School of Social and Political Science, Politics and International Relations, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom.
Center for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
PLoS One. 2020 Jul 2;15(7):e0235590. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0235590. eCollection 2020.
Amongst the most robust consensus related to the COVID-19 disease is that the elderly are by far the most vulnerable population group. Hence, public authorities target older people in order to convince them to comply with preventive measures. However, we still know little about older people's attitudes and compliance toward these measures. In this research, I aim to improve our understanding of elderly people's responses to the pandemic using data from 27 countries. Results are surprising and quite troubling. Elderly people's response is substantially similar to their fellow citizens in their 50's and 60's. This research (i) provides the first thorough description of the most vulnerable population's attitudes and compliance in a comparative perspective (ii) suggest that governments' strategies toward elderly people are far from successful and (iii) shows that methodologically, we should be more cautious in treating age as having a linear effect on COVID-19 related outcomes.
在与 COVID-19 疾病相关的最可靠共识中，老年人无疑是最脆弱的人群。因此，公共当局以老年人为目标，说服他们遵守预防措施。然而，我们对老年人对这些措施的态度和遵守情况仍知之甚少。在这项研究中，我旨在使用来自 27 个国家的数据，增进我们对老年人对大流行反应的理解。结果令人惊讶且相当令人不安。老年人的反应与他们 50 多岁和 60 多岁的同胞基本相似。这项研究：(i) 首次从比较的角度全面描述了最脆弱人群的态度和遵守情况；(ii) 表明政府针对老年人的策略远未成功；(iii) 表明在方法上，我们应该更加谨慎地对待年龄对 COVID-19 相关结果的线性影响。
