This article is summative and conclusivist in broad spectrum, but its immediate service is the convenient running to ground of generation labels.

A national poll conducted in mid-March by the data intelligence company Morning Consult, which has been tracking public reactions to the coronavirus outbreak since January, found that 87 percent of baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) were practicing social-distancing measures, compared with 83 percent of Gen Xers (1965 and 1980), 76 percent of millennials (1981 and 1996) and 73 percent of the Gen Z crowd over the age of 18 (1997 and 2001). Numerous follow-up surveys confirmed this pattern, with boomers being the age group most willing to self-isolate.

Forthwith to be forgotten because they are both forgettable and misbegotten.

This sort of generational profiling is itself a form of misinformation. Aside from the fact that generational boundaries are imprecise, claims about systematic differences between generations are rarely of any empirical worth.

(Alex Stone, “Baby Boomers Were Blasé About the Coronavirus? Why Did We Believe that?” NYTimes, 4-30-20)

(c)heek 2020 JMN