Young people, please wear a mask: The life you save may be your own.

In 1985, I published a column entitled: “Message for teen-agers: Buckle up.” Although cars had been equipped with seat belts for years, a 1982 survey in 19 states revealed that only 11 percent of drivers and passengers were buckling up. My sons were teenagers, and so were the undergraduates I taught at EKU. Our sons were not yet drivers, but whenever they were passengers in any car, they heard my same goodbye mantra, “Be sure and buckle up.”

I started my column by explaining that long before seat belts, I was once a teenager. I was dating a boy from Bardstown, about 25 miles from my home in E-town. I remember moonlit rides to parties where sons had access to their fathers’ private stock of Nelson County bourbon. I remember boys in white dinner jackets, and girls with summer tans and pink cotton dresses that swirled to the music of “The House of Blue Lights.” I remember drivers who drank too much and drove too fast, and I remember the white fence posts speeding by dizzyingly as we drove home over the dark road.

I didn’t drink, and I didn’t drive. I should have been scared, but I’ll be honest – I thought that nothing bad could happen. Boys in white dinner jackets and girls in pink cotton dresses led charmed lives. We could go on racing with the moon, while life, with untold pleasures still untasted, stretched out before us.

And we were lucky. Nothing bad happened – at least not in automobile accidents. We had wars, a polio epidemic, other illnesses, suicides. Our lives were not charmed after all.

But the 1980’s were different. Several of our sons’ classmates were involved in fatal accidents. Some received devastating injuries that irrevocably changed their lives.

When fatal accidents happened, we were haunted by “if only” scenarios. If only they had started a minute sooner or a minute later. If only they had taken a different route, stopped for gasoline, changed their plans. If only we could retrieve the moment – hand them the moment, and let them do it all differently. If only they had fastened their seat belts.

Today’s teenagers and young adults have new perils and new choices. The coronavirus has taken 150,000 American lives in less than six months, and thousands of new cases emerge every day. While the elderly have no choice but to stay isolated, young people often choose not to wear masks. Perhaps, like teenagers in the forties, they think nothing bad will happen.

If everyone would wear masks and practice social distancing, we could slow the spread of COVID-19, and hundreds of lives would be saved. While it’s true that many young people have only mild cases of the virus, COVID-19 has killed people of every age, sex, color, and ethnicity. We have a lot to learn about the disease, and we need to listen to the scientists.

In my news magazine, The Week, I read the following:

The answer to why some people become deathly ill with COVID-19 while others suffer only mild symptoms may lie in our genes, reports The New York Times. …researchers found that coronavirus patients with Type A blood were 50 percent more likely to need oxygen or require a ventilator. The study, which examined the genes of more than 1,600 patients from Italy and Spain, hasn’t yet been peer-reviewed. But previous research by Chinese scientists also found that COVID-19 patients with Type A blood appear to get hit harder by the disease.

Here’s my 2020 message to teenagers: A fatal exposure to this deadly virus can happen in an unguarded instant on the happiest, most carefree day of your life, and blood type is only one element in your genetic profile. So wear your mask, practice social distancing, and encourage others to do the same. The life you save may be your own.

Shirley Spires Baechtold is a writer, musician, and professor emeritus of English at Eastern Kentucky University.

This story was originally published June 30, 2020 at 11:28 AM.