Coronavirus gives millennials, Baby Boomers something else to argue about
Posted On March 18, 2020
When you stop and think about it, our response to the global spread of coronavirus, or COVID-19, has been pretty remarkable.
Professional sports leagues have suspended their seasons. The NCAA canceled March Madness and the College World Series. Disneyland and DisneyWorld have closed. People all over the country and the world have willingly curtailed their daily activities –many of them voluntarily quarantining themselves — in order to not only decrease their own chances of catching the virus, but the chances of unwittingly passing it on to others.
But not everyone has completely bought into the social distancing methods many of our medical professionals are telling us are necessary to slow the spread of the virus. And that’s given millennials and Baby Boomers yet another subject to argue about.
Business Insider interviewed several millennials who are “frustrated” that they can’t get their Boomer parents to quit going to church, hitting casinos, or even going on cruises. CNN published an opinion piece by Eli Pariser condescendingly chiding Boomers that they “aren’t taking this virus seriously enough” and begging them to correct that attitude for the sake of their own health.
And yet we see photos and videos of crowded beaches in Florida and packed bars and nightclubs in places like Nashville, and the people we see in these pictures are decidedly non-Boomerish. Those are largely millennials and members of the iGen out there partying through the middle of a pandemic.
Thirty-two-year-old actress Hilary Duff went off on them herself, according to the New York Post, in a story posted to her Instagram page: “To all you young millennial a—holes that keep going out partying: go home.”
And Boomers are understandably incensed over the trending phrase “Boomer Remover,” a crude nickname for the virus that started as a joke and has since become adopted by some young people angry over the older generation’s disregard for climate change and other millennial/iGen concerns – half-jokingly by some, perhaps less so by others.
Enough already. Stubbornness doesn’t have an expiration date, and no generation has cornered the market on selfishness. Any of us are capable of making bad choices at any age. It’s up to us to realize that, to stop pointing fingers, and to be better.
The sooner we all take responsibility for our own decisions, and give our healthcare professionals a fighting chance, the quicker we might give ourselves a chance to get past this difficult time.