Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Thursday March 26 2020, @09:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the pride-goeth-before-a-fall dept.

A group of young adults held a coronavirus party in Kentucky to defy orders to socially distance. Now one of them has coronavirus:

At least one person in Kentucky is infected after taking part at a "coronavirus party" with a group of young adults [...]

The partygoers intentionally got together "thinking they were invincible" and purposely defying state guidance to practice social distancing, [...]

[...] the virus seems to be affecting young people in the United States more than it has in China. A report released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that up to 20% of people hospitalized with coronavirus in the United States are between the ages of 20 and 44.

[...] "So far the demography definitely seems to be very different in the United States versus in other countries that saw this hit earlier,"

[...] In New York state, more than half of coronavirus cases -- 53% -- have been among young people between the ages of 18 and 49

From MSN:
Kentucky coronavirus party with group of young adults has left at least one person infected:

At least one person in Kentucky is infected after taking part at a "coronavirus party" with a group of young adults [...] The partygoers intentionally got together "thinking they were invincible" and purposely defying state guidance to practice social distancing [...] "This is one that makes me mad," the governor said. "We have to be much better than that."

And...From Slate:

A group of Kentucky partygoers recently attended a "coronavirus party." The event, which appears to be a pandemic-themed soiree, as you might imagine, was not a civic-minded effort to promote social distancing practices and best hand-washing practices, but a slap in the face to everyone else's collective efforts to not kill our parents and grandparents. The party mocked the virus, and the coronavirus gods were angry. One of the twentysomething attendees of the ill-advised gathering in the midst of a national emergency tested positive for the virus Tuesday.

Maybe I'm too old to get it, but it seems to me somewhat unwise to do this.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @04:30PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @04:30PM (#975961)

    Also Gen X here and I'd love to have the lot of them wiped out. Yes, I'd be sad to lose some relatives, but let's be honest about how much damage the Boomers have done to our generation, generations after us and the world at large. We've had a rapidly shrinking window during which we could do something about climate change and the boomers could have been a powerful force for doing something about it, anything about it, but by and large they've shown no interest at all in doing something about it. Same goes for shipping jobs over seas, they're generation was the one that did that at the largest rate.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @07:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @07:09PM (#976032)

    Ok Doomer..

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday March 26 2020, @08:02PM (6 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 26 2020, @08:02PM (#976059) Journal

    but let's be honest about how much damage the Boomers have done to our generation, generations after us and the world at large. We've had a rapidly shrinking window during which we could do something about climate change and the boomers could have been a powerful force for doing something about it, anything about it, but by and large they've shown no interest at all in doing something about it. Same goes for shipping jobs over seas, they're generation was the one that did that at the largest rate.

    If we're going to be honest about the Boomer damage, we need to keep in mind that they also played a big role in the greatest improvement in the human condition ever. It's remarkable how the usual minor mistakes of a generation are used as a pretext to damn the whole lot. Sorry, there's no evidence that we have a "rapidly shrinking window" to deal with climate change - after all, adaptation is a viable and cheap option. As for shipping jobs overseas, welcome to labor competition with the developing world. Those people, not the Boomers, got to decide whether they wanted to improve their own lives or not. I think they choose well as a whole.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @08:07PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @08:07PM (#976063)

      Not really, that was their parents that set that up. The boomers were just doing the work they were assigned through that. It's been steps backwards since the boomers took over. Life expectancies going lower, more poverty.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 26 2020, @10:10PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 26 2020, @10:10PM (#976101) Journal

        It's been steps backwards since the boomers took over.

        Which as I already noted is incorrect. You're not even characterizing the world right, so how can you determine what the Boomers' contribution is.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 28 2020, @03:43PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 28 2020, @03:43PM (#976660) Journal
        I wrote a journal [soylentnews.org] on this back a few years. Bottom line is that there are so many ways we're improving: better wealth for the average person, less wars in the world and less deaths (and yes, that was when the Syrian Civil War was really kicking), slowing global population, and less pollution. You should wonder why you are so invested in believing that the world must be getting worse.
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Mykl on Thursday March 26 2020, @09:33PM (2 children)

      by Mykl (1112) on Thursday March 26 2020, @09:33PM (#976088)
      • Boomers sucked up free/cheap education to the point that it was no longer viable to do so. In Australia, fees for tertiary education commenced in 1989 - about 2-3 years after the last boomers would have finished their tertiary degrees. In the 1960's students were paid to study teaching
      • Boomers sucked up cheap housing within reasonable distance to urban centres. These days, first home buyers are increasingly competing with boomers who are purchasing their fourth/fifth/sixth investment property with the money earned from those very first home buyers through rent.
      • Boomers in management positions have offshored most of the entry level jobs in this country in order to make a bonus next quarter, effectively killing off a means for many younger generations to get into the workforce. I worked in a supermarket when I was in high school / University, and I think of how many checkout operator jobs are no longer available to kids due to automated checkouts
      • Boomers are draining the health care system (in countries that have a functioning Universal Health Care system). By the time we pay to keep them all alive until their 90's, there won't be enough money to go around to help the younger generations to nearly the same degree. We're already seeing mechanisms in Australia that limit access to UHC for higher income earners
      • For the past 30 years or so, Boomers (who were the largest voting bloc for the period) voted other Boomers into government to enact policies that specifically enriched Boomers. I don't believe that they deliberately set out to disadvantage other groups - rather, they gave almost no thought to other groups at all. No need to worry about younger generations - they can collect our inheritance (if there's any left!)
      • (Score: 2) by Mykl on Friday March 27 2020, @01:44AM

        by Mykl (1112) on Friday March 27 2020, @01:44AM (#976166)

        Hmmm. I wonder if people are using the "Troll" modifier in the absence of a "Butthurt" modifier?

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 27 2020, @01:31PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 27 2020, @01:31PM (#976290) Journal
        In other words, we have a lot to learn about creating stable democratic societies. Given how universal the problem is, it's not a generational Boomer problem, it's a structural issue. Rather than whine about how some people did better by the current state of things, how about we figure out to fix things so that it doesn't happen again for a while?

        Several of your listed items come from either a poorly designed social safety net (say "sucked up free/cheap education", "draining the health care system") or artificial scarcity ("sucked up cheap housing within reasonable distance to urban centres", "enact policies that specifically enriched Boomers"). Others I think will go away on their own ("offshored") as the world becomes wealthier and labor competition becomes more a matter of who has better systems than who has cheaper labor.

        Here's some suggestions. In the short term:
        • Pay attention to the business environment: business changes (creation, growth, and destruction), preventable issues that can increase cost of labor, and encourage competition.
        • Pay attention to the regulatory environment. Excessive and overly complex regulation has negative consequences for everything on my list. I believe that there should be some regulation, but that it should be implemented in a reasonably low cost manner. Too often regulation is just spuriously created without regard for the costs of compliance.

          And it helps hide government misdeeds.
        • Pay attention to cost of living, particularly, real estate basic needs, and important life events (like health care and education). Most of the problem with being a young adult today is how expensive everything is.
        • Continue with the expectation that most people will work.

        In the long term:

        • Greatly increase longevity. My take is that people will be more aware of the future and their effects on it when they live longer.
        • Most of the world (in excess of 90%) will achieve developed world status by 2100. I think that will eliminate most of the ill effects of present day globalism. Competition will be on the quality of the society rather than on whether labor is dead broke and willing to work cheap. So suck it up, buttercup on the matter of labor competition.