Here are just three examples. No need to click – they all read the same.
BUSINESS INSIDER: “Frustrated Millenials Say They Can’t Get Their Aging Parents to Cancel Their Cruises, Stop Going To Church, And Take Coronavirus Seriously”
VOGUE: “Why Are So Many Baby Boomers in Denial Over the Coronavirus?”
BUZZFEED NEWS: “How Millennials Are Talking To Their Boomer Relatives About The Coronavirus”
Although I’m a little too young to be considered a Boomer, I am over 50, and I’d be glad to explain why the over-50 demographic is not panicking in the fashion that our young, know-it-all journalists would like. It’s simple. We’ve been through a lifetime of media-hyped hysterias and apocalyptic predictions. If not complete hoaxes, they were falsely reported or over-hyped. Here are a few:
Overpopulation and Global Famine: This was promised not just globally, but domestically too. We were supposed to have run out of food and descended into global starvation a long time ago. All the experts agreed.
Day Care Center Child Molestations: This hysteria sent many innocent people to jail. Local and national media fanned the flames with accounts of “numbers growing daily” and videos of anguished parents. It was a fraud perpetrated by highly credentialed “experts” who believed that pretty much every child exposed to an adult had been molested. The children just needed help remembering it. Those of us who saw through the hysteria were muzzled, because to question the veracity of the hysteria invited accusations that you too were a child molester. It was like Salem in 1693. The bravest journalist I’ve ever read is the WSJ’s Dorothy Rabinowitz, for daring to unravel the terror and how it spread.
Killer Bees: We treat it as a joke now, but we were promised an invasion of swarming “Africanized” bees that would kill livestock and children. It was soon going to be unsafe to even go outside in the southern US without thick layers of protective clothing. All the experts agreed.
Killer Mold: Toxic mold in the ‘90s was kind of like radioactive waste, only deadlier. Or at least that’s what the media had us believing. The terror of discovering mold in schools was met with media alerts, school shutdowns, and local TV stations filming panicked parents as they picked up their crying children, just moments before the tikes were engulfed by the attacking mold.
Global Cooling: A “consensus of scientists” assured me this was real, and that its impact on agriculture would probably lead to my death by starvation.
Global Warming: According to “scientific” predictions from yet another “consensus of scientists,” the Arctic should now be ice free, snowfalls a thing of the past, and New York’s West Side Highway under water.
It goes on and on. Acid Rain. Peak Oil. Ozone. Alar Apples. Y2K.
Maybe the Wuhan Virus is finally “The Big One.” But after decades of the media fraudulently screaming “APOCALYPSE IS IMMINENT!!!” it is not irrational for Boomers to dismiss the latest hysteria. In Aesop’s fable about “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” the moral of the story isn’t that the townsfolk should have believed the boy, the moral is that the boy shouldn’t have destroyed his credibility by falsely screaming wolf time and again.
Thirty years from now, the millennials who are currently aghast at their parents for not panicking, will themselves be jaded by decades of hysteria, and they too will be just as skeptical of “Apocalypse 2050!!!.”
Should seniors – and everyone - be super vigilant about hygiene and sanitizing right now? Absolutely. But should they engage in hair-pulling hysteria as demanded by young know-it-alls? Of course not.
Close it up
“Why is it that a healthy young American like me - in the demographic most likely to survive Coronavirus – is panicking”
Because it’s the in thing to do, and you’re gullible.
Boomers have seen a few epidemics, maybe had a heart attack or two, or are in remission from Big C. What’s yet one more thing to die from?
Not our first rodeo with these types of players.
For my own part, add "And I can do arithmetic."
“Mr Corona Virus, I am 75 years old. I don’t even look at the pretty girls in their summer dresses anymore. Save your threats for someone who has their life in front of them.”
(I stole that line from MAD DOG COLL.)
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
H. L. Mencken
We are being told that the elderly are at risk. Boomers don’t want to think of themselves as elderly.
Panic. Everyone keeps using that word.
The only example I’ve seen of it were those two pavement idiots fighting over toilet paper two weeks ago.
We haven’t begun to see panic. Wait until 2 weeks isn’t enough.
Then you will see some panic.
This youngest generation has been bred for Fear. 9/11 happened in their earliest years. They grew up with high levels of security. You can’t park next to that building, the concrete bollards are protecting it from car bombs. We have metal detectors everywhere. Let’s practice a drill in case one of your school mates decides to come in and shoot the place up.
Now the HS proms and graduations, college graduations too, are all cancelled, because life is far too dangerous to have such milestone events in your life.
Psychologically, I think all lot of them are growing up scarred. And, of course, Trump is Hitler — which is to say: The media loves to incite fear, hatred, and division.
Because you’ve never had to face any real adversity or discomfort, dickhead.
Also, Y2K and the oil rig fire/spill in the gulf...can’t even remember the name...something Horizon?
Topic reminds me of this wonderful cut from a Boomer-favorite band.
Last album, last song.
“Nothing Changes”
There’s no need to panic if you understand the risks and mitigate them you can handle quite a number of risky things in life. I have parachuted, scuba dived, rappelled into caves and climbed mountains. Panic never helps anything.
Let’s not overlook the heterosexual AIDS pandemic.
i’m 63. went out yesterday and today, 1 fast food, and 1 sit down and eat.
Every other person looked waaay older than I am. One guy got pushed in in a wheelchair and his buddy had to hoist him up on a stool for drinks.( 10 patron maximum was in effect, btw)
I am not understanding why everybody has to stay home to not infect the elderly, when they are out in bunches, eating and drinking.
Is there something I’m supposed to panic about?
Having living through a half dozen end of the world scenarios humped by media and the IYI I hardly think about the Wuflu
The day this boomer panics over a flu bug is the day I need to hang it up.
Just because you say “boo” doesn’t mean we are obligated to jump.
Don’t forget; “Duck and cover”! After living through imminent nuclear war what is there left to scare the boomers with?
I wonder why...
Could it be we've been breathlessly lied to before?
Because most are smart enough to know a BS headline when they see it. And this one seems to be alarmed because boomers are not panicking or peddling panic.