We have just moved to a 55+ community, which means that we in our mid-60's are the youngest people here. Pro tip: 55+ means 70+. We had a little gathering of people in close proximity this evening, to welcome snowbirds back from Florida.
Old people do not believe the coronavirus is a big deal. In a 2-minute conversation, I heard 50% of the cliches why it isn't. This was not based on any science or statistics or knowledge of epidemiology. These are decent, dutiful people who will not be expressing themselves in civil disobedience and marching on the state house. They will mostly sorta kinda adhere to social distancing because they are law-abiding and rules-following people. But they aren't going to be very precise about this because it has not penetrated their consciousness as important. I have read about older people who are the opposite, who are fanatic about all facets of personal protection these days. I will hazard a guess that they have been worried about many things over the years, and God bless them, because such folks are the ones who gradually move society in the direction of drunk driving and not wearing seat belts not just being a chuckling, okay maybe dangerous practice, but an actual bad idea.
Step aside from the idea of whether this is actually wise in the current environment or not.
NO, LISTEN TO ME, DAMMIT, I SAID STEP ASIDE FROM WHETHER THIS IS ACTUALLY WISE IN THE CURRENT ENVIRONMENT. I was screaming on purpose there.
When you are older and people you know have died of random and unfair things, and you yourself have had a few instances in your life where it suddenly occurs to you "Is this it, then? Is this the situation where it all comes tumbling down?" Whether that is your career, your health, your family, or the value of your savings/home/business, it is not a new question. You have an attitude toward such dangers, an approach to such dangers. You are now programmed to believe they are not such a big deal.You avoid discomfort and inconvenience, not death.
I saw online references to middle-aged people being frustrated trying to convince their parents that they should be extremely careful about C19, because those are the most vulnerable. I thought that was silly, just a select group of 30-50 y/o's who had to worry about their parents like that. I guess not. One's age affects one's perception of danger greatly.
So, under 30's still believe they are invulnerable, and they aren't being careful. No big deal for them, but they may be endangering others. Over 70's are already aware of a dozen things they might die of, and shrug about a lot of things because they are distractable about today's dinner, so they scare the pants off everyone else - because even the radical openers are saying"protect the most vulnerable in extreme fashion." This is part of why the myth of wisdom as one ages is spurious. It works up until about age 60 or 70, which was a minority of humans until recently. I'm not buying that as a general rule, even though it would benefit me. they also strangely believe they are invulnerable because "Hey, I'm still here, aren't I?"
30-70 y/o's are now having a culture war. Maybe they always are. Maybe that is what history is, arguments between 3-70 y/o's. It is moderately unfair of me to accuse y'all of having what is essentially a culture war, devoid of intellectual, scientific, future political, and personal considerations, but it's not entirely unfair. The culture war is in there, mostly between you and your age-mates, not the young and the old. It is for me also, but at 67 I am likely graduating out of that into the old-guy-who-keeps-saying-the-same-stuff category pretty quickly.
Do you observe their carelessness about death to apply only to themselves, or to others as well? If it is only for themselves, maybe it isn't so much being programmed into "I'm going to survive" as "It's not as important at my age."
ReplyDeleteNone of this 'rings true' in my experience.
ReplyDeleteI'm 76, and live in a rural area. I am not afraid.
ReplyDeleteGood to know my data set is inadequate for me to be drawing conclusions
ReplyDeleteLocking everything down and scaring people to death puts them in a different reference frame. This means nobody can apply the context of familiar surroundings and routine to the COVID case numbers (infections/deaths), putting them into proper perspective because everything's unfamiliar: All they know is, quite a few people have died, many more have been infected, some of them didn't know it, and all of this had to be understood over the television or internet because we're all miserable, stuck inside and can't see anything!
ReplyDeleteThat context cannot hold, as we are seeing, people will refuse to live in terror inside of their homes indefinitely. Now with things opening up incrementally and by state, I think people will start to make more coherent associations about the pandemic. What I am seeing on the ground is that quite a few are wearing masks, a select few are including gloves, and nearly everybody is respecting personal space. The ones that I see being the most PPE-aware are the very old / clearly infirm and, oddly enough, the middle-aged moms.
My mom lived until recently in a 55+ gated community, and my observation is that the highly-active seniors' natural behavior is one that would be likely to have a naturally-lowered risk profile, compared to younger age groups - they know their health problems and are virile enough to manage them competently. It seems to me that only the elderly that are crammed together in living centers (independent living apartments, assisted living, memory care, nursing homes, rehab) are the ones that are at high risk, due to communicability. I'm not seeing culture wars here, but I am seeing a lot of cross-generation tugging, the sort that usually goes on for a few years as children assume care for their parents. It's a process that's getting compressed from a few years into a month.
@ Aggie - that compression may be a better description. On my son's podcast out of First Methodist Houston, they had the bishop on who said something similar about churches. Those that had begun an online presence and were used to different types of church were switching quickly, and looked like thy could adapt however things went, but the congregations that had resisted change of any sort year after year were now already tanking, only a few weeks in.
ReplyDelete