But the young and frankly stunted — not all of the young, obviously,
hence the qualification — don’t understand that. They’d never confronted their own mortality, and therefore now run in fear, because a virus can KILL them, oh the horror.
Well, cupcake, it always could. You just didn’t have a media dedicated 24-7 to telling you about it with enhanced doom porn.
Which would fit with something I've talked to people about before: an awful lot of people in their twenties and teens- hell, some in their 30's and 40's- seem to have no damned idea how well they've had it. They've always had antibiotics and vaccines and so forth, and have no understanding of what life was like for most of human history.
This is their wake-up call, and they really don't want to answer it.
4 comments:
Life, you can't get out of it alive. When where and how is a crapshoot. Maybe you do need to look it in the face first to accept inevitability and resolve to go down kicking and screaming. Cowering in fear of death is worse than dying for the fear never ends.
Once upon a time...perhaps 80 years ago it wasn't a rare occurrence to have one or two siblings die during childbirth and/or contract a debilitating disease that either led to their death or life in a wheelchair. People born in the 60s would've definitely met relatives who fell in the latter category and perhaps seen pictures or heard stories of the former from their parents. People born later less so.
Up until antibiotics, polio vaccines etc. arrived full scale in the 1950's an
early untimely death was not uncommon. Most Americans knew someone who had
succumbed to some misfortune or disease. Death was NOT a stranger to Americans.
Since then modern medicine has made almost unbelievable gains in the ability to
KEEP YOU FROM DYING. A lot of Americans, especially the younger ones don't know
anyone in their age group who has died. And for those that do it's only one or two.
Death is now something that in their minds happens to strangers and usually only to
OLD PEOPLE....which they aren't ( and in their minds they will never be). As a society we have never dealt well with the reality of death. Over the past half century plus we have gotten even WORSE at dealing with it. Now the incessant
drum beat of "BE AFRAID! BE AFRAID!" from the media is driving this group to the
edge of insanity because they are being forced to confront mortality NOW, up close and personal. And they don't like it.
The irony of course is that this is not a disease of the young. The average of the dying is 75, not even the biblical 70 but those beyond. The level of fear is irrational and the political implications of any position make discussion difficult. Death for those now young may be long delayed, beyond what is now common. The social effects of lower infant mortality and the eradication or mitigation of so many diseases of the past will take time and changing perspectives to totally assimilate.W hen you could live to be 150 how cautious will you be as a carefree 20 year old?
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