatoff.Wemaybein
the midst of global health crisis, a
crashing stock market and a politi-
cal crisis, but I was momentarily fo-
cused on just one question:
At 64, am I really elderly?
I have completed 40 triathlons
in the past seven years and I quali-
fied for the ITU Multisport Cham-
pionships this September in the
Netherlands. (Although, as I fell
back into the couch, I considered
the treatment I had just had for
arthritis in both knees.)
Like most baby boomers, a gen-
eration devoted to wellness and
working out, I have been operating
under the assumption that 60 isthe new 40.
Suddenly, 60 is apparently the
new 80.
We’re elderly and our millennial
and Gen X children are worried
about us. They’re suddenly calling,
emailing and texting, ordering us
to stay inside, while many of them
have been feeling less at risk.
Of course, this all seems to be
changing daily with repeated
warnings from health officials, but
a generational divide remains.Consider Twitter, where some
millennials have made fun of
boomers stocking up on toilet pa-
per and hand sanitizer while
boasting of their own bargain air-
line ticket prices.
Most of the younger genera-
tions aren’t gloating about their
lower risk category, they are just
worried about their suddenly frail,
elderly parents in their 60s. Trish
Hall, 69, an editor and author, said
her daughter texted last weekshe can exercise while Mr. Hoff-
man practices yoga.
The online Merriam-Webster dic-
tionary defines elderly as “rather
old” and especially “being past mid-
dle age” without adding an official
age cutoff. But the word has be-
come controversial in recent years,
particularly among gerontologists
and those concerned with ageism.
“I’m vaguely hostile to the word
elderly,” says Thomas Cole, 70, a
gerontologist and the author of
“Old Man Country: My Search for
Meaning Among the Elders.” “We
live in an ageist culture and we
have negative associations with
words and images of old people.”
Mr. Cole notes that the Ameri-
can Geriatrics Society has stopped
using the word elderly. “If you
submit a manuscript to them and
you use elderly, they cross it out
and substitute older,” he adds.
A review of news releases and
briefings from the Centers for Dis-
ease Control and Prevention shows
that while it warned of an in-
creased risk from the coronavirus
starting at age 60, it doesn’t ap-
pear to have been using the word
“elderly.” The CDC didn’t respond
to requests for comment.
Mentions of the word came
later, in news reports and with re-
peated use by health officials and
politicians.
“We’re baby boomers, we just
don’t see ourselves in that way,”
says Kimba Hills, 66, an interior de-
signer based in Santa Monica. “How
did we get here?” she laughs.
A week ago, her 27-year-old son
voiced the opinion that she should
not go to a work assignment in Flor-
ida later this month. Ms. Hills balked
at first, determined to go, but just
canceled her airline reservations.
“I became concerned about be-
ing quarantined there. Who would
bring me food?” asks Ms. Hills.
Instead, she and a friend de-
cided to drive to a retreat in Palm
Springs this past weekend. But on
the drive there, the friend, Leslie
Libman, 66, a television director,
was barraged with concerned texts
and calls from her son, who is 33.
“You would have thought I was
dying,” says Ms. Libman. “You’re
an older person,” her son said,
“and you can’t go. Your immune
system isn’t great.”
Ms. Libman says she responded
that she would be better off in the
desert than in Los Angeles where
everyone is “losing their minds.”
Randi Danforth, 66, a publica-
tions director at the University of
California, Los Angeles, says her
28-year-old daughter expressed
concern about the coronavirus but
wants her mother to go ahead and
fly to Chicago for a visit later this
month. Ms. Danforth is still plan-
ning to go.
“Our children are worried about
us because we happen to fall into
that weird category that we don’t
think we’re in—elderly,” says Ms.
Danforth. “The realm of the elder.”wanting to know:
“What is your coronavirus plan?”
She didn’t have one yet.
Naturally, some boomer parents
are bristling a bit, despite all of
the expressions of love and con-
cern. They are bristling both at
the idea that they are elderly and
at the fact their offspring are sud-
denly telling them what to do.
Winter Hoffman, 63, and her
husband, Fred Hoffman, a 75-year-
old art dealer in Santa Monica, Ca-
lif., were on their way to an art
fair earlier this month when they
got their text.
“You can’t go. You’re elderly.
This is attacking elderly people,”
their 30-year-old son wrote from
his office in San Francisco, Ms.
Hoffman remembers.
The older Mr. Hoffman had just
checked himself out of the hospital
after a bout of pneumonia and the
couple wasn’t about to change their
plans based on their son’s text.
“I was thinking...Mr. Bossy,” says
Ms. Hoffman. “We feel we are very
much our own decision makers.”
They enjoyed the fair and are
still healthy. But now the couple
is no longer going out of the
house. Ms. Hoffman ordered a
climbing machine on Amazon soAS PEOPLE RELYmore on deliv-
eries for groceries and food—es-
pecially now that so many restau-
rants are closing—a new concern
is emerging amid the coronavirus
outbreak: How safe is the food
delivery?
Experts say the main risk from
ordering food and groceries is that
youcouldcatchthevirusfroman
infected delivery person, if he
sneezes or coughs on you. That’s
because the virus spreads mostly
by person-to-person contact.
It is less likely, although still pos-
sible, to get the virus from touching
contaminated packaging. There may
also be a small
risk from touch-
ing raw food that
has the virus on
it and then
touching your
face. But there
appears to be no
risk of contract-
ing the virus by
eating it in
cooked food, experts say.
Doctors say ordering food is
generally safer than going to a
grocery store or a restaurant, be-
cause you come into contact with
fewer people. “Ordering at home
may be the best way to get food,”
says Andrew Janowski, a pediatric
infectious disease physician at
Washington University School of
Medicine and St. Louis Children’s
Hospital. “Simply because there’s
less people.”
He recommends avoiding close
contact with the delivery person,
throwing away packaging, and
washing your hands before touch-
ing the food. “Try not to be inclose proximity to the person de-
livering the food,” he says.
A study published in NEJM Tues-
day found that the virus that causes
Covid-19 can live on cardboard for
up to 24 hours and on hard surfaces
such as stainless steel and plastic
for two to three days.
“The virus can remain viable and
infectious on a surface like card-
board and it can do so for quite a
large number of hours,” says James
Lloyd-Smith, a professor in the de-
partment of ecology and evolution-
ary biology at the University of Cal-
ifornia, Los Angeles, and one of the
study’s authors. “So in principle if a
food delivery
person or some-
one in the res-
taurant sneezes
or coughs on
your cardboard
container, there
could be viable
virus on there.”
One impor-
tant caveat: Dr.
Lloyd-Smith says all the laboratory
experiments were done at room
temperature and viruses generally
don’t last as long at higher tem-
peratures. So if hot food is in an
enclosed container, then any vi-
ruses may have a shorter lifespan.
Dr. Lloyd-Smith says it’s unclear
if the type of plastic they tested is
the same commonly used in plastic
bags and containers, but any
smooth plastic is likely “roughly
equivalent,” he says. “The big mes-
sage is if you’re touching things
that are coming from the outside
world and someone else has re-
cently handled them, just be aware
they could be contaminated andYOUR HEALTH| SUMATHI REDDY
Assessing the Risks
Of Food Delivery
24
Number of hours that Covid-19 can
live on cardboard, a study foundLIFE&ARTS
Baby boomers, a
generation devoted to
wellness and working
out, bristle at the idea
that they are elderly.