With the closings of school and most extracurricular activities, a lot of students and their guardians are upset.  It is disappointing that the Class of 2020 is going to be missing out on a lot of senior activities and their last seasons in high school. Pretty much everything has been canceled or postponed. I do understand people being upset at these cancelations, but I believe that they are necessary. People are simply underestimating COVID-19. There have been a lot of people I know and people online complaining about how school should and extracurriculars should resume. The only issue is that people are taking this way too far. I can understand being upset at activities closing, I have had my fair share closed as well, it is important to understand that these are simply the necessary precautions. 

There is a large segment of the population that is severely underestimating the Coronavirus. While it may be true that it is not necessarily killing people with good immune systems in our age group, that does not mean that we can completely brush it off. There are a lot of people in our age group with compromised immune systems that literally cannot afford to get the virus. I know a few people who are still in high school that if they get it, it’s potentially game over. Everyone and I mean everyone, must take precautions to not get the virus and to not spread the virus. Some people in our age group will actually become carriers of COVID-19 and not experience any symptoms. This means that older family members would not even know that you have it and will interact normally until they realize that they have it too. Coronavirus is potentially deadly to older people, as a matter of fact, a 31-year-old died from it. There have been a lot of people surviving from it, but not without permanent lung damage either. Most deaths are from older people with co-existing health problems, but because COVID-19 hasn’t been researched enough or been seriously damaging countries for long enough it can definitely not be the case. Essentially, if young people do not take the proper precautions to make sure they don’t get the virus, they are putting everyone around them in danger. Now is not the time to be selfish and care solely about yourself, viruses as a whole are a group effort and everyone must coordinate to make this quarantine go as best as possible.

Some easy ways to help towards easing the pain of COVID-19 are to wash hands on a regular basis, try to quarantine as best as possible, avoid touching your face, wearing gloves and a face mask if you go out, and preferably wash your hands over using hand sanitizer. Hand sanitizer is better than using nothing, but washing your hands for 20 seconds deeply with a sufficient amount of soap will really help. Together, we can overcome this horrible situation that has not happened in the U.S for centuries.