Editorial: The duty of baby boomers

The epidemiological situation leaves no room for misinterpretation. The fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is strong, the Delta variant has penetrated all Greek communities, and its transmission has become very rapid. It takes just one fissure in self-protection measures and a lag in vaccinations to create a new locus of super-spreading.

As pulmonary medicine specialist Nikos Tzanakis said publicly, the virus firstly harms younger generations, which have a low rate of vaccination, without creating major public health problems due mainly to the endurance of younger people.

It also easily penetrates communities of vaccinated people in productive age groups, due to their intense mobility, without excessively burdening the National Health System (NHS).

The biggest problem for the NHS however is the mass of unvaccinated people in the large group of citizens who are age 60 or over.

Most of the deaths and the increased number of intubations that are insufferably pressuring hospitals and totally exhausting doctors and healthcare workers - holding the country hostage to COVID-19 - derive mainly from this large age group, which often has underlying medical conditions, may be immunosuppressed, and is more vulnerable than all others.

When those over 60 remain unvaccinated, it is as if they are voluntarily going to the gates of hell.

With their stance, they are nearly committing suicide and they extend the duration and intensity of the public health crisis.

It is astonishing that the most favoured generation of the post-war world behaves in a totally anti-social manner.

This specific group of Sixty-Somethings belongs to the generation of the baby boomers - those born between 1946 and 1964 - and lived a life of nearly...