Or maybe they are a Millennial?
I just read this interesting article in The Hill, and it explains some of the differences in reaction to this virus that we've seen right here in this thread. The Harris Poll just did a survey and found that Millennials are somehow the most concerned about dying from Coronavirus, while older people (
ahem!) are less concerned. And yet it's all the old people it's killing, while young people aren't being killed by it.
Here's a key sentence from the article, and it suddenly explains a lot to me...
"It also raises the question of what is driving such fear among millennials — is it their engagement in social media that is creating greater concern, or is it their lack of any comparable events in their lifetime? Or a combination: A lack of any real experience with a pandemic crisis, combined with hearing about it constantly through social media, means that they have no personal experience to moderate or check against what is in their feed. Older people, in contrast, have been through comparable crises, making it natural for them to wonder what all the fuss is about."
Those who are most scared are those who have never experienced events of similar scale — the millennials.
thehill.com
Many Millennials are too young to really remember 9/11 and what that felt like for adults. Let alone other things like the stock market crash of '87, the worst of the Cold War in the early 80's when we were certain we'd all be dead by 1985, the Gas Crises in '73 and '79, the horrible Hong Kong Flu in '68, the Cuban Missile Crisis in '62, etc.
But maybe if we'd made a bigger deal out of the Swine Flu in 2009 they would have better coping skills for this Coronavirus? The '09 Swine Flu was bad (with apologies to any pigs that may read this and anyone else from the pork community), but Disneyland never closed and you could always buy bath tissue at Target.
2009 Swine Flu H1N1 in United States
60.8 Million US Cases
274,304 US Hospitalizations
12,469 US Deaths
Up to 575,000 Deaths Worldwide
I was on this message board regularly in 2009. We never talked about it, much less its impact to Disneyland. And over 12,000 Americans died from that virus.
That's fascinating to compare!
A summary of key events of the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and the CDC's response activities between April 2009 and April 2010.
www.cdc.gov