That's the headline at The Wall Street Journal: "A Generational War Is Brewing Over Coronavirus/Scientists say lack of alarm among young people could hinder the fight against the virus and endanger elders."
But they've still got their paywall up. Even with a link at the top of Drudge this morning. How many of these belligerent "young people" have a subscription to The Wall Street Journal? Maybe the article is written for the old, stirring us up to fret that the young people are hating us and ready to kill us off en masse (by letting us die).
Do we need the young people to be alarmed? No. Stay calm. We just need everybody to understand the facts enough to follow the rules. You can enjoy your life, young people. You don't have to angst about it and plunge your mind into thoughts of disease and death.
I think the mainstream media may be getting this very wrong, expecting young people not only to do the required social distancing but to keep watching the news about the disease. That's the business of the media, but people do not need to consume the product. And if they try to spice it up — generational war!!! — so you'll obsessively consume it, shame on them.
We all should turn it off! Read enough to stay informed and then use your time in seclusion to do things that are good and enriching for you and for the people you are confined with. You don't have to be gloomy or alarmed because this is serious and there's something we've got to do together. I encourage you to find the good, not to find a war.
We're only at war against a disease — a mindless phenomenon — not against our fellow human beings.
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182 comments:
Who is going to tell them how great they are if all the oldies die off?
Women are particularly vulnerable to the news. It's an entertainment for them. That's the business model.
There is a growing feeling that all this is unnecessary if you are under 65. The real "boomers" are still solidly in control.
What GOOD are people over 65? do they pay into social security? oh, HELL NO!
do they have ALL the nice houses, and stuff? oh HELL YEAH!
it's not a pandemic, it's a panacea
The media is unhelpful. At a time when we could use cool heads and clear reporting we have instead the worst of both worlds.
A few million fewer SS and Medicare drains would be a huge boon to their futures, to say nothing of the early inheritances. Thank goodness they're lazy and unorganized. It might save the political class from making career-ending votes when the Fed Gov goes bankrupt.
If God, in His wisdom, has given the World a plague which will carry away all the old, white guys, how is that a bad thing? Surely, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. Somebody test the President again. See how God's plan is working out.
Data released last week by the National Health Institute in Italy, currently the world’s worst-hit country, shows mortality rates starting at 0% for patients aged 0 to 29 and edging up to peak at 19% for those over 90.
"the hashtag #BoomerRemover, a nickname for the novel coronavirus, briefly trended on Twitter last weekend"
Lol. The greatest generation borrowed heavily from everyone else to fund their lavish golden years.
"the young people are hating us and ready to kill us off en masse"
You just now found out about that? I guess having millenial offspring keeps me in touch with the youth after all.
This post is written in the kind of Boomer-speak that makes young people hate Boomers.
As you suggest, the article is probably Boomer-bait.
let's imagine that this was 1968, and there was a virus that had a mortality rate of
0% for patients aged 0 to 29
but killed off the war mongering oldsters
Of those of you that were around in '68; WHAT would YOU have thought about THAT?
be honest
We're only at war against a disease — a mindless phenomenon — not against our fellow human beings.
For those who’ve always been at war with Eastasia, Covid 19 is just another weapon to bend the long arc of history.
Dr. Brix on TV right now saying the millennials are the ones “who are going to stop this virus.” So we both agree Millenials are the key here.
Across Europe, where social life is shutting down faster than in the U.S., a divide is spreading between the young, many of whom say they don’t fear the virus, and their elders, including politicians and scientists, whose alarm about the illness is growing by the day.
here's a FUN THOUGHT
imagine a country (NO! a continent!) where
The Old are ALL white, sorta Christian, really pagan, infidels
and
The YOUNG are arab, fanatical True Believing Sons and Daughters of ALLAH
???
oh! and don't forget: a mortality rate of 0% for patients aged 0 to 29
illegal “lockdown parties” popped up in France and Belgium
Shouldn't those be called "social distancing" parties?
It it's illegal to have a party, then the virus has already won.
What GOOD are people over 65?
Some of them run blogs or comment on blogs, and those are useful activities, according to some blog.
Spare a thought for the stay-at-home voter
His empty eyes gaze at strange beauty shows
And a parade of the gray suited grafters
A choice of cancer or covid-19
Althouse: "How many of these belligerent "young people" have a subscription to The Wall Street Journal?"
Millennial: "What's a Wall Street Journal?"
Ryan: ...borrowed heavily from everyone else to fund their lavish golden years.
Which is why the young are going to have an entirely different perspective on what's going on now.
Ralph L: Thank goodness they're lazy and unorganized.
That's a very Boomer thing to say.
They ain't all lazy and disorganized. There are probably quite a few young and middle-aged brains out there getting very busy while well-pensioned geezers are Decameron larping and sprinkling their mail with aromatic vinegar.
What about Gen X? We aren't boomers and we aren't millennials. We are mistakenly labeled "boomers" by idiot millineals. We'll just continue on, under the radar. We are just fine being ignored.
Has anyone noticed that with all the news about China and South Korea's situation, not a peep about the Norks? Do you think their isolation from the world is saving them, or that Lil Rocketman just shoots anyone testing positive?
Got tired of the struggle on FB to turn this into a political war.
Turned it off. Over time, I’ve been unfriending anybody with 5,000 followers trying to start a serious discussion group.
We’re all bored and looking for something to stimulate us, and argument is the cheapest, quickest stimulant.
Grandkids are home. Mommy’s a schoolteacher, so she’s home, too. The grandkids are thrilled with the extended, unhurried mommy time. We’re really having a good time.
"Which is why the young are going to have an entirely different perspective on what's going on now."
Ya think?
I see Covid has brought out the best in everyone today.
What GOOD are people over 65? do they pay into social security? oh, HELL NO!
I paid the maximum social security payroll tax for forty straight years. I retired at age 69. Back of the envelope calculation, I’ll have to live well into my 90s before I get back as much as I paid in, and that’s without calculating the impacts of Carter’s inflation or compound interest. I’d have done better to put my money in a 401K, but then how could Johnson have funded Vietnam without that big pot of Social Security dollars just sitting there.
Consider boomer Althouse. Nice house, had a nice relaxing career, raised 2.4 kids, a very nice state-funded pension with healthcare. Great health despite not being able to smell. Who nowdays can hope for this kind of life? How the hell can we pay back the debt that the boomers racked up? How are we going to fix the environment that they supposedly ruined?
Damn kids!
Somebody test the President again. See how God's plan is working out.
Maybe you’d see God’s plan if you tested Biden and Sanders? Tulsi! Tulsi! Tulsi!
It's almost impossible to stay informed. Very surprising in this day and age of technology. But then, technology is run by people, and people have an agenda.
Trying to find out what the air transportation current rules and regulations are, regarding quarantine or not, and all it is is hysteria about who is doing the right thing, quotes from angry pundits, quotes from people who have absolutely no clue.
It's very frustrating.
"Blogger Temujin said...
I see Covid has brought out the best in everyone today."
It's just very ironic that everyone in the country needs to shelter in place mainly to protect those over 65. The same hippie generation that hoped they would die before getting old.
Our Millennial children are on the helping side so far, one being an RT at a trauma center and the other an NP. And the local Level 1 trauma centers are setting up negative-pressure diagnostic tents outside the ER, for screening virus cases that present.
We're only at war against a disease — a mindless phenomenon — not against our fellow human beings.
Wanna bet?
Althouse: "How many of these belligerent "young people" have a subscription to The Wall Street Journal?"
Millennial: "What's a Wall Street Journal?"
The article calls them "Carefree youths", so where did "belligerent" come from? Psychological insecurity and projection?
From the internet: From the internet: "I'm not saying I'm fearless. But, eating a Taco Bell burrito during a toilet paper shortage, is a bit of an adrenaline rush."
Probably not a millennial. The person didn't want a trophy for it.
China now slowing the shipment of chemicals to make anti-virals, and threatening worse. I wonder if a Sanders will realize where much of our raw materials come from before he shuts down the petroleum industry.
"Who nowdays can hope for this kind of life? "
Step 1: apply yourself to your own education
Step 2: excel and graduate 1st in your class
Step 3: ? (but thinking for yourself, cultivating your own sense of cautious optimism probably won't hurt.)
Godspeed and good luck.
How are we going to fix the environment that they supposedly ruined?
We already fixed it, decades ago. That’s why Gen-X and younger have to run around pretending that ordinary CO2, exhaled by every member of the multi-celled animal kingdom, is a toxic pollutant. It’s also why Gen-X and younger preach about “sustainability” while pitching their aluminum cans into the regular trash.
@DBQ, right as usual.
Don't worry youngins. This, too, will pass. And when it does, we'll still be here to point the way for you. Just as the previous generation did for us. And the previous generation did for them. I've worked (and lived) around enough of the young to know they know nothing. The danger is that they don't know they know nothing. Yet. We did the same thing.
Damn kids!
If catch any of them on my lawn I'm going to stand slightly less than arms length from them for 11 minutes.
Oh wait a minute, that's what they're going to do to me, those carefree little fuckers.
I read that the amount of energy put out by a single average hurricane is about 200 times the world's electrical generating capacity. That's one (1) hurricane. In an average year we have about 10 or so.
In short, Nature is a far more powerful force than mankind's puny efforts to rival it. While we can't say there's nothing to be done or nothing we can do, with billions of people and an almost infinite number of vectors, all our precautions, bans and orders may not make a big difference in the end.
Step 4: Profit!
Ryan: The same hippie generation that hoped they would die before getting old.
They've been solving that contradiction to their own satisfaction with "60 is the new 40!" (adjusted accordingly as Boomer cohort gets ever older).
Who nowdays can hope for this kind of life?
As per the current example, retired government employees.
I'm not much into gloom and doom, but isn't Social Security unsupportable at its current funding level, something like 3.5 people paying in for each person who's getting paid?
Big Mike pointed thing out, saying...
I paid the maximum social security payroll tax for forty straight years.
RIGHT, back then you were useful, and a contributer
I retired at age 69.
And NOW, there's no point in having you around... You are extraneous
Big Mike
Same here.
Illinois public sector unions are whining that we have to raise taxes here in order to save their pensions. "We were promised a pension!" Yeah. Well. Tough.
The children aren't selling silver colloid to treat COVID-19, that's Jim Baker.
The children aren't selling tothpaste to treat COVID-19, that's Alex Jones.
The children aren't telling Fox viewers that, if you can hold your breath for 10 sec., you don't have COVID-19, that's Geraldo Rivera.
The children aren't saying it's all a hoax, that's Rush.
The children aren't saying a miracle is going to make it go away, that's the president.
Who's at war with who?
Your first grade teacher was right: play well with others, don't say anything you know isn't true and, abouve all, wash your hands.
Yet another reason to loathe the media.
so logans run for real, but with a devolutionary twist, yes there is that fillip in Europe,
Looks like everyone got the memo so it's now being called Covid-19.
I told my four and their girlfriends and fiancees, don't come over. You will put grandma's life in danger.
also miri from star trek, I guess sanders can sub for Melvin belli,
Mike (MJB Wolf), 7:23:
"China now slowing the shipment of chemicals to make anti-virals, and threatening worse."
This makes me angry. At them, at us for allowing ourselves to become so dependent on them. At myself for being so sold on free trade as to support it even when the necessary preconditions no longer applied. If China wanted to push Americans into the president's camp on trade, they couldn't have chosen a better time or approach.
Happy St. Patrick's Day Kids! By the way, we've closed all the bars. Would want us to get sick. But have fun!!
I'm not seeing a war, or even war talk. It is true, however, that with the shut downs and shuttering of businesses we are sacrificing the current economic health of the relatively young and healthy on weak statistical evidence doing so will protecting the health, and lives, of the relatively old and secure. It would be natural for those affected younger folks to feel some resentment.
For the coming months expect comments expressing social sadism to be deleted and/or moderated. Edginess is one thing, seeking pleasure in other people's pain and suffering is very much another.
are you going ban frank Lloyd nut, commie architect,
"We're only at war against a disease — a mindless phenomenon — not against our fellow human beings."
Fine. But the current approach imposes enormous costs on people at little risk, while a different approach --stricter isolation of the real risk groups, especially old, sick seniors -- could also stem transmission at potentially lower cost.
Regardless of the merits of the different approaches, the current one cannot be maintained forever, at limitless cost. Generational war may be a harsh metaphor, but the question is if the pushback on economic implosion and overwhelming stress will occur before or after the curve has been flattened.
Exactly how much are we willing to pay for extending ailing grandpa's life by two rather than three years? One million dollars? Five? Ten?
We're only at war against a disease — a mindless phenomenon — not against our fellow human beings.?
--Althouse
“The Trump administration has been copying the wrong Korea. Instead of the intelligence and expertise of South Korea, it is emulating the sycophancy, incompetence and propaganda of North Korea.”
--Fareed Zakaria, CNN
I'm going to go with "war against our fellow human beings".
My own personal experience is the younger people I know seem to be the most alarmed. Older people have seen worse things than this without the need for government intervention.
It is true, however, that with the shut downs and shuttering of businesses we are sacrificing the current economic health of the relatively young and healthy on weak statistical evidence doing so will protecting the health, and lives, of the relatively old and secure.
Indeed.
this infection will pass, but biden or sanders could fry the golden egg,
Hey Meade, my kid was applying herself like crazy in engineering school before they closed the place down to protect you. She’s flying home today. No refunds for the rest of the semester and she’s on the hook for the $18,000 in loans she took out just for this semester.
Thanks for the helpful advice though!
Just now on CNBC, Jim Cramer said that private industry will have 5 million test kits available next week. Next week!
Dems must now drop that narrative.
"We just need everybody to understand the facts enough to follow the rules. You can enjoy your life, young people."
Following "the rules" means that young people can't enjoy their lives.
"We just need x" is just the sort of mindless self-serving rhetoric to stir a generational war.
I am not even young, but I feel their pain. The fact that old people don't even recognize the pain as pain, that it is utterly disproportionate, and that it does not help the people suffering it, will only make things worse.
The quarantine/shelter in place could be targeted, but political correctness won't let that happen
"Read enough to stay informed and then use your time in seclusion to do things that are good and enriching for you and for the people you are confined with....."
This makes me grit my teeth.
Well and good to "read enough to stay informed and then use your time in seclusion to do things that are good and enriching for you and for the people you are confined with" but there is a large part of the population that is NOT in seclusion, that is working in an environment of paranoia and chaos, that cannot be homebound heroes.
What would be good and enriching for those NOT in seclusion would be for the 'secluders' to donate to food banks, as an example. To babysit out-of-school kids whose parent(s) have to work -- maybe even help them with something resembling education. There is plenty that can be done besides personal enrichment.
And - yes - those in seclusion ARE doing a good thing: just keep in mind this is not 'Woodstock Peace and Love - the Corona Virus Version' for everyone.
I am Laslo.
AA writes:
"Do we need the young people to be alarmed? No. Stay calm."
Generally good advice. Staying calm is almost always better than freaking out."
"We just need everybody to understand the facts enough to follow the rules."
Facts get lost in the hysteria, and maybe the "rules" aren't such a good idea.
For example, here's a few simple facts:
Wisconsin Population: 6 Million people
Wisconsin Covid-19 Deaths: 0
So, what's the significance of these two facts, for people living in Wisconsin?
"You can enjoy your life, young people. You don't have to angst about it and plunge your mind into thoughts of disease and death."
True. But many middle age people are worried about the economy shut-down, caused by the REACTION to viral epidemic. Losing one's livelihood will do that.
"I think the mainstream media may be getting this very wrong, expecting young people not only to do the required social distancing but to keep watching the news about the disease."
Watching the news about the disease, particularly when 80-90% is bad information can stress some folks out.
"That's the business of the media, but people do not need to consume the product. And if they try to spice it up — generational war!!! — so you'll obsessively consume it, shame on them."
Yes, consume less news!
"We all should turn it off!"
Yes!
"Read enough to stay informed and then use your time in seclusion to do things that are good and enriching for you and for the people you are confined with."
Yes, but an important caveat. Some blue collar workers don't have the LUXURY to simply seclude themselves. Are the bills gonna simply pay themselves?
"You don't have to be gloomy or alarmed because this is serious and there's something we've got to do together. I encourage you to find the good, not to find a war."
I like it, and agree. I would encourage you to skeptical of many aspects of this epidemic, and evaluate the argument, that the REACTION to the epidemic, may be counterproductive and make life worse.
"We're only at war against a disease — a mindless phenomenon — not against our fellow human beings."
The political "war" metaphor has been a failure. "War on Poverty", "War on Drugs", "War on Terror". I, for one,?am not at "war" against a disease. I am merely trying to understand to risks, not overreact, and keep healthy.
Hey Pants, believe it or not I do have sympathy for you and your family. And for anyone on a ventilator.
Get well. Stay well. Be strong.
Well we do have H1N1 as a benchmark. So if fewer Americans contract Wuhan Flu than Swine Flu, we have won. If fewer than 12,000 die from Wuhan Flu, then we have won. If we flatten the curve dramatically, as it appears we have, then we have a template for the next Chinese SARS-like bug that comes along. And if we have restructured supply chains to avoid reliance on China then we are better positioned for the near future than we were before Wuhan Flu. Too bad current data is so hard to come by and unreliable or it would go along way toward tempering the current panic.
Zakarias been an idiot since 1987, when he compared the reagan nsc to a junta because vietnam
I'm going to go with "war against our fellow human beings".
Of course, because it's distributed and transmitted by humans.
No refunds for the rest of the semester and she’s on the hook for the $18,000 in loans she took out just for this semester.
I bet you already knew that universities are mostly a scam nowadays.
Dogbert: I'll transfer any remaining money from low-income people to the rich.
Dilbert: That feels wrong
Dogbert: I'm just adding efficiency to the inevitable.
Only happy thoughts on Althouse. Got it.
I'm happy to see all these people outside of Costco in Cypress, Ca. getting some fresh air.
Madison where they waged the vendetta against walker and any other unperson, you trust their judgement.
Sadly though Ferd they don’t let you work as an aerospace engineer without it.
I feel for my daughter and her family in Marin County. They are on "shelter at home" for 3 weeks....which means that she and her husband are at home with two really active and rambunctious kids 10 and 7.
Fortunately, my daughter's job is one where she can work from home....for now. Her husband is a school teacher and is not going to work...I assume he is getting some compensation. I hope so. Financially they are OK...for now. They do have a decent fenced in yard and a large open park where they can at least let the kids out to release some energy. The shelter at home doesn't ban you from going to the store or medical appointments.
She too has been cleaning closets 😀
Three weeks may seem like an eternity, but this will pass. Better safe than to catch or pass on a disease.
It doesn't need to be a war between the young and the old.
Society needs all kinds, levels, ages of people to be whole. The young and the old both have strengths, knowledge and weakness to bring to the mix. Wishing people to die because they are old, homeless, a drain on your OWN resources, and their deaths would make your life better.... is an evil thing to do. I would hope that the majority of the young are concerned for their own parents, grandparents. If not...then we really have a broken society and perhaps should just start all over again from scratch.
When we receive a gift from God that gift always comes as a person who blesses us. The young folks are blessings who are now raising younger blessings who will do the same. The bad exceptions we hear about usually come in from a frustrated love of money.
"You just now found out about that?"
Why do people assume that when I write about something it must mean that I have never heard of anything like it before? I put in this category all the comments that tell me I am "naive" or "gullible" or put things in terms of my being "surprised." You're virtually always wrong.
They want to erase the lessons of the last generation, to create the new man.
comments expressing social sadism
What's social sadism? Serious question.
"Only happy thoughts on Althouse. Got it."
That isn't what I said, Browndog.
But there are at least 2 social sadists who regularly try to put up posts with the intention of inflicting psychological pain in others. It's what motivates them. When we see their name, or pseudo name, we will summarily delete without reading their comment. Everyone knows who I'm talking about. Hint: begins with "President Pee..."
Thank you and carry on.
" How many of these belligerent "young people" have a subscription to The Wall Street Journal?"
Ann, when is the last time you saw anyone under the age of 40 reading a newspaper, even online for free?
Trust me, the last time most of them read a newspaper was in elementary school, as part of their "civics" training.
like zonbies out of brains
"The article calls them "Carefree youths", so where did "belligerent" come from? Psychological insecurity and projection?"
"Belligerent" came from "war," the word in the headline that set me off.
"Belligerent" means, literally, making war.
I didn't read the article (paywall)so I can't comment on it in particular
However, having once been a young carefree youth, I remember how it was in my 20's. You are invincible.You won't get sick. You can do ANYTHING. The thought of aging never enters your mind. Old people are not YOU. Being old is somebody else's problem. Why feel sympathetic about that. You will always be...forever young.
You grow out of that....if you live through your stupid teens and 20's. When you have children of your own. When you start creaking and groaning as you age. When you realize that everyone in front of you...parents, aunts, friends even....are passing. When you can almost see the end of the line. (I want that played at my funeral) When you realize that YOU are the last man standing.
"Who nowdays can hope for this kind of life?"
You forget the hopelessness of the time of the Boomers' youth. I grew up thinking nuclear war could happen at any time. I felt sad that other human beings in the world had had a chance to grow into adults and have something of a life. I was born to die as a child, and that's just the way it was. I was afraid when I heard a plane fly overhead. In a minute, we could all be fried to death. A little later, it was Vietnam, come to kill all the boys of my generation. The world had been ruined, and the best thing to do was withdraw and engage in some sort of subsistence farming on a commune. It was not worth joining the terrible world our parents made. Best to dance and play and enter a psychedelic dream.
You are completely wrong if you think that I — even as my high school valedictorian — had any idea that there was a path open to me into a professional and secure career. That's only something I stumbled into many years later. I went to college but studied painting and drawing. I had no commercial potential. I only went to law school 5 years after graduating from college and only because I started noticing how long my life was turning out to be and that it was going to get awfully dull if I didn't do something with my mind. When I showed up at law school, I thought they'd let me in on some weird fluke and that I didn't belong there at all. It's not like all the doors were open and all I needed to do was to walk in. I was hard for me to see that this was something I could do. I was never encouraged like young people are today.
"When you have children of your own."
Especially this.
Will we come together over Coronavirus?
Meanwhile, the poison taps flow nonstop, 24/7, on CNN and MSNBC. Every Presidential news conference Q&A session turns into a media festival of gotcha! incoherency. But at least they stomped out that obscure pundit over at Fox who was dumb enough to respond to those who don't want to let a good crisis to go to waste.
@Blogger gilbar said
____&&&&&
What if Spanish flu struck early: "elites only" before big war
Really the soviets were the ones who were prividing the supplies to the vietcong, they were the one who were killing the generation, their nuclear weapond were threatening the planet.
"... having once been a young carefree youth, I remember how it was in my 20's. You are invincible....Being old is somebody else's problem. Why feel sympathetic about that. You will always be...forever young. You grow out of that....if you live through your stupid teens and 20's... When you realize that everyone in front of you...parents, aunts, friends even....are passing...."
That may have been your experience and it may be the experience of many, but there are also many young people who think deeply about mortality even when they are children. The notion that everyone dies in order, that all the generations before you will go before it's your turn — that is, of course, a fantasy, but not all young people are in its grip. Every child learns at some point that he too will die, and it can be very disturbing to absorb this abstraction. Many children experience the death of another child or young person — a friend or a family member. The work of understanding reality is hard and it happens to many (most?) of us when we are young. I believe that after 40, you become more and more accommodated to the idea of dying, and that you suffer much more from it when you are younger.
AA: You forget the hopelessness of the time of the Boomers' youth...[unimaginable and incomparable trauma and despair of having had the misfortune of coming of age/being a young American in the sixties]
This is complete bullshit.
Oh good Lord I wouldn't even know where to start with this.
I never felt invincible, but I do remember thinking people over 40 were pretty old, and really old people just kind of expected to die.
BUT I actually think the young people getting together isn't a bad thing. They just need to stay away from their grandparents.
It will be really interesting to see what happens in Chicago the next few days, after the St Patricks day parties.
"I put in this category all the comments that tell me I am "naive" or "gullible" or put things in terms of my being "surprised." "
Live by the persona, be misinterpreted by the persona.
Thank you for your good writing in this thread, Althouse.
Angle: "AA: You forget the hopelessness of the time of the Boomers' youth...[unimaginable and incomparable trauma and despair of having had the misfortune of coming of age/being a young American in the sixties]
This is complete bullshit.
Oh good Lord I wouldn't even know where to start with this."
It is amazing, isn't it? You think Althouse is a smart person. You think you could reason you way to a common view of the common facts. You think you live in the same world. But then this. From the most privileged generation up to that point, in the most fortunate country, in the whole history of the world. OMFG, Boomer.
Blogger Meade said...
"Only happy thoughts on Althouse. Got it."
That isn't what I said, Browndog.
Yea, but I think I'll stick with it in this brave new world.
"BUT I actually think the young people getting together isn't a bad thing. They just need to stay away from their grandparents."
But that is not what "the rules" say. Schools and college's close, for ailing grandpa's sake.
The young and relatively young are watching their economic futures taking a huge hit. Whether true or not, it's only natural that many will view themselves as being sacrificed at the altar of elderly pensioners. I don't know how we overcome that but our poison has been picked. No turning back now. Best to embrace it and to pray the negative economic impacts of our decisions don't dwarf the health impacts of Coronavirus in the coming years and decades.
"What's social sadism? Serious question."
Sadism that may not necessarily have a sexual kink to it. Though, fair warning, it could include that too.
"The article calls them "Carefree youths", so where did "belligerent" come from? Psychological insecurity and projection?"
"Belligerent" came from "war," the word in the headline that set me off.
If anybody is belligerent, it's the people who told the 'carefree youths' that it's illegal for them to have a party.
I always used to try to socially isolate myself from young people, especially around holidays like St. Patricks and New Year's. It will be a little easier this year.....I have a comfortable enough retirement, and, beyond washing my hands more often, my life hasn't drastically changed. Still, it's kind of a downer to live in a situation where I've got a good chance of contracting a disease with a high mortality rate for people my age....My morbid worries though are nothing compared to what's happening to the young people I know who have lost their jobs and have no idea where this will end. The big losers in the current situation are the young people.
On the plus side of seclusion, in nine months there will be a lot of babies born to sixty-year-olds.
I am Laslo.
Reporting for duty.
Journalists are not very interested in reporting facts nor do they understand facts, so they have fo write shit stuff like this. It is lazy and consists of researching Twitter feeds, blogs, and things in their own bubble.
What I marvel at is the confidence that people have in government officials and authority figures. Where does this confidence come from? Based on what data?
What does the government do well? I cannot think of anything.
Meanwhile, we are RADICALLY changing our economic lives based on what public “experts” say might, should, must, ought and have to happen. I find this challenging, because of the very real, long-term economic impact of these decisions. This will hurt for a long time. And the government’s solutions are to spend massive amounts of resources on (a) the national credit card, and/or (b) devaluing the currency. This is with (a) a national credit card nobody ever repays, and (b) a money supply that hasn’t contracted since the early 1980s.
This seems like Stage 1 thinking Us running rampant (Thomas Sowell, Applied Economics). The consequences are devastating. Perhaps everyone of a certain age and/or risk category — as defined by real data — should “shelter in place.” We don’t have testing kits, so it’s all left to opinion/speculation, and the safest choice is to shut everything down. Again, the safest choice, not necessarily the most efficient choice. That would require Stage 2 thinking, which is always in short supply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_Economics:_Thinking_Beyond_Stage_One
So again. I marvel at the confidence people have in authorities — at every level — as society is transformed to combat an invisible enemy. Are we doing our best, or are we advocating things no one could ever call us “wrong” for advocating?
Everything in life has a price, because we sacrifice multiple options in choosing what we think is the best option available with the time that we have.
This is all coming at a very expensive price.
And this is the problem with the journal glen simpson and evan perez are not one offs
You forget the hopelessness of the time of the Boomers' youth.
I see this from time to time. I think it's an early boomer, blue-state thing (*).
As a late boomer (born Dec '60) in a Southern state, things were great, and visibly getting better. No existential dread in my childhood!
(*) Yes I know that's a recent designation.
@Angle-Dyne, not bullshit. I was there, and unlike Althouse I did receive a draft notice for Vietnam. After living through the assassinations of Jack and Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, and watching cities burning I ended 1968 with a notice to report for induction. At that point I wouldn’t have bet I’d live to 25, much less my 70s.
But we made it. Ronald Reagan bet that if the Soviets were forced to compete with us economically they would collapse without launching into nuclear war. That was by no means as clear then as it appears in hindsight, but just like that, the Cold War was over with no H-bombs going off anove American and Russian and European cities. It may be fashionable amount the brain-dead to despise Ronald Reagan, but we owe him a lot.
This whole thing reeks of class warfare, not generational warfare. And I’m no Marxist.
This just in: Blue collar workers cannot work from home.
This misunderstanding permeates every “educated” discussion I’ve seen anywhere, to the point it betrays prejudice and ignorance. And this is the self-appointed “smart set” that says this $#!%.
“Work from home,” they say. Pathetic. And no government bailout us coming for the working man, is it?
No wonder we don’t make stuff anymore. It can’t be made from home.
You wanna know where Trump came from? You don’t know anything about Trump’s blue collar base, and blog posts and comments like those here show why this ignorance is rampant in BoBo society.
My wife and I, who are old, are relatively calm.
My wife's son and daughter (my step-son and step-daughter) are very upset.
“Hey Meade, my kid was applying herself like crazy in engineering school before they closed the place down to protect you. She’s flying home today. No refunds for the rest of the semester and she’s on the hook for the $18,000 in loans she took out just for this semester.”
My granddaughter is home from too, from the U of MN. She’s doing her classes online, isn’t your daughter doing the same? I suspect that there will be student loan forgiveness for this semester, or some sort of relief.
"War"?? Isn't anybody sick of the journalistic hyperbolic terms that create conflict? These people are sick. Huge part of the problem.
Death to the Boomers! I wouldn't get too upset at that. While people like althouse may have been conscious of death at an early age, most young men think they are invincible. That's one reason we have wars. Everyone thinks its the other guy who's going to get killed.
I doubt many young men in the 20s and 30s, think about Grandpa getting the virus and dying. Its just not on their radar.
"No existential dread in my childhood!"
Mine neither (late boomer reporting in). I suspect it is almost entirely the product of parental influence and the childhood household environment; I wasn't a sheltered child by any stretch. Perhaps Althouse is Greta Thunberg avant la lettre.
It must be frustrating for the young and middle-aged to see all these old boomers still in power, refusing to leave the stage. Ginsburg is a perfect example. Sick and 85, and she won't leave unless its feet first. Meanwhile we had the 2016 election between Hillary and Trump - both born in late 1940's, and now we'll have Biden who was born during WW 2!
I can remember when Reagan was plagued with "is he too old at 69?" questions in 1980. And Ronnie looked about 60. Ike was considered an ancient old man in 1956 - and he was only 66.
"What I marvel at is the confidence that people have in government officials and authority figures. Where does this confidence come from? Based on what data?"
I'm amazed that in this age of real-time information and these critical early days of near-panic thirst for solid, government-backed data, the CDC page devoted to COVID case and fatality counts is "updated regularly at noon Mondays through Fridays. Numbers close out at 4 p.m. the day before reporting." This disease is only a Monday through Friday thing? Some clerk at the CDC can't log in from home and spend 15 minutes collating reports into the webpage table and graph? The daily "number of cases reported" graph wasn't updated for almost a week. (Fortunately, now that it has been, it shows that new case reporting may have already peaked.)
What's that saying about global warming? "I'll believe it's a crisis when the people telling me it's a crisis start acting like it's a crisis." There IS crisis acting, but it seems to be in many of the wrong directions. Here's an idea, instead of starting with grandiose, nation- or state-wide measures to spike the economy, how about we start with getting the informational webpage updated regularly so rational citizens can make rational decisions?
I love that Ann has a tag "these kids today". (I'm 72 - get off my lawn!)
But to completely change the thread, I'm trying to adopt Instapundit's suggestion to tip heavily to encourage those who are still serving us and maybe having hours cut, yada yada. In other words, ... trying... to think more about others. Give an encouraging word.
This too shall pass.
“The notion that everyone dies in order, that all the generations before you will go before it's your turn — that is, of course, a fantasy, but not all young people are in its grip. Every child learns at some point that he too will die, and it can be very disturbing to absorb this abstraction. Many children experience the death of another child or young person — a friend or a family member.”
This is so true. When my son died in April, his nieces and nephews, my grandchildren in ages ranging from 3 to 19 were given a lesson in mortality. It was shocking on a deep level even to the youngest who at age 3 asked about where did Uncle D go, will he come back, will I die too, will you die and leave me, etc. etc. The older grandkids ages 10 through 19 were shocked by the fact that someone they knew and loved could be here one day and gone tomorrow, that someone young and healthy could so suddenly and permanently be gone from our lives.
Sadism that may not necessarily have a sexual kink to it.
Like vinyl siding?
What does the government do well? I cannot think of anything.
That was one of the points Trump made in his discussion with governors. If the states try to purchase supplies to cope with COVID-19 through the federal government the paperwork and red tape will delay things terribly.
After thirty years as a government contractor I would say that the only thing our government does well is kill people and use paperwork as a weapon against its citizens.
My granddaughter is home from too, from the U of MN. She’s doing her classes online, isn’t your daughter doing the same? I suspect that there will be student loan forgiveness for this semester, or some sort of relief.
HAHAHAHAHAHA regarding relief .... yeah, I'm not holding my breath on that one. I'd like to be pleasantly surprised.
Yes they are having classes online .... classes which were not designed to be online, including several that have lab components, and were converted to being online in the space of days. This is not the quality of education that she paid for.
To be honest, teenagers and young adults are one of the most likely groups to refuse to do what they are told, at least until it becomes apparent that the rules do apply to them. If anyone is doing something stupid in this situation, they would be the most likely culprits after criminals, the mentally ill, the homeless, and anyone who has been drinking or drugging too much.
But, yes, this seems less than helpful. We've been seeing a lot of that from the media. We got the FEVAH and the only cure is more YELLOW JOURNALISM!1!
The thing about Boomers’ skeptical response to COVID19 panic is that we have a more fully developed appreciation of the incentive structure of public officials when it comes to trading off restrictions on your liberty against the risk of harm to their political careers. (Plus the added possibility of permanent accretions to governmental power — a mitzvah from their point of view).
Similar incentive structures,btw, apply to secret FISA warrants, but that’s for another thread.
The older I get, the more I appreciate the true impact of the “Agency Problem” in all aspects of human endeavor.
(YMMV, not all Boomers think this way.)
Well, if you people are looking for a generational war, we can play this game. How about we just stop vaccinating/innoculating young people or aborting them before they are even born? .....oh wait...
/s
funny when you start creating envy and resentment and blame within the media about boomers and then suddenly something like this comes along.
This country wont hold together. I see a lot of violence and civil strife in the future for my children. Then when the current young are the "new boomers", they can blame themselves for destroying the greatest experiment in governance that ever existed.
@Inga, if the daughter of Misplaced Pants is taking STEM classes, she probably has lab classes that can’t be done remotely. Old line professors who teach math and physics and engineering classes may be too used to standing in front of a white board and need videotaping to do their lectures online. However I am genuinely glad it’s going to work out for your granddaughter.
My relatives’ daughter, a young person, a nurse, is today testing children for Covid19. She sent me a picture of her all gowned, masked, gloved and goggled up. She already tested two kids from Fon du Lac with high fever and cough. Now that is a young person not bitching about being inconvenienced. There should be more like her.
“Yes they are having classes online .... classes which were not designed to be online, including several that have lab components, and were converted to being online in the space of days. This is not the quality of education that she paid for.”
My granddaughter is missing an internship in France early summer this summer. The U of MN stopped all university related travel. So what do you think the universities should have done instead?
That's interesting Althouse. It must have come as a shock when you realized you were doing better than literally all of your classmates.
What does the government do well? I cannot think of anything.
Well, it took them 2 years but I hear they finally built one hell of a website for Obamacare!
Building on Inga’s comment, several years ago I attended a funeral for the son of a colleague. The boy died in a crash on the interstate while driving cross country. Numerous of the boy’s high school classmates attended the funeral, and their shock was palpable. The minister preached to the young people in attendance that for most of them this was probably their first encounter with death, and almost certainly their grey encounter with the death of someone their age. I think where he was going with that was the idea that the young people needed to think about what they would leave behind, if they suddenly passed away.
I wasn’t even a teenager when a friend I knew through Boy Scouts was shot to death by his neighbor for the crime of cutting across the man’s lawn. I helped carry his coffin. You don’t have to be old to die; I learned that sixty years ago.
I haven't watched a local newscast, read a newspaper, or watched the network news in decades (other than things like 9/11). And I haven't missed it a bit. Most of what passes for "news" these days is political propaganda and fear-mongering. I don't need it. I get my news from online blogs and radio.
And I'm much happier and calmer for it.
If it’s politically and socially necessary to close, universities should dig into their endowments and issue full refunds and there should be a complete do over of this semester. The time lost can’t be replaced but many kids are in extremely rigorous programs and I’m worried about their ability to succeed in future classes when this semester was basically a wash.
So what do you think the universities should have done instead?
Stay open, let any students or professors in precarious health teach or learn virtually, and tell kids not to visit their grandparents.
I can't believe how angry I am at the alarmism.
This is going to turn out to be the biggest overreaction in history.
Sadly, no one will pay the price for the evil they've done in inciting a panic
Here are things that don't make sense to me: schools are closed. Daycares are open. Schools in large cities are open for kids to come get fed, so the kids are still getting together in large groups and adults are still having to be at the schools.
“Illinois public sector unions are whining that we have to raise taxes here in order to save their pensions. "We were promised a pension!"”
“Yeah. Well. Tough.”
You were promised economically unsustainable pensions by Democrats. They lied. They always lie like this. You bought their lies, so voted for them. Not. My. Problem.
I don’t live there. Can’t see why anyone ever wanted to live upstate near or in Chicago. My mother grew up there (Oak Park), but very happily immigrated to CO almost 3/4 of a century ago (1946). If I did live there, I would move somewhere where my pension wasn’t being used to pay your much more generous pension.
For the most part, the private sector moved from defined benefit to defined contribution pension plans better than 30 years ago. The one big holdout were state and local government workers, who bought Dem politicians to push up their pension “commitments” faster than wages, because they were invisible, coming out of future monies, instead of current budgets.
"Ann, when is the last time you saw anyone under the age of 40 reading a newspaper, even online for free?"
I quit reading the paper paper long ago and my under 40 son still gets a paper delivered. I advised him to switch to on-line because I wouldn't want to bring a paper into the house when I'm trying to self-isolate.
But the question of a paper paper is irrelevant to this discussion. You can have a paid subscription to a news site. I have the NYT and the Washington Post. I don't want that paper in my house.
The idea that young people don't know the major newspapers... do you want to say that?
Riots in 3...2...1...
“My relatives’ daughter, a young person, a nurse, is today testing children for Covid19. She sent me a picture of her all gowned, masked, gloved and goggled up. She already tested two kids from Fon du Lac with high fever and cough. Now that is a young person not bitching about being inconvenienced. There should be more like her.”
Good friend is bunkering down in a remote part of the country, well stocked on food, gasoline, masks, gloves, etc, and esp with guns and ammo (I keep telling him though that if you standardize on fewer calibers, your ammunition problem wouldn’t be so acute). The closed the HS for youngest kid, so no problem. Middle kid is away in an engineering school, but their car broke down, so he is spending a day this week to drive over there, and pick them up. Lab work in their major is mostly BS (unlike Chem and Bio), so easily sidelined, and they did a lot of distance learning in HS, in order to ski race, so is used to it. Oldest one though is an RN, who usually works in the ICU, but has been detailed to the new COVID-19 ICU at their hospital, and is already dealing with patients. Not something that a parent really likes dealing with.
Meade: For the coming months expect comments expressing social sadism to be deleted and/or moderated. Edginess is one thing, seeking pleasure in other people's pain and suffering is very much another.
So I'm guessing Paul Krugman is not welcome here.
Pants suggests: universities should dig into their endowments and issue full refunds and there should be a complete do over of this semester.
Yes, they certainly should but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Wanna bet?
I reflected on this yesterday after we had been encouraged to be 'helpful'. It's easy and self-gratifying (not that the choice itself is any less good at that point) to be helpful when the situation isn't really very bad but as it worsens people-- human beings being who they are post lapsum-- will find reasons, justfiable even, to do less 'helpful' acts, to be less 'helpful'. And if the situation deteriorates to truly wartime conditions (which we devoutly hope doesn't happen) then while some people will, because of character or faith or ideology, continue to be 'helpful' a greater number will harden their hearts, as it were, and 'helpfulness' will be cast aside. We are certainly very far from that in the affluent, bougie parts of the United States but the barbarians are at the gate.
Ping,
Ha ha. But maybe, maybe not. We'll see if he can control himself. President Pee Pee and one or two others do not.
“Schools in large cities are open for kids to come get fed, so the kids are still getting together in large groups and adults are still having to be at the schools.”
Not in Wisconsin, schools statewide are closed. My grandson’s daycare also closed.
I don't watch TV news. Don't trust it.
So if you wanted to make the age divide as bad as possible right now, would you implement a forced sequestor of everybody over the age of 65 (myself and my wife are included in this) like in the Bay area? The authorities seem hell bent on making all of this as bad as possible. Force younger folks to keep working, while the older folks are required to shelter at home and depend on the younger folks to bring us groceries, etc. Personally, I am not complying except at the point of a gun. That would be interesting - the police running about and shooting at people over 65 who happne to be out and about.
And one interesting fact. Italy and Iran are both heavily into China's One Belt One Road initiative. Over 300,000 Chinese citizens reside in Itlay, most in Northern Italy working in the textile industry, and they travel back and forth to China\Italy regulary. THe Iranian regime has had close ties with the Chinese and have regulary engaged with them face to face. Now that might scew the numbers for both countries into the very negative. Looks like shutting the borders in the US was a darned good idea.
Personally, I am worried that the insanity will destroy the economy, especially for folks who work at restaurants, bars and other generally minumum wage gigs that just can't weather a long shutdown. We already have establishments in the Seattle are that are closing for good because of social distancing and the newly madated two week closures.
I have little to no trust in the government - maybe a result of being in the military for as long as I was. That coupled with the known corruption we get a glimpse of every day does not help.
I hope we as a nation come together to get through this, but I have my doubts.
Inga-
OK, not in Wisconsin. In Chicago and New York. Large Cities.
Schools here are providing "grab-and-go meals". I had envisioned a long line and the Soup Nazi but evidently not how it's working. Two of the high school clinics remain open, too.
I Have Misplaced My Pants said...
My granddaughter is home from too, from the U of MN. She’s doing her classes online, isn’t your daughter doing the same? I suspect that there will be student loan forgiveness for this semester, or some sort of relief.
HAHAHAHAHAHA regarding relief .... yeah, I'm not holding my breath on that one. I'd like to be pleasantly surprised.
Yes they are having classes online .... classes which were not designed to be online, including several that have lab components, and were converted to being online in the space of days. This is not the quality of education that she paid for.
Buy stock in Coursera.
They do a better job of online courses and don't waste 60% of the money they take in keeping Women's Studies majors employed as administrators.
We're only at war against a disease — a mindless phenomenon — not against our fellow human beings.
Sorry, but that's wrong.
The Left, the Democrats, and the MSM are at war with America. They want Trump out of office, and will do anything, say anything, cheer on anything to bring that about.
Thus they have been desperately fighting to get everyone panicked and doing stupid things, in the belief that hurting America and the American people will hurt Trump's re-election.
The permanent staff at the FDA and CDC, yo know, the kind of people who make up the #Resistance, fought tooth and nail against letting Dr Chu test swabs for Covid-19, in Seattle, back in January when a lot of carriers could have been caught, before they infected other people.
Was that because they're incompetent but power hungry bureaucrats, who wanted to keep their empires strong, damn the public health?
Or was that because they're proud members of the #Resistance, eager to fight Trump, and damn the public health?
An Obama appointed State Department health bureaucrat brought the Diamond Princess passengers back into the US, sent home to "self quarantine", behind President Trump's back. More #Resistance at work? Or just people pushing the ideology of the Left, the firm belief that individuals have a "right" to "live their own lives", even if that gets other people sick / dead, and society has no right to protect itself?
In either case, we had a human wage war on the rest of us, and enable many more humans to do the same (how many stories have we read of "self-quarantined" people who went out, and got others sick?)
The virus is the easy opponent. It's the humans that are the hard opponent
@EsoxLucius
It was President Trump who cut off travel from China. And all your beloved members of the Left who screamed about it.
You want to get in a fight about who's giving bad advice, doing bad things? We can do that. Your side isn't going to win that one
“Schools in large cities are open for kids to come get fed, so the kids are still getting together in large groups and adults are still having to be at the schools.”
Stop, Grab and Go, food distribution program for school children in Milwaukee.
“This is going to turn out to be the biggest overreaction in history.”
Only in this country, and in neighboring Canada. There are places that are going to be per a toy scarred by this pandemic, like China, and esp, I think, Iran. China, because their government has been lying to them since Day 1, and a lot of Chinese have died as a result. And maybe more importantly, their economy is going to be devastated as a result. A lot of the middle class jobs they so love are going to disappear, as China’s reputation as a reliable manufacturing partner has cratered. Manufacturing was already moving out of China to lower cost countries, but this is likely to greatly accelerate. Iran, because the country is run by fundamentalist clerics, who tried to address the pandemic with 7th Century science and medicine. Just trust in the immortal teachings of the Prophet, except that, fairly unique in the countries around the world, their ruling caste seems to have been hit by the virus worse than anywhere else in the country, presumably by practicing what they preached. Their economy was already under severe strain, due to our sanctions, and, I think, that this just makes the ultimate fall of their regime that much quicker (hopefully before they get nuclear weapons, that they could use to hasten their Twelver Armageddon).
We have a lot going for us here in the US, despite our government screwups. For one thing, in modern times, pandemics like this flourish best in urban environments. Wuhan is very similar to NYC - slightly larger, and more populated, but extremely similar population density. Only with worse air pollution, and many more smokers. And it is only one of maybe 10 cities like that in China, some much bigger. Contrary to what the left wants (to urbanize our population), most of the people here prefer living in the suburbs, exurbs, and even in rural areas. Much of Western Europe (also Japan and S. Korea), is also very densely populated, in comparison to the US. The importance of population density, is that the denser the population, the more people you normally encounter in a day, and the quicker the spread of airborne diseases like this one. If medical technology were static, then lower population density would not be that helpful long term - it would just take longer to infect the countryside.
But medical technology is not constant, esp in the face of Yankee Ingenuity. Vaccines were supposed to take a year or so. Except some prototypes are going into testing already. Antivirals are already in testing on infected patients, with some showing real promise. And one of the older practices, of transferring serum from recently recovered patients (for their antibodies) to newly infected ones, is now being tried. Our ability to test is also starting to explode, Trump having forcibly dragged it out of the CDC’s monopoly. Many of these may not pan out, but enough, I think, will, so that most Americans will likely not really be that vulnerable to this disease. Both time and space are on our side here.
Ann said...
We're only at war against a disease — a mindless phenomenon — not against our fellow human beings.
One problem is only some of us are paying the price to fight this "war."
Regal Cinema's just shut down for two weeks. Most of the people that work there are young and poor. Restaurants are all shut down right now. Staffs for restaurants are young and poor. Students at schools are paying for an education they are not getting. There is a nationwide hiring freeze.
Economies work on the margins.
Another problem is this is not being treated rationally. You are all freaking out over this now but when you were young and working you did not. Swine Flu killed orders of magnitude more people before it made the news.
We all see that when it was Boomers turn to sacrifice to fight pandemics they just don't do it.
The last problem is there are bad actors.
I made a mistake yesterday comparing J.Farmer to Ritmo. J.Farmer and the rest of the alarmists are just sheep. Ritmo is a bad actor trying to cause pain and injury in order to obtain political power.
And that is the crux of the problem. It is 2020 and there is an election soon. We all know what the media is doing and why. We all know what democrats are doing and why. We all know what China is doing and why. I am still amazed you all don't know what Trump is doing and why.
And you are still letting them do it.
Baaaahhhh.
Inga said...
“Schools in large cities are open for kids to come get fed, so the kids are still getting together in large groups and adults are still having to be at the schools.”
Stop, Grab and Go, food distribution program for school children in Milwaukee.
Does COVID-19 hang in the air for 3 hours or not?
The welfare industry isn't interested in actually sacrificing.
They just want to get off work early.
Big Mike: @Angle-Dyne, not bullshit. I was there, and unlike Althouse I did receive a draft notice for Vietnam. After living through the assassinations of Jack and Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, and watching cities burning I ended 1968 with a notice to report for induction. At that point I wouldn’t have bet I’d live to 25, much less my 70s.
Sorry, no. I'm younger than Althouse, but I grew up in the '60s, and had seven older siblings (born between the late '30s and 1955), one of whom served in Vietnam. I remember fearing for his life (though I was probably too young to take in fully my parent's anxieties, anxieties *that were a repeat of the anxieties endured during WWII*.) In 1965, my sister had just taken her first teaching job. In Watts.
I could go on. But not one of us, still children or already young adults, had that attitude about life, or conviction of being uniquely distressed among the generations, that you and Althouse claim.
Sorry, it is bullshit. The idea that a time of war, fear of war, assassinations, and fear of terrible weapons and global catastrophe was somehow unique to those who came of age in the '60s is preposterous. It's Boomer narcissism. What *is* unusual is the wealth of the society they were born into, and the opportunities they had to share in that wealth in the great thriving American middle class. As for reasons for angst and loss of hope and the questioning of all values, I'm pretty sure those who survived WWI had a least as good a case to make for themselves than we did and do.
Fear of war "com[ing] to kill all the boys of your generation"? Or killing *you*, if you were one of those boys? What do you think families of the previous generation were worried about during that little unpleasantness in the 1940s? And nobody's been coming home in body bags or maimed from pointless wars these last 20 years? War is the human condition, taking or blighting the lives of the young, and wrecking their societies, even as some sit here right now tapping about their uniquely hopeless youths. Oh, and btw, nuclear weapons still exist. Except in this episode, there's a higher probability of their falling into the hands of nutcases not subject to the restraints of rationally acting.
Don't even get me started on Althouse's whine about how she wasn't encouraged, like kids are these days, who just can't understand how *hard* it was for her, and how *hopeless* her prospects were.
Give.me.a.fucking.break.
https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/new-california-law-reduces-penalty-knowingly-exposing-someone-hiv-n809416
New California Law Reduces Penalty for Knowingly Exposing Someone to HIV
Oct. 13, 2017, 8:53 AM CDT / Updated Oct. 13, 2017, 8:53 AM CDT
By Julie Moreau
California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Senate Bill (SB) 239, which reduces penalties for knowingly exposing a sexual partner to HIV.
Under current California law, it is felony offense punishable by 3 to 8 years in prison. The new law, which was signed by Brown on Oct. 6 and takes effect January 1, changes this to a misdemeanor, carrying a 6-month prison term — the same punishment as knowingly exposing someone to other communicable diseases.
The law also reduces the penalty for knowingly donating blood infected with HIV from a felony to a misdemeanor.
Democrats Scott Wiener and Todd Gloria authored the legislation, which was passed in the Senate in May, and approved by the Assembly in early September. The measure was co-sponsored by more than 130 advocacy organizations, including Equality California, the ACLU of California, APLA Health, Black AIDS Institute, Lambda Legal and Positive Women’s Network–USA.
For the "up to date" view, there's this: https://pridelegal.com/california-hiv-laws/
This is f-ing insane, but this is the Left. Decreasing the criminal penalty for knowingly infecting other people with a deadly disease, for knowingly risking the blood supply going to sick people, newborn babies, etc.
Most schools around the nation with feeding programs are doing these Grab and Go meals.
Sorry, Millenarians, I gotta stand with my g-g-g-generation (for some reason I always stutter when I say that phrase). Grew up singing "Hope I die before I get old" which is why Boomers never age.
If only schools had the foresight to build in drive up windows. Many already have walkies and earpieces.
"That's interesting Althouse. It must have come as a shock when you realized you were doing better than literally all of your classmates."
Yes, it was quite enlightening. I didn't think I was that great. I looked around the auditorium at orientation and thought: All these people, all with such an advantage over me (me, who'd never taken a course in economics or political science or anything else you might think of as pre-law). Later, I realized that you don't really need to be that good to be better than the competition. And it's possible that an aspect of being smart is that you have a sense of what it could be to be much smarter. I imagined there were people smarter than me, but where were they?! I never found them.
I know there are people who are whizzes in math and science, who really get caught up in that stuff when they are young. But they're not so much out where you can run into them in the normal course of life. And if you did, what would you talk about? My standard of who is smart has to do with how great they are at keeping a wide-ranging conversation going.
I know there are people who are whizzes in math and science, who really get caught up in that stuff when they are young. But they're not so much out where you can run into them in the normal course of life. And if you did, what would you talk about? My standard of who is smart has to do with how great they are at keeping a wide-ranging conversation going.
So is mine.
And I find my math / science whizz friends are much better at that. Because we tend to actually car about reality
Will we come together over coronavirus or is "A Generational War... Brewing Over Coronavirus"?
There’s a data point just in from Middlebury, VT. The students at Middlebury College responded to being sent home by rioting, trashing their dorms, smashing dorm windows, and then vandalizing local businesses. The war is ON.
"rioting, trashing their dorms, smashing dorm windows, and then vandalizing local businesses."
Snowflakes gonna flake.
"I am still amazed you all don't know what Trump is doing and why."
That is?
Oh PLEASE!!! Nearly all 20-somethings think they are invincible and tend to take much bigger risks than they will decades later. This is NOT NEW. Nearly every risk-adverse middle aged person can think back to the plethora of dumb ass thing they did - and shudder.
I personally have a neat theory that explains our species very survival depends on dumb young people: if it wasn't for the 'can-do fuck the consequences' of the yoot centuries ago we would have died out long ago. Why risk having kids just to see them die or die in childbirth yourself if female? Why bother do anything with the level of poverty, disease, filth and death the was much more common hundreds of years ago?
And I find my math / science whizz friends are much better at that. Because we tend to actually car about reality
THIS!!
mockturtle said...
Pants suggests: universities should dig into their endowments and issue full refunds and there should be a complete do over of this semester.
Yes, they certainly should but I wouldn't hold my breath.
A lot of them are going to be forced to. Kicking people out of dorms puts them in violation of landlord-tenant laws. Closing cafeterias and dining halls puts them in breach of contract on meal plans. They're probably in breach of contract on the tuition, too - I'm sure some smart lawyers are going to be making that case in a few months.
Individual universities could be on the hook for billion dollar settlements. That's a lot of incentive for lawyers to launch class-action lawsuits that will start destroying the modern university system.
You forget the hopelessness of the time of the Boomers' youth. I grew up thinking nuclear war could happen at any time. I felt sad that other human beings in the world had had a chance to grow into adults and have something of a life. I was born to die as a child, and that's just the way it was. I was afraid when I heard a plane fly overhead. In a minute, we could all be fried to death. A little later, it was Vietnam, come to kill all the boys of my generation. The world had been ruined, and the best thing to do was withdraw and engage in some sort of subsistence farming on a commune. It was not worth joining the terrible world our parents made. Best to dance and play and enter a psychedelic dream.
It's so odd that I can't identify with any of this. During the same time period, I didn't have these thoughts or emotions. Yes, I was completely conscious of the danger and unpredictability of the communists and their nuclear weapons, but none of that compares to the horror and uncertainty that kids in their thirties have experienced. They have seen the twin towers collapse on live tv after watching successful people who could have been their parents hold hands and leap from the top floors to resoundingly splat on the plaza 10 seconds later rather than roast to death in the fires.
They have seen children massacred in their school rooms by bug-eyed crazies. They have seen images of the aftermath of suicide bombers at a concert in London or a marathon in Boston or a nightclub in Florida. And now this....
Our hostess is amazing on many levels, but this LSD hippie shit is hard to swallow. i was fully aware that our parents and their parents, at extraordinary sacrifice, saved the world from the Nazis and the Japanese when there was no way to know the final result. They didn't create the mess. They cleaned it up, and the ungrateful fucks of Althouse's and my Boomer generation, particularly in Madison, WI (I was down the road at Beloit in the late 60'2), just turned up the hifi, took a tug on the bong and acted like shits. I was drafted and was a fighter pilot in the Marine Corps flying off carriers in the South China Sea, Chu Lai, and Da Nang. I went to law school afterwards having always planned to do so (either than or Julliard).
The Boomers have a lot to answer for, and if it ends on a ventilator gasping for that last breath, it could be some cosmic justice.
- Krumhorn
though I was probably too young to take in fully my parent's anxieties, anxieties *that were a repeat of the anxieties endured during WWII
The greatest generation, indeed.
I think of this every time I watch a movie from the 60s with David Tomlinson with my kids. Take for example Bedknobs and Broomsticks. It is set during WWII and is a wonderful film, but: what was David doing during WWII? He was a RAF pilot, with all the danger and sacrifice that entailed; his best friend was shot down and died. He married the friend's widow, no doubt out of survivor's guilt/a desire to care for her and her two young sons. A year or two after they were married, the widow took her two little preschoolers into her arms and leaped off a building in New York.
And ten or fifteen years later he was making movies about WWII, doing his job, surrounded by all the memories of what must have been unimaginable trauma.
I realize I have done quite a bit of whinging about my personal circumstances and the impact our current chaos on my own family, but that doesn't mean I'm unaware that suffering is all relative. I was thinking about how we would adapt to the likely loss of 1/3 of our usual income next year when I was driving past Phoenix Children's Hospital a few days ago. I mean, many of the people in that building would be delighted to have my problems.
A lot of them are going to be forced to. Kicking people out of dorms puts them in violation of landlord-tenant laws.
My daughter's school hasn't closed the dorms or dining halls, yet; they have asked the students who are able to go home to go home, but have kept the facilities open (grab and go for the dining halls; no seating) for those who need them; who have nowhere else to go. I imagine for the reasons you mention they cannot kick everyone out, although one assumes that some kind of executive order would override that. We flew my daughter home, in advance of what looks like the possibility of a shutdown of air travel and/or more strict quarantine measures happening, and are going to give it a couple of weeks to see if this gets worse or better before we send her back. We'd all like her to spend the rest of the year at school where she belongs but if they have moved everything to these bullshit Zoom classes (she said her first couple have been a complete waste of time; hopefully they improve), cancelled all her events/activities/tutoring sessions and closed the libraries and labs, there's really no point to her being there. Glad she is spending $18,000 a semester for this.
Temujin said...
Don't worry youngins. This, too, will pass. And when it does, we'll still be here to point the way for you. Just as the previous generation did for us. And the previous generation did for them. I've worked (and lived) around enough of the young to know they know nothing. The danger is that they don't know they know nothing. Yet. We did the same thing.
This generation is stupider than previous generations. But in their defense this is largely because a cohort of the older generations values their stupidity and works to keep them that way.
Google Greta for why.
At least no one here grew up worrying much about death from TB or childbirth or diphtheria or small pox or the sweat.
[My granddaughter is home from too, from the U of MN. She’s doing her classes online, isn’t your daughter doing the same? I suspect that there will be student loan forgiveness for this semester, or some sort of relief.
HAHAHAHAHAHA regarding relief .... yeah, I'm not holding my breath on that one. I'd like to be pleasantly surprised.]
There is going to be relief. But since the bills have to be paid they're just going to charge your account for it. Plus since Dem constituencies cannot be allowed to incur losses you're going to end up paying your own bill plus those for two others. And they expect you to thank them for the charade.
Wikitorix said...
[Pants suggests: universities should dig into their endowments and issue full refunds and there should be a complete do over of this semester.
Yes, they certainly should but I wouldn't hold my breath.]
A lot of them are going to be forced to.
No they aren't. The "stimulus" already accepts the principle that the taxpayers will bear the losses associated with the coronavirus. The schools may write a check but the government is going to give them the money.
cancelled all her events/activities/tutoring sessions and closed the libraries and labs,
This is what an attorney calls "damages." So the class action lawsuit against her school will only be for tens of millions of dollars - there's many lawyers who will be willing to take up that fight.
The Boomers have a lot to answer for, and if it ends on a ventilator gasping for that last breath, it could be some cosmic justice.
- Krumhorn
*********************
Yet you, a self-described Boomer, would apparently exempt yourself from that fate, I guess because you do not consider yourself to have been among the "ungrateful fucks" of your own generation.
So...why the condemnation of other Boomers who were NOT ungrateful fucks? There are tens of millions of us out here.
One would think that a legal education would have taught you not to make such a blanket indictment.
Yet you, a self-described Boomer, would apparently exempt yourself from that fate, I guess because you do not consider yourself to have been among the "ungrateful fucks" of your own generation.
So...why the condemnation of other Boomers who were NOT ungrateful fucks? There are tens of millions of us out here.
One would think that a legal education would have taught you not to make such a blanket indictment.
For the most part, the Boomers, as a group, can be characterized by the self-absorbed lint picking in her statement. Those of us, many among the commenters here, that weren't the rioters, protesters, and leftie anarchists have had to live with watching the inexorable Gramscian march through the institutions led by our contemporaries. As a result, the faculty lounges of the universities and colleges, newsrooms, and the writer's rooms in Hollywood are stuffed to the rafters with lefties.
While there will always be a Bernie Sanders or an AOC, the young 'uns have been pickled in the brine that the Boomers have fed them through every orifice.
The Boomer have a lot for which to answer. If there is a generational argument about the current situation, I'm not at all surprised. On the whole, it's entirely merited.
- Krumhorn
At 78, I'd rather take my chance on catching and surviving coronavirus than see the US economy trashed for the sake of giving me better odds.
Statists gotta statify, But remember that statism is deadlier than the Kung Flu or any other disease.
I’m not a virologist, epidemiologist, “public health expert” or even an MD. Nor am I a statistician. But I do think postponing a death, by 18-48 months, of one million 75-85 year olds - and thus having two ICU stays (avoiding the ventilator shortage) rather than one - by avoiding the nightmare of a high amplitude curve is well worth millions of bankruptcies, huge GDP loss, and altering the retirement plans of everyone from the 401(k) generation. You’ve seen the quality of life of a sick 87 year old. What’s sacrificing a few billion in GDP to give him or her another hundred eps of Wheel of Fortune
Most of you are totally missing the central point here, other than Achilles, Steve and a couple of others:
Older people, and those with serious chronic heath issues are afraid if this virus, mostly from being panicked by the media. These scared old folks, aided and abetted by the media, have put pressure on politicians at every level to do anything possible to protect the scared elderly cohort. These politicians want to cover their asses and be sure they don’t compare unfavorably to other overreacting pols, plus they like the power they attain in a crisis, so they restrict basic American freedoms and decree that a huge swath of the population cannot work, indefinitely, starting immediately by shutting down places of work indefinitely.
So the real war is the millions of service workers in the restaurant, bar, convention, sports support, and food services industries who live paycheck to paycheck getting absolutely fucked by the frightened elders, who instead of staying home and telling others to stay away til they feel safe again, selfishly inveigh upon the pols to make them feel safer. Millions of hourly workers in the services industries are going to be crushed whether 1,000 die here or 1 million die here (at least one “study” projects that high).
So for the sake of preventing to some degree a hypothetical level of harm to primarily the elderly sick, we are right now inflicting enormous harm on a much larger body of our citizens, these hourly workers being shut out, very few of whom have any mortal risk from Covid19. Their real risk is losing their jobs, homes, cars, health benefits, irrecoverably for many. Not to mention the small businesses that will be crushed and take more jobs with them.
This really is the elderly vs the not so elderly in a life and death face off if this continues so cavalierly, subverting the rights and livelihood of paycheck dependent hourly workers vs the selfishness of some number of frightened older people who should self quarantine but let the rest of their fellow citizens not have their lives wrecked. I say this as a 75 year old.
I’m also ashamed and disgusted at how our citizens are reacting by showing appalling indifference to their fellow Americans, swarming grocery stores and stripping unreasonable amounts of basic items from the shelves, with no thought that others have the same needs, I thought it couldn’t happen here in Tucson, but I went to our nearest grocery Sunday for one item and was appalled, people, mostly overweight elderlies, acting like a horde of locusts completely stripping the shelves of toilet paper, water (do they think the taps will run dry?) produce, cleaners, cereal, eggs—you name it.
Our nation was built by people of stronger stuff.
And the media are happy to fan the flames of hysteria through outright lies, omissions, and publicizing bogus studies telling us millions will die, right here in River City. They’ll be appalled if their preferred scenario doesn’t happen, but of course will suffer no accountability for the damage they do. Meanwhile 150-300 per day are dying of the flu in the US even with a flu vaccine administered to many millions, and we’ve had just over 100 dead from Covid19 since it was first reported almost 3 months ago. I see no reason to destroy our economy over a hypothetical. In that sense the reaction to Covid19 mimics the warming alarmist crazies. Much overlap between both sets of alarmists.
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