The Boomer's Pandemic: What About My Needs?

During WW II British intelligence cracked German military codes that indicated major bombing raids on large industrial cities in England. This produced a dilemma for PM Winston Churchill, who knew that any attempts to conspicuously defend certain targets might tip off the Luftwaffe that the British knew what was coming. 

Faced with the choice between defending the code breakers and protecting citizens, Churchill chose the Enigma crackers— knowing that it meant thousands would likely die in raids such as the 1940 Coventry attack when, in one night, 500 German bombers destroyed more than 4,300 homes and around two-thirds of the city's buildings. 

Churchill knew he could not save every life, so he chose to defend the most lives he could. That was via the Enigma crackers at Bletchley Park. The Greater Good concept.

The Covid-19 pandemic has raised similar ethical arguments about the “Greater Good”. While many heroes have emerged to fight Covid-19, there has also been a lot of self-interest. How many deaths is too many? In response to my assertion that we must accept losses  in our society from #Covid-19 for the “Greater Good”, I was asked, “Well, what if one of the people who died was your mother or grandmother?”

My reply was, “Would you be more comfortable if it’s someone you can’t see? Because about 280,000 people a year are going to die in Canada. They can’t all be people you don’t know. Someone has to die.” (Right now 13,500— or four percent of the annual death toll in Canada— have died with/ of the virus)

Let’s be honest, “What if one of the people who died was your mother or grandmother?” is the most Boomer thing ever. Awash in sentimentality, it’s meant to stigmatize the other while advertising personal virtue. It says, “No one I know should ever die in a pandemic. And you have blood on your hands for suggesting so.”

The surveillance state of me-firsters is also vintage Boomer. As we wrote October 25, “…we’re reduced to a game of “Spot The Offender” as snitches in our society target those who don’t wear masks on planes or who get inside the magic six-foot zone of safety. Virtue is now a parlour game of who can ‘out’ the most fellow citizens who believe the current draconian isolation/ masking situation is absurd.”

.

The sensitive Boomer cohort has lived its entire life two steps removed from reality. A couple of economic bumps brought on by rapacious greed. But no wars, no plagues, no price for anything. Just the arc of justice, as Barack Obama says, bending upward.

It’s the gauzy worldview of someone who never uses the word “die” or “dead”, preferring “passed”. It’s New York governor Andrew Cuomo sending thousands of infected seniors off to die in retirement homes  then writing a book about his leadership. It’s California governor Gavin Newsom ignoring his own lockdown/ mask/ sacrifice diatribe to dine maskless at the fabulous 3-star French Laundry in Napa. It’s the nomenklatura riding it out on yachts while others ride it out In basements.

Thee, not I.

It’s the sympathetic notion of immigrants scuttling across the Rio Grande to freedom and prosperity with no residual cost. It’s the preening virtue of enforced diversity without racial tension. It’s a credit card with no limits and no minimum payments. That is the legacy of the Boomer generation which counts on Twitter, Facebook and Google to muzzle dissonant messaging.

So is the petulant response to Covid-19. “Someone stop this virus! I demand someone stop it now!” has been the reaction when people we know start to die from Covid-19. People’s mothers and grandmothers who couldn’t be hugged or comforted in their final days. It wasn’t supposed to happen to them.  Even more important, it wasn’t supposed to happen to me.

(Actually, it’s been this way before. Only Boomers were watching The Masked Singer instead. Dr. Neil Rau, infectious diseases specialist and assistant professor at the U of Toronto, points out that the hospital system has been overwhelmed in the previous two years due to a bad influenza season. “We didn’t close every restaurant & gym and control people’s lives like this. This is really an over-reaction.”)

Whoa, Neil. If you don’t want to be doxxed into submission you better stop that kind of talk. 

A final note. Modern science has given those born in the past 75 years the idea that 90 is the new 80. Grammy lives forever, cupcake. Don’t give it a second thought. Perpetuating life into triple digits is common. A pill or an injection for immunity taken to prolong life far past the traditional age of mortality is a given.

What Covid-19 has done is remind the Boomer generation and their witless media sidekicks (who regurgitate WHO press releases as news) that warehousing fragile older people is a business fraught with complications. For instance 77% of Albertans dying from/ with the virus have three or more co-morbidities. Isolating them in senior care facilities is psychologically deadly. Witness Andrew Cuomo’s deadly handiwork on NYC’s elderly that cost an estimated 8,000 lives in senior care or extended living. 

In other words, we were tempting fate— even with the miracles of modern science. But no one in power wants to say that maybe we can’t keep that many elderly alive in this way. Assuming that the demographic now being hardiest hit is natural was folly. Best to bury the lede. A frank discussion on expectations is needed. Because next time it might be the young who are vulnerable. 

Having watched the previous ten months, some Boomers heading into their septuagenarian or octogenarian bliss may be re-considering the “let’s make 100” concept. But not many. The Greater Good is what’s good for my reality. The rest we can always censor. 

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx