03 May 2020, 7:42 pm
ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 68
Gender: Male
Posts: 39,637
Location: Long Island, New York
03 May 2020, 8:05 pm
Do people really dehumanize their own parents that way?Morbid ‘boomer remover’ coronavirus meme only makes millennials seem more awful
Spawned in the underbelly of Reddit, the nihilistic catchphrase has gained traction on all social media platforms, especially among savvy millennials who picked up on the fact that the COVID-19 virus seems to take aim at baby boomers, or those aged between 55 and 75.
And despite the fact that nearly 40% of coronavirus-related hospitalizations in the US have occurred in patients younger than 54, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the disease is hitting older adults much harder: 80% of deaths associated with the illness were among those 65 and older.
Hence, “boomer remover” is now officially a trending meme.
Yet, as public health officials urge people of all ages to go home and stay there in an effort to “flatten the curve” of infection, many young people can’t help but notice that their boomer parents and grandparents appear to be taking a decidedly more lackadaisical approach to the global health crisis.
And that’s got adult offspring pretty worried about their older kin.
“Best advice for convincing a diabetic boomer parent to stop commuting into the city?” an anxious Lucy Carson, a literary agent at the Friedrich Agency, wrote on Twitter. “Rage-sobbing into the phone isn’t helping my cause.”
“I had to tell my 70 yr old mum that they’re calling this pandemic the Boomer Remover before I could convince her to cancel all of her boomer cluster activities,” tweeted another exasperated millennial.
So dire is the phenomenon that a tweet by New Yorker writer Michael Schulman asking if “anyone else noticing a trend of baby-boomer parents who aren’t taking this seriously as their kids” has drawn more than 1,500 replies from alleged children of boomers in similar situations. They included tales of elderly relatives sticking out a Florida vacation, going to church and visiting their own 101-year-old parents.
Seemingly without millennials’ concern for at least their own families, the younger Generation Z demographic has displayed a much more savage outlook toward older individuals.
Twitter user B.W. Carlin echoed scores of social media pundits when he said, “I have been informed by a relative who is a middle school teacher that students are now referring to coronavirus as the ‘boomer remover.’ ”
Last year, the Gen Z and millennial demos both upset their elders with the catchphrase “OK, boomer.” The dismissive expression, delivered with an eye roll, is employed when those 55 and older are perceived by their junior counterparts as out-of-touch and ill-informed.
But the new, extra-strength boomer remover is a step too far for some.
“ ’Lol haha boomer remover’ this also includes your family and loved ones plus several celebrities and politicians that have always supported young people and their politics so shut the f - - k up,” tweeted one critic of the term.
“This is the #BoomerRemover crowd in a nutshell: spoiled children who were never told ‘NO’ and never taught empathy or responsibility. No one else matters,” complained another. “Whatever sweetie wants, sweetie gets.”
The funniest coronavirus memes to get you through self-isolation
Earlier this week, Financial Times writer Rana Foroohar extrapolated on the political subtext of the buzzword.
“Young people calling the coronavirus a ‘boomer remover’ may reflect the general lack of empathy in society these days,” she wrote, “but it may also mirror the free-floating political anger that the current generation has for their elders.”
Others, though, are seeking to temper the controversy, arguing that some boomers would do well to remember that they, too, were once teenagers amid a generational struggle (read: the sexual revolution; Vietnam War protests; The Beatles).
“Teens calling the coronavirus the ‘boomer remover’ is s - - tty,” wrote videographer Jack Saint, “but people trying to lecture them on how it’s wrong . . . need to remember what teenagers are like.”
After all, the same generation laughing off the coronavirus-induced death of their elders are the same folks swarming the Florida shores on spring break right now.
Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 03 May 2020, 8:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
03 May 2020, 8:05 pm
They can't have it both ways.
It was raining yesterday, so I went out in the parking lot and sacrificed a goat. And a half hour later, the rain stopped. That shows the goat sacrifice worked.
(More seriously, the story just as well shows that the situation was deliberately hyped for political, economic, and/or dictatorial reasons from the beginning, or from just large-scale incompetence. Calculating the importance of these different factors will be difficult, especially since lies from the media have played such a prominent role in the whole situation.)
03 May 2020, 8:08 pm
They can't have it both ways.
It was raining yesterday, so I went out in the parking lot and sacrificed a goat. And a half hour later, the rain stopped. That shows the goat sacrifice worked.
(More seriously, the story just as well shows that the situation was deliberately hyped for political, economic, and/or dictatorial reasons from the beginning, or from just large-scale incompetence. Calculating the importance of these different factors will be difficult, especially since lies from the media have played such a prominent role in the whole situation.)
You so smart.
ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 68
Gender: Male
Posts: 39,637
Location: Long Island, New York
03 May 2020, 8:13 pm
I have noticed the masks I have worn seems to slip off the nose on occasion if I am not paying attention.
03 May 2020, 10:26 pm
This seems very important, and almost unbelievable.
Can asymptomatic people transmit the virus? That's what we've been told, and that's one reason there's been so much panic. It turns out there may be no evidence for asymptomatic transmission after all: the claim was based on a small early study where the researchers didn't even interview the supposedly asymptomatic carrier.
Study claiming new coronavirus can be transmitted by people without symptoms was flawed
A paper published on 30 January in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) about the first four people in Germany infected with a novel coronavirus made many headlines because it seemed to confirm what public health experts feared: that someone who has no symptoms from infection with the virus, named 2019-nCoV, can still transmit it to others. That might make controlling the virus much harder.
Chinese researchers had previously suggested asymptomatic people might transmit the virus but had not presented clear-cut evidence. “There’s no doubt after reading [the NEJM] paper that asymptomatic transmission is occurring,” Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told journalists. “This study lays the question to rest.”
But now, it turns out that information was wrong. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the German government’s public health agency, has written a letter to NEJM to set the record straight, even though it was not involved in the paper.
The letter in NEJM described a cluster of infections that began after a businesswoman from Shanghai visited a company near Munich on 20 and 21 January, where she had a meeting with the first of four people who later fell ill. Crucially, she wasn’t sick at the time: “During her stay, she had been well with no sign or symptoms of infection but had become ill on her flight back to China,” the authors wrote. “The fact that asymptomatic persons are potential sources of 2019-nCoV infection may warrant a reassessment of transmission dynamics of the current outbreak.”
But the researchers didn’t actually speak to the woman before they published the paper.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02 ... irus-wrong
03 May 2020, 11:04 pm
Can asymptomatic people transmit the virus? That's what we've been told, and that's one reason there's been so much panic. It turns out there may be no evidence for asymptomatic transmission after all: the claim was based on a small early study where the researchers didn't even interview the supposedly asymptomatic carrier.
Study claiming new coronavirus can be transmitted by people without symptoms was flawed
A paper published on 30 January in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) about the first four people in Germany infected with a novel coronavirus made many headlines because it seemed to confirm what public health experts feared: that someone who has no symptoms from infection with the virus, named 2019-nCoV, can still transmit it to others. That might make controlling the virus much harder.
Chinese researchers had previously suggested asymptomatic people might transmit the virus but had not presented clear-cut evidence. “There’s no doubt after reading [the NEJM] paper that asymptomatic transmission is occurring,” Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told journalists. “This study lays the question to rest.”
But now, it turns out that information was wrong. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the German government’s public health agency, has written a letter to NEJM to set the record straight, even though it was not involved in the paper.
The letter in NEJM described a cluster of infections that began after a businesswoman from Shanghai visited a company near Munich on 20 and 21 January, where she had a meeting with the first of four people who later fell ill. Crucially, she wasn’t sick at the time: “During her stay, she had been well with no sign or symptoms of infection but had become ill on her flight back to China,” the authors wrote. “The fact that asymptomatic persons are potential sources of 2019-nCoV infection may warrant a reassessment of transmission dynamics of the current outbreak.”
But the researchers didn’t actually speak to the woman before they published the paper.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02 ... irus-wrong
It is unusual in that I've never heard that the influenza virus can be transmitted from normal respiration and it's size is apparently between 80-120 nanometers. Yet from what I can find the Covid-19 virus is 125 nanometers (around the same size as influenza), but yet it can be transmitted from normal asymptomatic respiration?
We heard from China that the virus can be transmitted by normal respiration? Hmmm.....
03 May 2020, 11:50 pm
04 May 2020, 12:39 am
04 May 2020, 1:43 am
I have noticed the masks I have worn seems to slip off the nose on occasion if I am not paying attention.
About half the people in supermarkets roll their facemasks down to talk to the checkout people
04 May 2020, 1:51 am
04 May 2020, 2:05 am
04 May 2020, 2:13 am
^ same here. which only exacerbated the unintelligibility problem 
i've seen people move around it just to make each other heard.
there are markers on the floor indicating distances of 6 feet.
04 May 2020, 2:16 am
Customer kills drug store security guard in confrontation over being asked to wear a mask
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/ ... 075515001/
Oklahoma city immediately dropped its face mask order after residents threatened violence against employees who were enforcing the rule
https://news.yahoo.com/oklahoma-city-im ... 55095.html
Ohio Gov. DeWine said his order for shoppers to wear masks went 'too far'
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ohio-gov-dew ... 36009.html
People: We don't need no stickin face masks
04 May 2020, 8:25 am
Did you ever shoot a bottle rocket off into water?
We normally shoot these off in the middle of our concrete bridge over our creek. Therefore if anything goes awry, they will not set off the dry grass or shrubs. Generally with the sparklers as they burn down, we throw them way up in the air like a shooting star and they come down into the water and make a hiss.
If you want to keep them in working order after years of storage, there is a good trick that you can use. Find a non-working freezer at a garage sale. It can be either a chest or upright, just make sure the door seal is good. I have some that I have stored this way for more than thirty years and they are still good. To keep moisture and air out, I duck taped the outside seals with aluminum duck tape really well. I no longer buy fireworks anymore as I can make much better ones than one can buy at a stand. Once I learned how to do that, some of the sparkle vanished over playing with them.
I used to do some tricks with bottle rockets, but I do not recommend others to repeat, as they could get hurt. One of the things I used to do is with tri-whistling bottle rockets with water proof wicks. Moon travelers seldom have the right wicks to work with water. I would fill a pop can with water to the top of the can and put it on a tall fence post. I would then light the rocket and put it into the opening of the can. It would go off, spraying water out of the opening. Then, bang and the can would be split in two. I do not recommended repeating this trick because I have been hit with aluminum shrapnel from the can and it can cut you pretty bad.
I used to play hot potato with firework artillery shells with my cousins around a local lake. I can remember playing baseball with those lit shells too. We stopped doing that after we caught one of my cousin’s clothes on fire and got punished for doing so. It was fun while it lasted. Yeah, I have been playing with fire for a very long time.
You can melt a hole in a beer can with a sparkler.They are almost like a welding torch.
There was one with a politically incorrect name that used to go along the ground bumping and whistling till it went off.It really livened up the festivities when it ran into a group of people.I don’t think they sell it anymore.
04 May 2020, 8:31 am
