[lupusreal]

The whole American economy is already rigged to let baby boomers cash out at the end of their lives so they can travel Europe while younger generations struggle to make rent. Then I'm supposed to mask up and stay inside for an indefinite period of time ("two weeks to flatten the curve" becomes two months, then starts to look like it will be two years...), for what? To protect myself from an illness which nearly everybody my age shrugs off effortlessly? No, to protect the baby boomers so that they might live even longer. American society revolves around baby boomers.

A century ago, old people would have made sacrifices so that young people could live their lives. Baby boomers are too self absorbed for that, far too selfish. I gave them two months, which is more than I should have. Give an inch and they'll try to take a mile. If it wasn't for the pushback we'd all still be isolating to make baby boomers feel safe.

[umanwizard]

Old people weren’t the ones asking for more pandemic restrictions. They were most strongly supported by politically progressive city-dwelling Millennials.

[lupusreal]

Oh yes they were. "You're killing grandma!" was the battle cry of the isolationists.

[umanwizard]

The lockdowns were justified in the name of old people, yes. That doesn't mean old people were the ones calling for them.

[lupusreal]

Appeals to grandma weren't targetted at baby boomers; their grandmas are long dead already. The baby boomers are the grandmas the rhetoric referenced.

[umanwizard]

I understand that. Regardless of who the rhetoric referenced, it was not propagated primarily by old people.

Just like arguments to “think of the children” are almost never made by children themselves.

[chasd00]

> If it wasn't for the pushback we'd all still be isolating to make baby boomers feel safe.

From what I remember it was the boomers who were the loudest voices against “shelter in place” during the pandemic. Young people were the ones happily following what ever order the authorities demanded.

[Damogran6]

Hindsight being 20/20 and all that. This is clearly something you feel strongly about. I don't like people dying and societally, don't mind doing things that help other people not die.

Success was quite the moving target back then and to be cranky that two weeks lead to two years drastically underestimates the difficulty of the problem. Paxlovid, Boosters, knowledge on how to treat AND THE FACT that the ones that were susceptible are DEAD... (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...)

Your take on it is tone deaf and lacking in empathy.

[umanwizard]

Everyone dies, no matter what you or anyone else does or doesn't do.

[Damogran6]

Yes, but. It’s the time in-between that people generally want to maximize…and if they’re the kind of person I want to hang out with, they want to help other people maximize their short time as well.

[umanwizard]

Maximizing the quality of one's time on earth is not only done by maximizing its duration. Nobody, including the people you want to hang out with, optimizes for 100% longevity without caring about any other variable.

[lupusreal]

Tone deaf and lacking empathy is a good way to describe people in their 70s who want society shut down, children locked out of schools even, because they're terrified of their own mortality.

[Damogran6]

You’re not up on pandemic math, are you?

There’s emergent behavior that came out of well known scientific behavior in trying to contain a global phenomenon that we didn’t fully understand when it hit.