REVscene Automotive Forum - View Single Post

whitev70r · 03-21-2020, 02:58 PM

Convincing Boomer Parents to Take the Coronavirus Seriously (from New Yorker, well ... look where the state of NY is at now)

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cu...irus-seriously

Last Wednesday night, not long after President Trump’s Oval Office address, I called my mother to check in about the, you know, unprecedented global health crisis that’s happening. She told me that she and my father were in a cab on the way home from a fun dinner at the Polo Bar, in midtown Manhattan, with another couple who were old friends.

“You went to a restaurant?!” I shrieked. This was several days after she had told me, through sniffles, that she was recovering from a cold but didn’t see any reason that she shouldn’t go to the school where she works. Also, she was still hoping to make a trip to Florida at the end of the month. My dad, a lawyer, was planning to go into the office on Thursday, but thought that he might work from home on Friday, if he could figure out how to link up his personal computer. That night, moments after getting into bed, I sprang up and wrote them an anxious e-mail. “I feel like the two of you are not taking serious enough precautions right now,” I told them. “The time is DONE for going out to restaurants, showing up at the office every day, etc. Just stay inside and watch TV!” When I followed up with texts, my mother wrote back sarcastically, “Thanks mom.”

This role reversal was . . . novel. I still think of my parents as the grownups, the ones who lecture me about saving for retirement and intervene in squabbles with my little sister. It took a pandemic to thrust me into the role of the responsible adult and them into the role of the heedless children. I’m thirty-eight, and my mother and father are sixty-eight and seventy-four, respectively. Neither is retired, and both are in good shape. But people sixty-five and older—more than half of the baby-boomer population—are more susceptible to covid-19 and have a higher mortality rate, and my parents’ blithe behavior was as unsettling as the frantic warnings coming from hospitals in Italy.

03-21-2020, 02:58 PM	#2350
whitev70r Willing to sell body for a few minutes on RS Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: 604 Posts: 10,415 Thanked 6,257 Times in 3,012 Posts Failed 320 Times in 161 Posts	Convincing Boomer Parents to Take the Coronavirus Seriously (from New Yorker, well ... look where the state of NY is at now) https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cu...irus-seriously Last Wednesday night, not long after President Trump’s Oval Office address, I called my mother to check in about the, you know, unprecedented global health crisis that’s happening. She told me that she and my father were in a cab on the way home from a fun dinner at the Polo Bar, in midtown Manhattan, with another couple who were old friends. “You went to a restaurant?!” I shrieked. This was several days after she had told me, through sniffles, that she was recovering from a cold but didn’t see any reason that she shouldn’t go to the school where she works. Also, she was still hoping to make a trip to Florida at the end of the month. My dad, a lawyer, was planning to go into the office on Thursday, but thought that he might work from home on Friday, if he could figure out how to link up his personal computer. That night, moments after getting into bed, I sprang up and wrote them an anxious e-mail. “I feel like the two of you are not taking serious enough precautions right now,” I told them. “The time is DONE for going out to restaurants, showing up at the office every day, etc. Just stay inside and watch TV!” When I followed up with texts, my mother wrote back sarcastically, “Thanks mom.” This role reversal was . . . novel. I still think of my parents as the grownups, the ones who lecture me about saving for retirement and intervene in squabbles with my little sister. It took a pandemic to thrust me into the role of the responsible adult and them into the role of the heedless children. I’m thirty-eight, and my mother and father are sixty-eight and seventy-four, respectively. Neither is retired, and both are in good shape. But people sixty-five and older—more than half of the baby-boomer population—are more susceptible to covid-19 and have a higher mortality rate, and my parents’ blithe behavior was as unsettling as the frantic warnings coming from hospitals in Italy. Last edited by whitev70r; 03-21-2020 at 06:16 PM.