Shut Up, Boomer!

Please note, this is not a pro- or anti-vaccine article.  It’s a cultural observation, not advocacy.  If you have comments regarding vaccines in either direction, please walk into the middle of Death Valley and shout them loudly at the sky.  And leave your canteen in the car, would you?

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Regardless of your position or my position or anyone’s position on vaccines, I strongly believe that Baby Boomers need to shut up about the subject.  I’m talking locking their lips with a tiny invisible key, and throwing it off into the distance somewhere, never to be retrieved.

SHUT.  UP.

Legally mandated disclaimer: #notallboomers, certainly not YOU, gentle reader, and some of the people I’m calling Boomers are that slightly older group born just before and during WWII some call “The Silent Generation”.  I include them here because in most cases, this one very much included, they behave in an even more intolerably Boomery fashion than actual Boomers.

Due to my ongoing work with the Olds, not to mention my proximity to my parental units and their social circles, I encounter a fair number of Baby Boomers on social media.  One of their favorite pastimes is posting memes about vaccines.  Most of them go a little something like this:

You eat bologna and you don’t know what is in it, but don’t take vaccines?  Aren’t you a special kind of stupid?  This meme invariably has a picture of a scowling Clint Eastwood or that terrible cartoon character “Maxine” attached to it.

Or: Anyone not getting the vaccine is obviously selfish and doesn’t care if other people die.  Let’s prove how much we care about human life by killing them first! (insert really extreme threat to life and livelihood here)

For the more intellectual set: It’s pretty ironic you don’t “trust the science”, when you’re writing this on a computer that gets magic signals from the sky.  This meme is invariably posted by someone who doesn’t know how to program that perpetually-flashy clock on their VCR, and also who still uses a VCR.

Now, you may agree or disagree with these sentiments.  I don’t CARE.  Your opinion about them is irrelevant.  The issue is this: posting inflammatory crap for the sake of posting inflammatory crap is not and never has been meant to persuade anyone.  These memes are nothing more than a way for a bunch of entitled people who get off on feeling superior to chest bump each other and get a momentary rush over it.  They feed an us vs. them mentality, of the sort we have more than enough of in our country already, and that mindset never, ever comes along with us being our best selves.  If that isn’t enough of a deterrent, they are actually turning off the very people who are most reluctant to have a jab – younger people.

Folks, these memes are worse than nothing.  They actually make people who read them LESS likely to get vaccinated.  If you doubt this claim, please read this excellent post by OT alum Erik Kain where he breaks down this fact in great detail.   To sum up Erik’s argument, calling people stupid is never convincing.  It merely encourages people to feel attacked, to get defensive, to circle the wagons and withdraw into a sort of fortress of solitude where they only listen to those saying what they already believe.

I would add that hypocrites calling people stupid is far more apt to convince them to say “eff you, I won’t do what you tell me” than it is to convince anyone of anything.  And when it comes to vaccines, Baby Boomers are the most hypocritical hypocrites who ever hypocrite-ed.

A whole lot of people – even those who support vaccination fully – have noted a stomach-turning insincerity in seeing the generation who firstly, benefits the most from the vaccine by far, and secondly, who has engaged in constant selfishness, health-obsessing, and science-doubting over the course of their lives, lecturing younger generations about their behavior in any of those arenas.  Being put down and publicly shamed by Boomer hypocrites has been really off-putting for a number of younger people, who are more likely to be vaccine hesitant on average.  Yes, even those who voted Biden – though the issue of vaccine hesitancy has been sadly politicized, this phenom crosses party lines bigly.

While I would like to give you some current numbers on vaccine hesitancy among young people, like so much else having to do with Covid these days, they got that data locked down so tight I couldn’t find what I considered reliable numbers in a reasonable Google search.  Suffice to say, it’s the prevailing wisdom – people under 40 have been more reticent to get the vax than older people, and I’m fairly sure you clever folks have all read the same articles I did proving it a few months back, in those halcyon days when you could still find actual data in the news rather than terrifying anecdotes.  Beyond what I’ve read about the mindset of hypothetical strangers, I have heard much vaccine hesitancy from my fertility clients and among my adult sons’ friends/coworkers, so I can personally attest that this is a Legit Thing amongst some in the 20-40 age group.

When I mull over their concerns with a drop of empathy in my heart, I kinda see where they are coming from.  They look at the science – and indeed, this is REAL SCIENCE, not Fantasy Island stuff – and see that they are at much, much lower risk of dying from the coronavirus.  They look at the science – bona fide science! – and see an average age of death from Covid-19 that is higher than the average human lifespan, meaning that the average person who dies of the coronavirus has already lived a full life by any measure.  They see a vaccine that has been inarguably rushed into use when other vaccines and other medications took decades to approve – a bureaucratic process that legitimate science repeatedly told us was done for our safety – even when people died from a lack of approval of a medication that could have saved their lives, we were told it was for the public good.  They see potential fudging of the numbers and moving of the goalposts done during the studies, studies done by profit-seeking corporations that have gotten in trouble for rushing unsafe drugs to the market before. (This is long, so if you’re pressed for time, skip to the third part of this piece, where the scientific magic happens.)

And let’s not forget that we were also told by experts, repeatedly told by EXPERTS! – that rushing vaccines to the public was dangerous…when it was done by Donald Trump.

Young people are not memory-less idiots and they don’t exist in a news-free vacuum.  They see these facts – again, all of them based in actual science and not Dr. Mercola woo – and conclude, “Well, maybe I’ll just hold off a bit here.  Just to see.”  All things considered, being concerned about one’s health in the Time-of-Covid is not an irrational or unscientific decision, even if you personally don’t share the same concerns.  If this decision seems cavalier or foolhardy to you, please remember that young people, by definition, have their whole lives ahead of them.  If a vaccine might have some heretofore undiscovered side effect (and again, legitimate scientific research has indicated that the vaccine has already had some very widespread side effects that were not expected or predicted, that were first disbelieved and are only just now being studied), waiting a few months or even a few years, if you are at very low risk from the disease itself, makes a fair bit of sense.  This is particularly true if you have fifty more years of life to look forward to and you don’t want to have that screwed up in the name of “SCIENCE” (™) ¹

Now, hang all that in the greater context where there’s a pretty fair case to be made that precious precious science, alleged purveyor of all that is good and holy, brewed the Rona up in a lab to begin with, with the funding, support, and involvement of several of the people who were later tasked with investigating its origins and managing our response.  Let’s not forget that these allegedly trustworthy-Honest-as-Abe-Lincoln scientists proceeded to mislead and obfuscate for over a year before the evidence became too overwhelming to continue to deny.  “No, come on, seriously guys, it was the WET MARKET, we promise, a pangolin, whatever that is, or something, u know those KARAZY CHINAMEN and their bizarre eating habits, what a bunch of gross freaks they are, and there is absolutely nothing racist about this theory of ours either BTW, now get your ass over to Chinatown and hug a Chinese person today because actually it is you, Sir and/or Ma’am, who are the racist!”

Science deniers?  More like scientIST deniers, amirite?  And some of the very people we were told to trust unquestioningly have been subsequently revealed to be balls deep, or at least wallet-deep, in Wuhan, years prior to the pandemic.  Can you blame these kids for having some concerns, all things considered?  I mean, expecting Zoomers and Millennials to blindly “trust scientists” when Dr. Fauci himself has lied more than Shaggy after Honey caught him red handed just seems freaking ridiculous to me.

But this isn’t an article about vaccines or why some people are reticent about getting them.  Others have already done that, and far better than I ever could.  (you can scroll through the first part of this article unless you’re interested in Scott Alexander’s analysis on Ivermectin; the meat is at the end.)

No, this is an article about Baby Boomers and why they’re really just the Literal Worst.

Baby Boomers, whether you love em or you hate em (JK, no one loves them, and this is ok because they have more self-love than all other generations that have ever existed on Planet Earth combined), were blessed with the most wonderful stroke of good luck at birth, emerging into the world in a time and place where technological advances and economic prosperity met at a bar, dropped acid, and reenacted the Kama Sutra – without protection, because it was the Sexual Revolution and AIDS hadn’t gone viral yet.  Then the rest of us had the shit luck that their generation was so much bigger than the rest of us that they not only burned through the available resources in terms of jobs and opportunities for achievement in pretty much every arena, but was massive enough to act as a force unto itself, dominating both politically and culturally so much so that here in 2021 we are all groaning “Jesus Christ, enough with the Kennedys already.”

Not only did the Boomers enjoy their beautiful free-range upbringings of the 50s, they had the luxury of rebelling against them, wallowing like swine in 60s drug culture and the sexual revolution without enduring the terrifying and intellectually insulting “just say no” scare tactics of the 80s and 90s.  And since enjoying their youths wasn’t enough, entire classes of medications were invented just so they could keep having sex into their dotage, for our precious Boomers must be denied nothing, not even oddly tumescent old man boners.

That subsequent generations are milling around like Oliver Twist, our bellies and our bank accounts empty, unmarried, childless, having no sex at all, hoping for a refill on our porridge bowls or possibly a chance at home ownership, matters not to those who are accustomed to gorging themselves sick on society’s trough and thinking of it as their basic human right.  Yet the Boomers have the unmitigated gall to then shake their fists at these so-called slackers for daring to, on occasion, not service their generation’s every need.  These fortunate sons and daughters had a smorgasbord of life’s pleasures handed to them on a platter made of some sort of space-age material, devoured it right down to the sprig of parsley, and then began looking around at other generations seeing who they could blame for their raging case of indigestion.

Yes, yes, it’s all that avocado toast those darn Millennials eat, yes, sure, that’s all it is.  That’s why your sons and daughters are childless at 37.  Avocado-the f*ck-toast.  Has nothing to do with their crippling college debt which they undertook only because you told them it was the ONLY way you could adequately impress your friends with your child’s accomplishments…er, I mean, that they could succeed in life.  The dire prospects for our nation’s longterm economic wellbeing have nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the Boomers expanded government massively, screwing over future generations because they were incapable of telling themselves “no” when it came to anything at all, even a military-industrial complex that spends money that doesn’t exist to fund the creation of weapons of mass destruction like, oh, IDK, gain-of-function research into bioweapons. ²

This generation that is, at present, telling their Younglings to “relax, man, and like, trust the science” apparently has forgotten that science also brought to our door nuclear weapons, Agent Orange, thalidomide, leaded gasoline, DES, Phillip Morris pro-smoking “studies”, the Dalkon Shield, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, Vioxx and Celebrex, America’s opioid epidemic, Snackwell’s cookies, the Tuskegee Experiment, and very probably Covid-19 itself.

‘Ppears to me that the Boomers have conveniently forgotten that they themselves have never trusted science, protesting, distrusting, and rejecting things (some of which have saved, or could have saved millions of lives, far more than those taken by the Rona) like pesticides, herbicides, preservatives, nuclear power, GMOs, golden rice, saccharin and its even worse friend the Demon Aspartame, irradiated food, the existence of climate change, and so on.

Boomers distrust science so thoroughly they’ve made a billion dollar industry of herbal supplements, in many cases refusing traditional medicine themselves to swill herbs instead.  My Auntie Grizelda, Boomer Extraordinaire, goes on at length about how stupid people are for “going to doctors” instead of “taking St. John’s Wort” and “using CBD oil and pain patches instead of taking painkillers” because “Western Medicine is KILLING PEOPLE” and “BIG PHARMA”.  But on Facebook, with her followers cheering her on (the same folks she mocks behind their back for their irritating habit of seeking medical attention for their health issues) she’s all about “trusting the science”.

Another thing that Auntie Grizelda never “trusted the science” on was secondhand smoke, smoking as so many Boomers did all through her pregnancies and throughout her children’s lives, with absolutely no guilt about trapping them in a car with air as blue as the summer sky.  She didn’t make them wear their seat belts, either – another fact she appears to have forgotten now that she has social media, regularly posting memes comparing vaccines to seat belt use.  Auntie Grizelda, just like her peers, thought nothing of demanding antibiotics for every case of the sniffles, forgetting to use half of them, but then kept them in the fridge, expired, for the next case of the sniffles that came along.  She proudly fed her children raw cookie dough and unwashed fruit and would get furious at anyone who didn’t want to feed their own child a bloody pink hamburger – even AFTER the e.coli outbreak that killed several children.

Her obliviousness to danger even extended beyond her own family; she happily sent her children to school sick constantly because “germs are good for people,” even sending them to birthday parties and CampFire meetings with active fevers, gushing snotnoses, and hacking coughs.  She allowed one of her children to go to an end-of-school festival with a very mild case of chicken pox – one of the most contagious diseases there is.  I don’t recall her ever worrying that an old person or an individual with a compromised immune system might be negatively affected by her decisions then.  In fact, she would roll her eyes at anyone who stayed home from work or school when they were sick, those lazy pussies.

Lest you think I am exaggerating re her cavalier attitude towards the safety and suffering of others, in our most recent phone conversation, she declared (in light of Bob Dole’s passing) that they should have had a war to teach young people respect, like the way Bob Dole had to learn respect.  You know, by nearly dying while somewhere between 70-85 million other people were killed, and into the billions of others suffered deprivation, physical infirmity, and great sorrow.  (I know what you’re thinking, but she is super liberal and a Buttigieg supporter.  This is a cross-political, generationally-based mindset.)

You know the Boomers I’m talking about.  We’re all very well acquainted with them and their tendency to decry younger generations as overly delicate helicopter-parenting germaphobes because we cut our children’s hot dogs into tidbits to prevent choking. It’s different this time, though, because, you know, it’s THEIR safety at risk.  Rearrange your life, folks, top to bottom, stem to stern, no risk is too great for YOU (you, not them) to incur when a beloved Boomer – our nation’s GREATEST TREASURE – is in peril!

Ah, Boomers, you are truly the worst.  The rules for thee, but not for me.  Even when it comes to the needs of their own children and grandchildren.  KIDS, whom non-sociopathic human beings are supposed to always put first, are located well behind that Boomer-a-licious desire to visit all-you-can-eat buffets and waddle their knee replacement-ed, morbidly obese selves back onto cruise ships.

For those of us who don’t suffer from a raging case of generational narcissism, it’s hard to know what to make of this veritable army of elderly people who in their youths gleefully rejected their parents’ values – very much including science –  in the name of freedom and self-expression, insisting on their right to live their own lives their own way no matter who it hurt, yet in their dotage expect unquestioned filial responsibility from their own kids, even at the expense of said children’s own well-being.

As for freedom and personal expression and living their lives their own way, well, for Millennials and GenZ, social media must suffice.  Sorry kids, it’s all you get.  A Boomer somewhere might get SICK!  And by the way, get your butts off social media and LIVE, man!  What is WRONG with kids these days anyway?

This generation that used to exalt experience, claiming that it was better to die, to DIE than to bend even just the littlest bit to The Man, has had absolutely no compunction about locking up four generations of younger people, most of whom were at very little risk from Covid-19, to save their own wrinkled skins.  They’ve had no compunction about tanking the economy (how many times WILL the greed and gluttony of Boomers tank the economy, anyway??  Isn’t this like the 5th or 6th time we’ve been down this road?) all to extend their magnificent, glorious lives a little longer, because they really needed to listen to that Best of Rod Stewart Album while visiting Joshua Tree one last time.  It was on their Bucket List, and God forbid a Boomer should have to miss a single solitary thing on their Bucket List.

And now that it’s time to go back to work, slaving away for those ungrateful Baby Boomers who overwhelmingly own most businesses – by a factor of ten times the rate at which Millennials do – that the young people have the temerity to say “nope, not this time, not for those wages, and not for that kind of treatment” well surprise, surprise, they don’t like that either.

Helpful hint: If you have spent a relatively long human lifespan thinking that everyone you encounter, the older people and the younger people alike, are irredeemably selfish a-holes, the odds are stellar that YOU are, in fact, the selfish a-hole.

Truly, the Boomers are the locusts of generations.  They sucked the life out of their poor Greatest Generation parents (what little remained after surviving a Depression and WWII) and then set about sucking the vitality from the generations that followed them.  And they’re unbelievably, shamelessly, STILL asking for more, more, more.  Over the years the Baby Boomers have proven themselves ready, willing, and able to take endlessly from anyone, everyone, anyplace and everyplace.  If there was a way to take candy from a baby by charging it to the humongous national debt that ballooned so horrifyingly on their watch, they’d do it in a heartbeat even knowing that the baby in question will have to pay it off someday.

Do you understand the optics of this for young people??  It isn’t good, guys.  Boomers, you’re only getting by with it because the Millennials and the Zoomers are legitimately better people than you are.  From my position as a bemused Gen X outsider looking on dispassionately from my seat at the back of the bus, caring about nothing because I’m used to getting screwed over by the Boomers and I learned long ago to save my energy, it’s just about gross to see the generation who claimed it was a violation of their fundamental human rights to have their hair cut, willing to use the power of the law in order to force people to have a medical procedure that some of them just don’t want to prevent a disease they’re not at all vulnerable to.

My Boomer dudes, YOU wouldn’t get your bangs trimmed, but you think it’s ok force healthy youths to wear masks on their face even when outdoors and alone, and even to give up their right to leave their home freely.  All because you want to take a cruise and not have to worry that your two, scratch that, three, or are we on four now, IDK hard to keep up with it, vaccines may not hold ya.

Not only is it wrong and selfish and greedy beyond belief, it’s a betrayal of all those beautiful sentiments regarding freedom and self-actualization the Boomers claimed to believe in.  And the sign said long haired freaky looking people, need not apply.  Let me pause here to wipe the tears from my eyes before they drench my mask!  A HAIRCUT, OMGosh how terrible for you!!  Jesus, y’all were just so full of shit.  Whether one agrees with Covid health policy or not, it’s easy to understand why a good many people find the Boomer position grossly hypocritical.

 

Obviously this vid is about how Boomers hoarded the vaccine for themselves at first even though they were mostly retired and didn’t even need to go anywhere, but it’s a pretty good summation of the chronically-entitled me-first Boomer attitude.

Why should Boomers have gotten the vaccines first, anyway?  Yes, they were at greater risk, but they also had greater resources to live off of, and fewer places to be.  Is that even good public policy in a pandemic, to vaccinate people who could stay at home indefinitely FIRST?  If our goal was to eradicate the Rona, shouldn’t the vax have gone first to at-risk people who had to, you know, WORK for a living?  Who couldn’t sit at home watching cable news all day living off their fat retirement paycheck garnered at a time when Big Business still had loyalty towards their employees (yet another thing Baby Boomers enjoyed and then happily killed off?)  You know, those people who had to drag their tired asses out and about every single day to keep the country going, inasmuch as it actually is?  The kids who have decades of life awaiting them and not a handful of years, if that even?

No, of course not, because Boomers.

A lot of younger people are just plain fed up with the idea that we should do WHATEVER it takes to allow 85 year olds to be able to go out to lunch and play golf in the six months they have remaining to them before they keel over dead from some other cause.  In the meantime the rest of us eat a Cup o Noodle at our desk — that is, if we’re lucky enough to have a job still — and think back fondly on that one time we went to a concert in 2016.

The Boomers don’t care.  For all their talk of civic responsibility, they have absolutely none themselves.  Zero.  In their minds, if it’s not good for them, it’s not good, period.

People – kids, even – are committing suicide.  Addicts are relapsing and overdosing.  Businesses are going under – it is estimated that 40% of all black-owned businesses will close forever due to the pandemic.  Grocery store shelves are emptying.  Children’s education, and indeed, their mental health, is suffering.  People are dying from postponing medical tests and non-emergency procedures.  Vulnerable individuals in poorer countries around the world are STILL WAITING for vaccines  and probably will be through 2024, while Boomers in the First World are like “nah actually I’m gonna need three of those bitches, maybe four, just keep em coming why don’t you, and be sure you hit that 22 year old over there, even though he’s at very little risk and doesn’t even want the shot.  Why?  Because they might accidentally make ME sick, of course, obviously, DUH!  I know the chances of anything fatally bad happening to me are slim since I have been vaccinated myself, but you can’t be too careful since I’ve only made it three years past the average human lifespan!  I NEED MOAR!”

Ya know, I probably wouldn’t have published this article, just left it on my computer as a satisfying rant, but I went looking for memes thanking young people who have been vaccinated and found NONE.  That pretty much sums up Boomers, doesn’t it?  Where is our thank you, Boomers?  Where?  How about some humility and some gratitude for a change, instead of superiority and disdain?  How about an ‘atta boy’ for those younger people who have had the vaccine FOR YOUR SAKE instead of telling those who haven’t how moronic they are for not doing exactly what you want them to, quickly enough for your liking?

When will the sacrifices of other generations on their behalf ever be enough for these greedy, ungrateful old jerks?

The answer is never.  It will never be enough for them, because they’re the Baby Boomers, the generational equivalent of the Sarlacc Pit.  Always hungry, forever digesting.  They’ll continue to ask for more until they are denied.  That’s how human vampires are.  They’ll drain you dry if you don’t tell them it’s enough already, and show them the stake you have ready if they get up in your face about it.  If some poor kid in Generation Z wants to deny these Boomer bloodsuckers their pleasure by keeping their shirt sleeve firmly tugged down to their wrist, well, alls I’m saying is that I can understand the impulse.  Nobody wants to do anything for someone who has a lifelong history of treating other people like Count Dracula treated Renfield, and displays not a whit of gratitude.  “If you don’t do what benefits me, at all costs to yourself, you’re a special kind of stupid.”  Hey, yeah, well, screw you, Maxine.

My friends, I’m gonna reveal the harsh reality of Life After Rona here.  It’s not something any of us like, but it’s the stone cold truth, and what’s more, it’s science, which you purport to trust.  Lean in, inasmuch as social distancing will allow: You can’t eradicate a disease that the vaccine is not working for and that is capable of rapid-fire mutation.  That wish that so many Boomers are constantly expressing, that “Covid-19 just go away again and never come back so I can resume my life before I die” is a child’s wish, a fool’s wish, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with science.  Trusting in that wish is not trusting in science, it’s trusting in magic.  Science isn’t magic, and neither are vaccines.

Smallpox was eradicated because it doesn’t mutate fast and thus responded well to vaccination.  SARS-CoV-2 is not smallpox, not even close, and letting it run amok in Third World countries, mutating constantly, while rich Baby Boomers in the wealthy West suck up every available vaccine just in case, is sheer unscientific lunacy.  (Case in point, Omicron.)

As for those polio and mumps and measles vaccines you folks remember so fondly from your childhood?  They only worked as well as they did because most adults were already immune to the diseases, having had them in childhood, leaving a much smaller pool of people in need of immunity via vaccines.³

By the way, even under these ideal circumstances, it took decades for these diseases to retreat fully.  Decades.  When I told my Boomer mother-in-law this, she didn’t believe it; I’m telling ya, a not-small percentage of Boomers are operating with a badly skewed, ahistorical, unscientific mindset where they really truly expect that Covid-19 is going to disappear in, like, ten minutes from now or whatever.  Face facts folks; the Rona is not going away any time soon, all but certainly not within a Boomer’s lifetime.  It’s science.  I wish it wasn’t, boy howdy do I ever, but it IS science.

Never in human history have we tried to eradicate a disease that the entire population had no immunity to.  NEVER.  Expecting this entirely new process to go off without a hitch within a couple of months if only we put a gun to everyone’s head, is a nonsense bullshit expectation.  And setting public policy on a nonsense bullshit expectation is not a sound approach to governance.

Science.  Who’s denying it again?

Look, we all wanted the vax to work, to work flawlessly and completely and forever and ever (even the handful of true anti-vaxxers, the ghouls who get off on seeing vaccines fail, wanted that, I suspect) and it just ISN’T.  People are catching and spreading the disease after having been fully vaccinated.  Some people are even still getting real sick and dying fully vaccinated, and that means even if we had 100% compliance, with all the youngs and all the olds joining hands and singing Down With The Sickness, it would still be spreading and still be killing to some extent.

Boomers, you would still have to worry when you’re out there buying tole painted wooden geese and crocheted pot holders at craft fairs that you might be vulnerable.  Because you ARE still vulnerable!  You’re calling for people who are at very little risk from the disease, to be forcibly vaccinated in the name of achieving an impossible goal.  You’re calling for a massive and intrusive violation of civil liberties in the name of maintaining a pretend fantasy in which you can daydream that that big fat meanie pants Covid-19 spoiling all your fun will be gone for good and you can go back to Golden Corral.  But I’m afraid it’s here to stay.

Do you feel super awesomely good about that, Boomers?  Because I thought you were the quintessential anti-authoritarian rebels.  I thought you were brave and principled and stood up for the little guy against the big bads of the world.  I guess not.

And to think all it took to get you to give up everything you so constantly, loudly, and obnoxiously claimed to believe in was the threat of a slight reduction in the years of your life.  ON AVERAGE.  That you can mitigate to a large extent by getting vaccinated yourself, mitigate even more by not being obese, and mitigate pretty much entirely by continuing to quarantine.  Yourself.  Not demanding that little children and young adults quarantine indefinitely FOR you while you go on that trip to Branson or Napa Valley you always wanted to take.  Not demanding that people who are reticent about the vaccines be forced to have them at the point of a gun.

I mean really, that’s pretty weak sauce for a bunch of people who used to bladi-bladi-blah about freedom and civil rights and being willing to die for what you believed in.  But as I’ve suspected for a real long time now, you only said those things because it was cool at the time.

It may be you get your way anyway, Boomer buds.  Vaccination rates among those under 40 are gradually going up – NOT because those naughty Youngs are finally listening to your elder wisdom, but because the vax has been around long enough so we have a bigger body of observational data to rely upon.  Some initially reluctant people are starting to trust the jab more than they did at first.  If you believe everyone should be vaccinated regardless of age, you should applaud and thank those people, not belittle them for not acting faster.  And Big Daddy Government, the same folks who brought us the draft (remember how you didn’t like the draft, Boomers? Remember how the draft made you disrupt and risk your whole entire life for the sake of rich, arrogant old men you didn’t even know?  You may want to think on that…) may very well end up successfully mandating that everyone gets the vaccine.

Once again, the Roulette Wheel of Fate will give the Boomers a disproportionate payout.  Take the win with grace, you arrogant a-holes.  At the very least, stop gloating by posting your little self-congratulatory, “I’m better than you” memes because you’re only making people resent the vaccines and resent YOU for foisting them onto everyone, regardless of their individual risk level.  And a resentful people is an uncooperative people.  It is ever so and ever more shall be.

Boomers, we ALL hoped you’d die before you got old, but here we are.  Please, for once in your lives, if you really, truly, can’t say thank you, just shut up.

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1. In the name of fundamental human decency, please stop dunking on that poor girl who didn’t have a vaccine because she was worried about potential effects on fertility, and then died from Covid-19.  If you have had your children, the privilege of being able to enjoy that very fundamental human experience easily without fertility treatment – or even with fertility treatment – is not to be taken lightly.  A young woman’s concerns in that regard, even if or perhaps especially if they ended in tragedy, should not be mocked by people in a much more privileged position.  Punching down is a bad look.
2. Peeps, they were doing or planned to do gain-of-function research in MERS, a virus with a 30% death rate – how much more function did they want it to gain, anyway? They planned to release a souped-up version of Covid-19 back into bat populations on skin-penetrating nanoparticles, and no, I am not making that up.  And the “they” here is Peter Daszak, the guy the WHO then assigned to investigate the origins of Covid-19.  I mean, come on.  It’s insanity to sigh impatiently and tell ANYONE to “trust science” on this subject.   Science DID THIS and science tried to hide it.
3. If you doubt this claim about polio, 70% of children infected with the polio virus had no symptoms, 24% had only a mild cold, and 1-5% get a more severe illness that is not fatal and resolves within two weeks.  Only 0.5-1% percent of sufferers have any paralysis at all, and most cases of polio paralysis are mild (not that I’m recommending it, I’m simply trying to point out how it is that I can claim most adults had survived polio back in the day.  It is because they did.)  The WHO estimates that 20 million people living today are polio survivors and this number was significantly higher in the 40’s and 50’s.  The polio virus was so widespread and ubiquitous it is believed that prior to the rise of improved sanitation in early part of the 20th century, most human beings around the world had polio as infants while still protected by antibodies they got via the placenta and mother’s milk.  The epidemics of polio we recall from the 1940s and ’50s are believed to have happened because improved sanitation meant children and even adults got the disease later on when it was riskier, instead of at a very young age when the disease was typically mild.  Straight from the CDC, haters.