ON THE RISE
Resiliency During a Pandemic: Young People Were Made For This By Trina Ryan
D
14 ONYX MAGAZINE
Mikaela Hutchinson, 17, is the outreach deputy director of Zero Hour.
have been cited in the U.S. to date, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University— social distancing (staying six feet away from other people) and news alerts of the virus’ spread have become part of daily life. Walk outside and signs of a looming apocalypse begin to appear: grocery aisles ransacked, streets emptied, businesses and restaurants closed (some permanently). What feels especially unprecedented about the current pandemic is not just the unknown period in which it will last, but the prolonged isolation—the lack of
human interaction during a time when it’s needed most. Though the outbreak has stoked widespread panic among different classes of society, young people—the millennials, the Gen Z’ers—are, in many ways, built for such a crisis. Facetime, text, virtual video games: young folks are leveraging their innate ingenuity and technical know-how to stay connected, hallmarks unique to this demographic. “Because so much of what we do is already digitized, communication right now doesn’t feel that different,” Royster said.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MIKAELA HUTCHINSON
awn Royster, who is 17 and a junior at Timber Creek High School in Orlando, typically runs at night. But this March day wasn’t a typical day. Having been out of school for nearly a week, due to a statewide effort to stem the coronavirus outbreak, she was determined to make the most of an abnormal situation. So she laced up her light blue Nike Zooms and set off in the early morning light. She loved being out in nature, the soft breeze caressing her face. She ran harder than usual, barely catching her breath. And while this morning jaunt offered a therapeutic release from days of isolation, something felt eerie. At the sight of a human face— once a source of comfort—an instinctual survival mechanism kicked in, a flinching need to protect and distance herself. She ping-ponged from sidewalk to sidewalk, avoiding passersby. Was this practicing ethical social distancing, she wondered. Or was this society’s new normal? At the beginning of March, the novel coronavirus, referred to as COVID-19, seemed an innocuous specter, contained to a far-off land. Symptoms can include fever, cough and breathing trouble in healthy individuals, and can lead to death in the immunocompromised and the elderly. However, considering that there is no vaccine nor an adequate number of tests or hospital beds for those who fall ill, all Americans are at grave risk. Now that the virus has wended its way to the States—more than 100,000 cases
