San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
SENIORS FACE NEW RISKS WITH CORONAVIRUS
Ira Nelson is a hale and hearty 80year-old, yet he realizes age may make him especially susceptible to the coronavirus.
“You don’t do stupid things now,” the Del Mar resident said. “You pay attention.”
So he and his wife hunker down in their home, only venturing out for gas and groceries. When outside, he remains socially distant. A volunteer with UC San Diego’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, he avoids the office, performing tasks online and by phone.
A model of coronavirus best practices, Nelson nonetheless misses Osher’s intellectual stimulation and the joys of dining in local restaurants. “The whole point of eating out is eating out,” he said. “Otherwise, you’d go to Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods
and bring something prepared home.”
The demands of this crisis — stay at home; work remotely, away from colleagues; curtail all trips; keep 6 feet between you and others; prepare for a siege of weeks, even months — hit everyone hard, no matter their age. That fact was underscored this week, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported nearly 40 percent of those hospitalized with COVID-19 were in the 20to-54 age group.
Yet experts insist that people 65 and older are especially exposed during this pandemic. Not only are they more at-risk to illness and even death, they may also fall prey to less obvious dangers.
“This is a really serious issue and it is not like anything we’ve seen before,” said Dr. Dilip Jeste, UC San Diego’s senior associate dean for healthy aging and senior care. “I strongly urge people to follow the recommendations from the scientists in the field.
“At the same time, we have to start thinking about various unintended consequences.”
Jeste, who holds the Estelle and Edgar Levi Memorial Chair in Aging, cited three relatively unconsidered risks for older Americans, and one underappreciated benefit seniors bring to this crisis.
1. You’re socializing all wrong
Since the advent of tablets, smartphones and online gaming, many have warned that young Americans spend too much time staring at screens. Whatever happened to socializing with flesh-and-blood, actual friends instead of virtual acquaintances?
Suddenly, that script has been flipped.
“Now,” Jeste said, “the children are becoming role models for us. They know how to keep friends without actually seeing them. That’s contrary to everything we’ve been taught and have practiced all our lives.”
Make no mistake: maintaining a circle of friends and staying in touch with loved ones is essential. Jeste cited research that shows adults who regularly socialize with others enjoy better health, brighter spirits and longer lives, especially if they get together face-to-face.
“Unfortunately,” Jeste said, “we are now in circumstances where we have to stop that, and stop that to an extent that is unprecedented.”
While venerable forms of information and entertainment — books, magazines, radio, network — remain important, Jeste urges seniors to explore high-tech tools.
Facetime allows you to see and converse with adult children and grandkids. Zoom can facilitate virtual office meetings. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and other streaming services can deliver new and classic films to living rooms.
Write Out Loud, a local nonprofit that organizes Old Town’s annual Twain Fest and hosts literary readings at senior centers and other venues, had to cancel a “Voices of Ireland” presentation scheduled for last Monday. Instead, the group used email to share several favorite Irish yarns with people on Write Out Loud’s mailing list. (To sign up, email a message to writeoutloudsd@gmail.com.)
“One of the stories is ‘Kathleen’s Field’ by William Trevor,” said Walter Ritter, 71, Write Out Loud’s executive director. “If you haven’t read it, you’re in for a real treat.”
2. Your body, your (inconsistently aging) self
While the calendar measures chronological age, bodies may age at a faster or slower rate, depending on diet, fitness, genetics and overall health.
“There are people in their 80s who are functioning at a really high level and people in their 50s who are not,” Jeste said.
The notion that 65 is the dividing line between middle and old age, the doctor added, is an artifact from the 1960s. “That actually started during Lyndon Johnson’s time with Social Security,” Jeste said. “We use these cutoffs all the time — you’re 18 before you can vote, 21 before you can drink. But 65 is so dated. Lifespans have increased dramatically since then.”
The doctor cited another curious fact about aging: “Our different organs age at different rates. My liver may be 40 years old and my spleen 60 years old.”
As we get older, Jeste added, we become more unlike everyone else, as everyone ages at different rates. For proof of this notion, watch Suella Steel’s ferocious volley at La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club. In 2019, she was ranked 35th on the international senior tennis circuit.
“I’m going crazy staying at home,” said Steel, 78, who still teaches tennis and competes in tournaments around the world. “The sun’s out today, so I got out on the courts. And tennis is the one thing you can do, because you don’t get close to people.”
Again, it’s critically important to maintain proper distances between people while exercising. While physical activity generally benefits seniors, and everyone else, it is not a cure for this virus.
3. Ageism’s new wrinkles
This crisis may inadvertently reinforce damaging stereotypes.
“This may serve to increase ageism in our society,” Jeste warned. “We might think that we may be more likely to get infected if we are with older people. And this may seem to come from empathy, that we have to protect them.
“But we have to be careful that we begin to think, even implicitly, that older people are a group that should be avoided.”
For many younger and middle-aged people furloughed or working from home, this is an opportunity to check in with older parents or grandparents. Leslie Stump took her mother-inlaw, 73-year-old Vila Stump, shopping at the Barons Market in North Park during the morning hour the store reserves for seniors. They shared family news and avoided talk of the pandemic.
“A few weeks ago,” the elder Stump said, “when the negative stuff, the Henny Penny, the-sky-is-falling stuff began, I stopped watching the news. If you create fear, you break down your resistance. It’s an open invitation.”
Seniors are not a monolithic, one-size-fits-all group, said Michael Scott, a 75-yearold psychotherapist. He’s been able to maintain his Hillcrest practice by “seeing” clients via Skype and Zoom.
“The ones that aren’t usually stressed are not stressed,” he said. “The ones that find things to stress over, they’re stressed. It depends on the personality.”
Far from being doddering has-beens, seniors are arguably the nation’s most powerful and influential people. The current U.S. president and leading candidates seeking to replace him are in their 70s. California’s senior U.S. senator, Dianne Feinstein, is 86. Six of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices are 65 or older. Jerry Sanders, the CEO of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce, is 69.
Yet many in this age group are being asked to step aside, at least for the duration of this crisis. Susan Christison, a 79-year-old Kensington resident, enjoyed her unpaid twiceweekly job assisting at the food pantry operated by St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in City Heights. This week, though, organizers seeking to guard the health of older volunteers recommended that those 65 and older stay home.
While she understands that decision, Christison doesn’t feel terribly at risk. “Although I want to do the things that we are supposed to do,” she said, “I feel like I am in excellent health. I don’t have any of the underlying conditions that we’ve been warned about. I get out, I exercise every day, I have a healthy outlook on things, I have a nice circle of friends.”
Still, Jeste warned, even seniors in the full bloom of health need to take precautions. “For older people,” he emphasized, “the risk of coronavirus is high. The risk of being hospitalized, going to the ICU, even dying, is higher with this group.”
Many seniors, while not discounting the risks of this pandemic, believe they may have survived worse.
Stump is a geriatric caregiver with Jewish Family Service; her clients include Holocaust survivors.
Denise Bradshaw, a Mission Hills resident and another furloughed St. Mark’s volunteer, lived through World War II as a child.
Pat Tara, 67, has been through it all. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake caved in the roof of her house in Capitola. The 2008 recession demolished her insurance business. Then she was diagnosed with cancer. And finally, three years ago, a flu led to pneumonia and five days in a hospital’s intensive care unit.
A Northern California resident, she drove down here to visit family. On Friday, while shopping for baking supplies at the North Park Barons, Tara reflected on this crisis.
“I have a roof over my head and a warm place to stay,” she said of her daughter’s house. “It’s just frustrating not being able to go home. And I can’t find flour.”
Within her age group, Tara’s attitude is not uncommon. This week, a national survey conducted by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Research found 43 percent of adults under 30 were “very worried” about the coronavirus. That sentiment was echoed by just 21 percent of Americans 60 and older.
4. Gift of perspective
Tara is among the many seniors who understand Jeste’s final word of advice: take the long view.
“Humanity has been through plagues and cholera and many things,” he said. “We need to keep a feeling of reassurance. Everybody is uncertain how long this is going to last, but it cannot be permanent.”
During this period, Jeste recommends staying physically, mentally and socially active. Use appropriate means to contact friends and family. Get plenty of sleep. Maintain a healthy diet and outlook.
“If we just become couch potatoes and watch TV all day and drink more and don’t sleep well,” he said, “that will neutralize the positive effects of social distancing.”
By adopting healthy habits, we may have a better chance of achieving a healthy and relatively young old age.