Author Topic: BACK TO WORK!! It’s just killing old farts  (Read 7009 times)

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Offline kimmy

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Re: BACK TO WORK!! It’s just killing old farts
« Reply #15 on: April 14, 2020, 10:57:14 pm »
I'm with squiggy on this one.

Kimmy you've gone Republican.  We're all stuck inside until everyone gets vaccinated.  Any talk of easing restrictions makes no sense.  It's just going to flare up again.

There isn't going to be a vaccine for a year to 18 months, at the earliest.   Do you really think it's realistic to just maintain a ban on gatherings of over 10 people until 2022? Dr Fauci says 18 months hopefully.  What if instead of 2022, it's 2023 or 2024... still want to keep everything locked down? Still want to wait for the vaccine?

I always hear people ask something like "how would you feel if you have to tell your grandfather that he might get sick and die from this?"   I have yet to hear anybody ask anything like "how would you feel if you have to be the one who has to tell your granddaughter that she won't be able to go back to college until 2022?" 

I know that somebody is going to say "well the virus attacks young people too you know!"  but the death rate is minuscule for young people-- a fraction of a percent-- and most young people don't even need hospitalization. (my own speculation: the data for young people is probably inflated because only the very sickest will even be tested, most will feel like they had a bad cold and never know.) It's only when you get into the seniors age group that the  becomes significant.  For young people, the rate is negligible-- literally one in a million hospitalization rate for people under 18 according to the US CDC. Under 60, the rate is still very small. Only once you get into the pensioners and retirees do you find significant rates of hospitalization. I know that everybody is pushing very hard to point out that sometimes young people become very sick and even die from this. But the numbers say that by far the vast majority of hospitalizations and deaths from this will be boomers and their parents.

So while everybody is saying "we're all in this together!" the reality is that we are asking young people to put their lives on hold for the benefit of our society's older (and wealthier) members. 

Young people will never be repaid-- or even acknowledged-- for the sacrifices they are making to keep old-people safe during this disaster. 

Our government is taking steps to make sure that land-owners and stock-holders and big businesses aren't annihilated by the economic fallout from this pandemic. For everybody else it's going to be hit and miss. For my acquaintance that opened Kim City's first LGBT bar about a month before the lockdown, it's probably going to be a "miss". It was a nice 4 weeks for him, but it's probably never going to open again.  For my special girl, who depends on commissions (from her day job) and tips (from her night job) to make ends meet, it's probably going to be a "miss". We don't talk about money issues, but I don't need to ask to know that she is going to be completely **** over in terms of how much the government provides her versus how much she would earn normally. I don't need to ask to know that she is going to be depending on her parents for financial assistance for the duration of this shitstorm, and I don't need to ask to know how badly that hurts her.

Our government has taken great action to prevent the collapse of real estate values and the stock market and of big businesses and pension plans and hedge funds and all of those other things. Which I commend them for. But people will fall through the cracks, and disproportionately those will be young people. Industries will be crushed for years to come, and disproportionately those are industries that employ young people-- retail, restaurants, hospitality, tourism.  While some young-people will cash in working as Skip The Dishes drivers at an equivalent pay rate of about $3 per hour, most are going to be left broken by an economy worse than we have seen since the 1930s.  While the boomers and their stock portfolios and their real estate assets are protected by the government, young people are going to be left at the curb.

The boomers will go back to their stock portfolios and pensions, and go back to golfing with their buddies. Young people will have nothing except the knowledge that they did something good for their society.  Once upon a time I had a job in customer service, where I was told that good customer services is "like wetting yourself wearing dark pants: you get a warm feeling but nobody else notices."  That is going to be the reward young people get for their sacrifices they make during this crisis.

Everybody is saying "we're all in this together!" the reality is that we are asking young people to put their lives on hold for the benefit of our society's older (and wealthier) members. 

And what is especially galling to me is that most of the boomers and their parents are too ignorant and self-centered to know or care what others are giving up to preserve their safety.  They'll be bitching that their weekly bridge games have been put on hold, and that the golf club is limiting how many groups can be out on the course at one time, and that the "golden years" hours at the grocery store hours are so inconvenient.   And they will spend not a moment thinking about the young people who have put their education on hold and sacrificed their livelihoods for the sake of the greater good.

So forgive me for not feeling super charitable toward the "old farts" right now.


 -k
« Last Edit: April 14, 2020, 11:14:33 pm by kimmy »
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