Boomer Remover vs. an inability to sit on a couch

It’s an unfortunate fact of life that, when a crisis strikes, not everyone rises to the occasion. The onset of the current virus pandemic has brought that to light once more.

Not long ago, a Twitter post, presumably from a young person, expressed satisfaction with the knowledge that the early signs indicated that the elderly appear to be most vulnerable to the new, insidious illness that is producing chaos and fear worldwide.

The writer gleefully termed the virus the Boomer Remover. In other words, good riddance to any geezers born after World War II who happen to contract the ailment.

Apparently, better dead than fed. Geez, where is Jonathan Swift when we need him?

On the other side of the virus-response coin, older people seem to be fighting back. Well, “fighting” may be too strong a word in this case. How about “trying to counter certain unpleasant biases?”

One fellow in South San Francisco recently wrote a letter to the editor of another Peninsula publication and called out the younger generation.

He stated that, “Millennials, your grandparents were called to war. You are being called to sit on your ass on a couch. And, yet, you can’t even get this right.”

Yes, that’s a bit harsh. Actually, it’s really harsh. But no harsher than

Boomer Remover. Looks like the gloves are coming off during this period of stress and strain.

We need to lighten up out there.

Oh, and before we let it pass, a post on a Burlingame blog was not exactly beneficial in this argument on the side of the, shall we say, more mature camp.

At one point last week as the stock market took another dive, he or she revealed that, “I lost $270,000 in my portfolio today … this equals one Ferrari.”

Oops. Not going to get a whole lot of sympathy from that fiscal revelation. In fact, it probably gave more fresh ammunition to the Boomer Remover crowd.

My head is starting to hurt. Again.

Some perspective

Getting solid, reliable, vetted information about the nasty virus can, at times, be daunting. There’s a lot of scary data out there, much of it tending toward the hysterical. Hello, cable TV, by the way.

So let’s try to put some of it into perspective, gently and without a lot of dire hand-wringing and finger-pointing.

Recently, the University of Washington produced a report showing projections of virus-induced deaths in each state in the U.S. by Aug. 4. California was predicted to suffer about 6,100 fatalities by that date.

That seems like a lot. But is it? And if the numbers and methodology are correct, what are your chances of perishing in this outbreak?

Well, let’s do the math. There are about 40 million people living in California right now. If 6,100 die because of the infection, that would work out to one in 6,557 people; your likelihood of being a fatal virus victim would thus fall to just 0.0001525%.

But it gets even more optimistic. It would be reasonable to assume, unfortunately, that of those 6,100, many of them would be individuals who work with, or live with, the infected or those who don’t know they are carrying the virus, people with serious preexisting conditions and others who don’t follow reasonable guidelines designed to keep them healthy.

So, in fact, your odds of not dying from the disease by early August are even better than 6,557 to one if you can somehow avoid being in any of the above categories of those most at risk.

All that said, the assumption is that the Washington study and its conclusions are rational, well-sourced and valid. We can hope.

In any event, stay well.