From the current vantage point of mid-March 2020—in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic—the recent era of "Okay Boomer" memes feels like a fond, innocent, faraway memory.
When the same generation was made the subject of a new meme in some dark corner of Reddit, people of all ages were quick to attack the meme as morbid and insensitive.
The Novel Coronavirus has infected over 250,000 people across the world and killed over 10,000 people.
Scientists learned the virus impacts people with greater or lesser severity based on a few factors. Pre-existing health conditions and higher ages are the clearest indicators of increased chances of hospitalizations and fatality.
According to Stat News, a CDC Analysis published on March 18 affirmed that the virus sends adults ages 65 and older into hospitals at a disproportionately higher rate. Those age-based statistics have abounded in the media landscape since the virus began to dominate headlines.
Most of the Baby Boomer generation—defined as folks born between 1944 and 1964 or aged 76-56—falls right in this higher danger demographic.
This fact collided with another important truth: the internet is crowded with meme-making and meme-sharing people under the age of 40, the very age reportedly highlighted as less at risk of hospitalization and death from the virus, but most likely to be asymptomatic carriers aiding in the spread of COVID-19.
It did not take long for at least a few of those invincible-feeling younger people to give Baby Boomers the meme treatment—the second time in a few months. We all remember the "Okay Boomer" meme from just months ago.
When a meme positioning the virus as the "Boomer Remover" was posted, it quickly went viral.
from CoronavirusMemes
But most were not so amused by the apocalyptic flow-chart, or the spirit behind it.
Anaconda_kleenex/Reddit
All moral judgments aside, even the meme's truth is being called into question, as the same previously mentioned CDC analysis found that one fifth (20%) of infected people age 20-44 have ended up in the hospital.
As greater measures are taken across the U.S. to keep families at home to reduce the virus' spread, perhaps these opposing generations will be forced to work things out, at least in the non-internet realm of real-life home isolation.
