Mentions of the word "elderly" have soared across the media this month. The timeline below shows mention density in global online news coverage since 2017, showing the vertical increase this month.
Here is the same timeline zoomed into Jan 2020 to present. Mentions began gradually increasing over the second half of last month and then began increasing sharply on March 7th and have soared over the past 24 hours.
Television shows a similar surge in mentions, though at a 45 degree slope rather than vertical like online coverage. Here mentions didn't take off until March 3rd and have trended up since. Fox News has used the term the most, followed by CNN, with MSNBC far behind either.