A Wuhan Coronavirus Message to Our Legal Insurrection Family
Please take care of yourselves. We need you. Okay, boomers? Are you with me on this one?
My inbox has been flooded with messages from almost every company I’ve interacted with assuring me that they have a plan on how to deal with the Wuhan Coronavirus (none of them use that name, of course).
The airlines, the banks, the hotels, the domain host, the lawyers, the accountants, … even the furniture store, all have sent me messages of reassurance. They will be there for me, they are spread out in various locations with various back up systems, and they can log in from home.
So consider this my message to our Legal Insurrection family of editors, authors, readers, commenters, vendors, and donors.
It sounds pretentious to say that we will be here for you, but, we will be here for you. We will continue to report as the Wuhan Coronavirus sweeps around the nation and world, and hopefully provide readers with a measure of sanity in a world gone mad. And we will continue to call it Wuhan Coronavirus.
Our office is not on lockdown, because we don’t have an office – we are virtual. with editors and authors scattered around the world, including in Ithaca/Rhode Island, Houston, Oklahoma City, the Redneck Riviera, San Diego, Massachusetts, Washington State, North Carolina, South Africa, Ohio, and more.
While we are far apart, we are closer than distance measures. We care about each other in easy times, and more so in hard times. And we care about each other’s families.
My children sent me an article, Convincing Boomer Parents to Take the Coronavirus Seriously:
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….
As I spoke to my peers, I realized that I wasn’t alone. A lot of us have spent the past week pleading with our baby-boomer parents to cook at home, rip up the cruise tickets, and step away from the grandchildren….
Over the weekend, I tweeted my observations, asking if others were struggling to get their baby-boomer parents to take the threat seriously. More than a thousand panicked responses poured in, so fast that I couldn’t keep up with them all.
I was born at the tail end of the baby boom, and never really thought of myself as a boomer. Why are they sending me an article about boomers?
My kids are all millennials. I tend to think they are younger than they really are. They are not Gen Z.
I know, I know, we boomers all love to make fun of millennials, but my kids assure me they’ve never done the Tide Pod challenge or any of the other things we associate with millennials. I think maybe we got the millennials wrong, or at least most of them. Deep down, beneath the tattoos and body metal, they care, they really care, particularly now that their boomer parents are at risk.
The kids who thought their parents were both absurd and immortal are now facing that mortality and the prospect of being on their own. Understand what they are going through.
I don’t know much about Gen X, but many of them are portraying themselves on social media as the responsible generation, the anecdote to millennials.
I was just talking to my husband about how we are in the middle of the boomers who seem to be in denial and then the millennials who are too self important to understand why they need to stay home.
Most of our editors and authors are Gen X. Responsible people who feel sandwiched between out-of-touch boomers and irresponsible millennials. So we are in good hands here.
We also worry about our readers. Boomers are our largest demographic, according to our Quantcast stats. And we all are most at risk.
An important part of the strategy for the Legal Insurrection Foudation is to personalize the connection to readers, to create community in our house, chaos in our opponents’ house. But my Florida ‘campus free speech’ tour, and Samantha’s Northeastern U. appearance, had to be canceled. Any future trips for in-person appearances and reader events are on hold at least into the summer, maybe even the fall.
We will focus for the next few months on research and investigations, but the personal touch will have to wait until touching is cool again.
But plans are just plans, and our Legal Insurrection family is our family. We will be here for you, please be here for us.
Please take care of yourselves. We need you. Okay, boomers? Are you with me on this one?
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Boomer hubris has been a problem since the 1960’s. When they said “don’t trust anyone over 30”.
They were young and dumb, weren’t they?
Goes hand in hand. Some generations are just dumber.
TZ and The Fine Report–
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Baby Boomers were not the ones shouting “don’t trust anyone over 30.” That saying was created and chanted by college grad students in the early 1960s, when even the oldest Boomers at the most just might have been college freshmen. The “don’t trust anyone over 30” crowd were members of the Silent Generation, also known as the Lucky Few, who were born from approximately 1928 to 1945. See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Weinberg
Outstanding comment and analysis. Abbie Hoffman, one of those knuckleheads screaming at the crowds not to trust folks over 30 was born in ’36. There are many others. The group later called Boomers were simply the “millenials” of their day, young, ignorant, and trying to figure out the world. They because “Boomers” after they had careers, successful lives, and retired. They are blamed by the latter day “Millenials” for whatever they are accused of, notwithstanding that those same Boomers are who built and sustained the businesses, paid the taxes that supported some much of the expansion of government, paid the tuitions and whiped that arses of the not yet matured generation called Millenials.
“Became” not “because”
“so much” not “some much”
and
“wiped” not “whiped”
Sounds to me as if somebody has bought into the C19panic virus. Ok 7,000 dead from C19 so far this year. Condolences to their families and loved ones and flowers for their graves. But did you know that over 100,000 people have died from the regular flu viruses this winter? And that the mortality rate from C19 is maybe 3% on a very bad day. And only for those aged and already infirm. A healthy 30 yr old doesn’t die from C19. Maybe takes a few days off from work like every year. So please think carefully about this C19panic virus. It’s worse than the actual C19 virus.
Flu has a mortality rate of 0.1%. COVID-19’s mortality rate is at least an order of magnitude higher, and perhaps an order of magnitude and a half higher. No one should panic, but no one should dismiss the risk involved.
LOL, I’ve been getting the emails all day. They all have a “plan”.
The virus is a minor thing compared to the financial destruction created by the government. That will likely kill many more than the virus.
If you want to shut something down that might have a beneficial effect,
SHUT down the government.
I agree.
A week ago you couldn’t have convinced me that this country would literally commit economic suicide over this year’s cold virus. That’s exactly what we’re doing.
Gee, I wonder who is pushing that theory…
Anybody who is keeping up with what’s happening and can think. My deepest concern is that the lemmings who believe this line of crap about an “On the Beach” scenario (whether the virus or “climate change”) will all flock to whoever promises them salvation, no matter how ridiculous the promises – and Dems can out-promise God. The next presidential election will, in all probability, be my last – and I’d hate to go out on a losing note, whether I’m around to see the end or not.
It is like living inside a Twilight Zone episode called “Fear of the Sniffles.”
Some of this seems to parallel “Climate Change” — short on facts, big on fear, predict doom if you do not give up your rights, throw money at the foggy problem, attack those who talk facts rather than narrative, etc.
Perhaps the left will study this for what caused the panic so they can apply it to Climate Change because they will say our panic and submission saved the planet so do it for the climate. Something just seems to be not right in this whole situation.
NPR ran a poll on those who think this is overblown by the media
The same people who believe the earth will burn are the ones most panicked by this
Stupid voters believe stupid things
The size of our economy is it’s own built in fail-safe. We have ups, we have downs. The long term market trend is always upward. This may be China’s fault, but the reaction is definitely a self inflicted wound. American’s are going to learn a lot from it, in many ways, some unexpected. This can turn into a huge positive for our country, I truly believe that. I always enjoy seeing you here txvet2.
Thank you, Professor. We’ll be sticking around, happy to be reading more LI posts than we get a chance to.
BTW, most of the people dying from complications resulting from exposure to this virus aren’t boomers, and it’s a mortal insult to call us that.
You aren’t going to tell me how to wash my hands, and to remind me to do so frequently? Thank God!
One thing I have noticed is that fewer guys seem to be walking out of the restrooms without washing their hands, although many are simply doing the “wet my hands for 3 seconds and book” thing. Darwinism? Nuf said!
At Walgreens I have been accustomed for years to scanning my own loyalty card. Last time — earlier this week — the clerk tookit from me to scan.
I’m a Boomer. He isn’t. He’s handling dozens of cards, I only handle one.
I’m grateful he at least me insert my own credit card in the reader slot.
And I don’t want to hear another word about how terrible it is to use the supermarket self-checkout.
And if any of you homos touch my stuff? I’ll kill you.
So to speak.
Lighten up, Francis.
🙂
Next time whip out a travel size spray bottle with 91% alcohol and disinfect the card while it is still in his hand, explaining why he should not handle customer cards.
Did you notice that in the good professor’s featured image at the top of this article both he and his key people are well within virus transmission distance of each other?
Professor, we all know that you are a pretty bright lawyer, and are an advocate of the rule of law. Please don’t let that go to your head to the point of thinking that an injunction or restraining order can stop those nasty little viruses.
We all like you and wish for your success, but we want to stop short of flattering you to the point that it risks boosting your ego into uncharted waters.
/s/ JD Nobody
yup. was gonna say pic was not recent but exif shows it taken 2-10-2020 so before the “scare” but still in the timeframe.
everyone be careful, be cautious, be smart. don’t panic!!
Taken in LA !!
Thank you professor. My background and training/education tell me that reasonable precaution and good hygiene habits are the best preventive for this sitution. And nothing I have read or heard so far changes my mind about that conclusion.
I know that the world population has been complacent in regards to proper pathogenic control ( open borders crowd and all that) but as I said in a previous thread the people are better able to deal with this than the Government as long as they are given the right information.
Your postponing events where there are likely to be large groups of people (especially those who are likely to do a lot of international travel) is reasonable. The media hype and fearmongering is not.
The virus is likely to run its course within the next two months. But it will take years to undo the economic damage the panic has already done by politicians overreacting.
I am old enough to remember my parents harping abuot washing your hands, use a handkerchief when you sneeze cover your mouth when you cough, don’t share drinking glasses. These common sense things they learned in responce to past epidemics. So why should we overreact now.
Be well stay safe!
The msm is inflicting death from a thousand cuts upon itself. They have flat out lied for so long, on so many things, even the most ardent leftists can’t deny their failure. That’s not to say leftists want to deny the lies. It means they will eventually abandon their failed messenger. No one will stay with the ‘boy who cried wolf’ media hacks. When cvid19 wraps up, we are likely to see a rapid increase in the markets and economy. Americans are resilient. We overcome adversity and will do so in this case as well.
” politicians overreacting…”
Nope. It’s the media’s planned hysteria.
Modernly the media runs the polititcans: in fact, they own the democrat party. The GOP? They lead them by the nose, witness mccain and romney.
To keep myself amused I’m sending out texts to my neighbors and friends telling them the press says to check on our elderly friends and neighbors. Then I ask them how they’re doing.
They’re all younger than me. LOL.
Just doing your own little bit to whip up needless overexcitement, huh?
Well, I suppose everybody needs a hobby.
Please do take care of yourselves. Also don’t be surprised next week when the numbers of Positives shoots up, that will be due to testing becoming more available not because things are getting worse.
Also, the number of positives going up is going to drop the mortality rate.
Be safe everyone, be prudent and adult and you will make it through this just fine.
From Bogota, Colombia, por supuesto. Of course with you.
One comment in general. I am a bit of a free speech absolutist type. As such one of my forbidden types of speech is falsely yelling “FIRE!” in a crowded theatre.
The Obama administration guy who, this past weekend posited the likelihood of up to 11 million US deaths from the virus seemed a lot more to me like a “FIRE!” guy than a journalist or analyst contemplated by the First Amendment. Just sayin’
Take care
Okay, boomers? Are you with me on this one?
Of course!
And one from the ‘comment team’:
New York Times Authors Deceptively Edit Trump’s Advice to Governors on Medical Ventilators:
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2020/03/16/new-york-times-authors-deceptively-edit-trumps-advice-to-governors-on-medical-ventilators/
What garbage the ny times is.
And more, from the garbage associated with the Bezos Post and the like:
Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin speculated on Sunday that more Republicans will die of coronavirus than Democrats (appearing on MSNBC):
https://dailycaller.com/2020/03/15/jennifer-rubin-republicans-coronavirus-deaths/
More like hoping.
Thanks, Legal Insurrectioners and commenters for hanging in.
Seeing “Okay, boomers?” in the headline had me laughing.
The oldest Baby Boomer is about 74 years old. I’m a ’49 vintage Boomer.
I’ve read only in two places that Boomers weren’t giving COVID-19 the concern it deserves. I don’t know from where that idea has come. I think I have given that disease and all airborne communicable diseases the concern they deserve. I agree with Shadow5.
On the other hand, people of all generations should be self-isolating whenever they get a cold or flu other airborne communicable diseases. That would cut down significantly on the spread of infectious ailments.
Meanwhile, I sent an email message to my daughter reminding her that I’m a Boomer, her mom is a Gen Xer, and she is a Millennial, and predicting that kids born 9 months from now will be called members of the Wuhan Clan.
My daughter responded: Nah – they’re the QUARANTEENS.
I was born in late Nov ’64, so I understand not quite identifying with Boomers.
Prof Jacobson, do take care of yourself. We need you, too.
They’ve made up a new name for those of us born after ’56. We’re a cohort of Boomers called Generation Jones. There was such a huge cultural shift between 1946 and 1964, the early and late boomers don’t really have a lot in common. I was born in ’63, 7 months before Kennedy was assassinated so that was never a defining moment of my life like it was for the early boomers.
The initial estimate for the lethality of a new virus is *always* too high. Remember the West Nile virus? The initial estimate was 10% fatal. Later serotesting showed the real rate was more like 0.1%. The cases that are initially noted are the serious ones. The vast majority that aren’t serious don’t show up in the initial estimates. COVID-19 does indeed spread faster than seasonal flu, but there’s a good chance that it’s not more lethal.
We’re not all going to die.
Don’t act rashly. Be careful. But, as Douglas Adams might have recommended, don’t panic.
’47 Boomer here. I’ve been helping the young’ns organize Zoom meetings. It’s probably not the best thing to use … but it works.
I would rather do meetings in person; sometimes that is not practical. Participants in eleven countries, or nine states, or ice storms making travel a hazard … this is just another bump in the road.
With a 99% cure rate (Fox News tonight), and China mysteriously shrugging off the plague with minimal damage except to smokers, I wonder if this entire matter has been totally exaggerated and we are dealing with a common cold with a propensity towards viral pneumonia in the compromised. And nothing more.
The obituary pages in Italy go on for pages and pages and pages… everyday. That’s not the common cold at work.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/coronavirus-obituaries-bergamo-italy/2020/03/16/6c342f02-66c7-11ea-b199-3a9799c54512_story.html
It’s also worth noting Italy has the oldest pop in Europe 23 percent over 65 and many if not most of those deaths are of 70, 80 and 90 year olds. The virus is concentrated heavily in certain areas stressing medical services resulting in higher death rates on top of the age factor.
Combine the older population of a lot of smokers with a couple hundred thousand infected Chinese running back and forth between Italy and China and you have a recipe for disaster.
Now, throw in a government healthcare system and you have your result. Government healthcare is always a joke.
To get good information on COVID-19, Google “TWIV podcast.” It’s done by the professor who I learned virology from in the distant past. The single topic of recent episodes is COVID-19. Lots of facts. It probably helps to understand some microbiology to understand what they talk about, but it’s absolutely not necessary. The last episode had a guest who’s an epidemiologist, also from Columbia. I don’t think that you have to be a virus geek to appreciate TWIV, but it probably helps.
I think that if we work together on this quarantine, we will interrupt the flu season, cold season, and pneumonia. That sounds good, to me.
We’ll all be starving and out of work before this is over. This is an economic disaster created by our own government.
We lost one great mind to sudden death too soon a few years back. We don’t need to lose another. Be safe.
This is great. Thank you. The emails from restaurants I’ve been bombarded with are actually kind of shocking.
“Dear Valued Customer, we have been washing the shit out of our hands every 10 minutes all day long for you.”
Makes me wonder – how filthy have you been before this week?
You, too? I thought I was the only one receiving the retail and restaurant email equivalent of, “Please, come back to us! We are all wearing our condoms – honest!”
It has become so bad, even Amazon Prime has slowed down delivery days.
So far I’ve received no such message from the IRS.
Just wondering, what is (or where is) the “Redneck Riviera” ? Incidentally, born in ’46 and I rode 2 US Navy “Boomers” during the Cold War. So, happy to be called “Boomer” !!
The Gulf Coast generally, the coasts of Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle more specifically.
.
Late ‘45 here. It’s always annoyed me that I’m not officially a boomer.
Ah heck, watch some Lawrence Welk reruns and when you know the names of all the musicians you’ll be well on the way to becoming a boomer.
Gonna need to learn some doo-wop. The music of our generation has been pretty good up until about the late 80s.
Never, NEVER end a spoken sentence with an upward inflection, as though asking a question. Jeez, I have no idea what happened to younger generations conversational skills but their voice inflections and enunciations are enough to quash whatever they may be trying to communicate.
PS, James Dean was a zero. Rebel Without A Cause was a movie without a thought. At most, James Dean was a precursor to Sean Penn. Spit on the ground when that name gets mentioned.
To my view, the early 60s and those horrible skinny neckties marked the worst of our era. Those who are from the beginning of the era would probably disagree.
There was a time when PBS was actually very cool and NPR was less propaganda.
On the uptick, being 45 is a wonderful time in life, income is usually good, skill set is solid, family is usually still intact and a few options still remain if you need to regroup, retool or overcome.
I think Petrushka is saying that she is a beautiful 75 years old.
Hehe, yes, I believe you are correct! In which case, disregard my comment to her, she’s older than I.
Nonetheless, Lawrence Welk ran a tight ship, provided employment and opportunity for a lot of musicians and, the times as they were, was often the best choice from a very limited palate of television viewing.
I am not so sure that folks of the era understood that there were two parts to TV in those days, the audio part and video part, hence VHF and UHF channel bands. It was entirely possible to get the audio part and not be able to get the video.
Which editor/author is in NC?
Stacey
We have always known that government would use its power against us, somehow, someday.
There are villains in this story, members of the same “boomer” generation who have always been subversives.
When the FBI, DoJ, Pelosi and her chorus of eunuchs, Mueller, Assange, NSA, CIA, Lois Lerner and the usual suspects could not prohibit Trump by all of their best efforts, they brought out their next, best plan.
The one thing the socialist, deep-state, anti-America ne’er do wells had left was coming up with someway to try and diminish or destroy the economy.
And, icing for the cake, there was Pelosi, abortion money in hand, stuffing an emergency bill with her idea of essential health services, infanticide.
May Covid become a democrats constant companion.
The emails have been coming heavily enough that I’ll soon have to empty my trash folder just for general housekeeping. Even from TurboTax and PayPal.
Years ago, The Bride used to wonder why I liked to keep a bit of stock for essentials such as paper products. Then she got in the habit of it herself. The larder is crowded, we have extra water filters, fuel for the generator, and suitable other essentials, some of it measured in millimeters.
I’m still new to LI but I’ve been lurking for a long time and consider the group as those of a similar mind. It’s comfortable here.
.
It is!
All the best to you!
’49 boomer here. We understand the difference between caution and panic, and a large number of us know what the words “pantry,” “larder,” and “root cellar” mean.
Indeed. Our pantry is well supplied, always is. A couple of times a year we’ll root-around in there and concoct a soup or casserole of items that should be rotated, from time-to-time.
The other plus is that when good deals come up or have coupons or both we stock up on what we like and save a few bucks.
I’m Generation X. I just sent my mom off home about a month ago, after she spent a long time with us while undergoing cancer treatment. (That’s why I couldn’t make it to the meetup in Houston, BTW. It was chemo day for her.). She’s eighty-six.
Needless to say, I’ve begged her not to even think about leaving her house. And to spray with bleach or Lysol every single letter or package she receives. She didn’t beat cancer for her to watch all that health she fought for disappear because of some deadly junk from China!
The ChiComs can go to Hell!
50 +/- deaths here in the US–have a better chance of a lightning strike or winning the lotto than succombing to some damned chinese virus
despite several vigorous and rather enthusiastic efforts to render me otherwise, am still alive
no bunch of fascist talking heads, regardless of how well they are paid, are going to determine the course of our lives here
speak to your loved ones–let them know how much you care and how important they are to you
everything else is just background
Am I the only “tail end Boomer” who is insulted by the insinuations that I am not capable of caring for myself? For pete’s sake, I’m 62 years old, have learned a thing or two in those years, and manage to remain a functioning professional with enough sense to come in out of the rain and wash my hands.
If I hear that disrespectful and invalidating phrase, “Okay, Boomer,” one more time, though, I may come unhinged.
Quit dividing people by birth dates, and see them as individuals.