States are closing hiking trails... Why? Seems like a pretty low-risk, healthy activity...

Trail closures have a cascading effect as people move from closed popular trails to open less popular trails.

Here in Ventura county California the trails closed after LA county closed their trails and all the LA folks started coming here.

zxcvzcxv wrote:

Had a national shutdown taken place March 1, we would be facing a very early and successful resolution of this by May 1. Instead, haphazard, late, and partial restrictions give us increasingly harsh measures that are too late to stop this from being a huge event. Quick early action as they did in Taiwan with 124 separate measures taken, starting December 30 or earlier, would have stopped this cold. Instead we're now at 116,000 cases and about to pass 2,000 dead later today (we're at 1937 with 241 dead so far today). The U.K. is starting to really hurt with 260 deaths since yesterday to already hit over 1,000 with only 17,000 cases total, 1/17th mortality rate on found cases, vs. the U.S. at under 1/20th so far.

This. National lockdown. Get everyone masks for when it re-opens. No local flights. Airlines are getting bailed out anyways. Why didn't they stop all air travel? Domestic and international.

It's too late now. We're stuck with this crap until June? Races at the end of May are getting cancelled now. Even Boston 09/2020 is possible not to happen.

New York Subways are still running.----Cess pools in the best of times. Maybe that's why New York has so many cases.

I don't feel bad hiking or skiing-or frankly have a whole lot of sympathy for DeBlasio or Cuomo as long as they refuse to really shut down that city.

Trails are more crowded than I can every remember, it’s impossible to maintain proper distance. it makes me wonder if we did nothing at all whether this would be worse or better.

whereditgo wrote:

Because if you give people an inch they will take a mile. They closed hiking trails by us because teenagers were posting on social media where to meet to party and groups of 100 kids were getting together on the trails.

i definitely would have done this if this went down when i was younger.

zxcvzcxv wrote:

Had a national shutdown taken place March 1, we would be facing a very early and successful resolution of this by May 1..

The virus has most commonly been spread by injections, through clothing distributions such as baseball caps (Wuhan, Iraq and Iran), by suspension in liquids like hand sanitizers, and by sprays. I'm personally skeptical that being in groups, i.e. transfer from one person to another, has much of anything additional to do with it.

vvv wrote:

Trailhead parking, transmission of virus on gates, fences and restrooms, any accidents requiring rescue pull emergency workers from overstretched hospitals, any accidents requiring hospitalization take beds from covid patients.

Near me a climber fell off a big wall and needed 19 rescue workers to get him to safety and a cyclist crashed on a steep descent, broke bones, was hospitalized and was infected while in hospital.

It's not about you - it's about the bigger picture. Don't be selfish.

The bigger picture is that it's a liability.

8) wrote:

trail maintenance. suddenly there is an influx of obese people - who have never set foot on a trail before - stampeding along the single-track which erodes away with every step. that poor mountain biker washes out off the cliff.

One biker is more damaging to a trail than a group of thirty runners.

zxcvzcxv wrote:

Had a national shutdown taken place March 1, we would be facing a very early and successful resolution of this by May 1. Instead, haphazard, late, and partial restrictions give us increasingly harsh measures that are too late to stop this from being a huge event.

You is delusional if u think national shutdown would have stopped this. What about it living on cardboard? Ever heard of mail?, parcels?

WWRD wrote:

This is a ridiculous and shows governments general tendency towards fascism if give leeway.

No, governments more often trend toward communism.

green tea wrote:

Gotta protect the fish from the coronavirus too!

https://www.foxnews.com/great-outdoors/washington-bans-recreational-fishing-slow-coronavirus

Whoever wrote that overly cutesy article, ought to be tazed. "Fishtancing"? Yuck. Jeanne Moos type BS. Booo!

I just checked. A man wrote it, too. No excuse.

The shelter in place is not to reduce the number of people who get it... it is to endure that everyone doesn’t get it at the same time.

Closing most trails is overboard. But if it’s Rancho San Antonio in Cupertino where thousands of people walk the same stupid 2 miles then yeah, I get it.

JesusisJedi wrote:

I have read COVID-19 is mild in most cases. In MT we are ordered to stay home. Does anyone know the mortality rate for COVID-19 compared to the ratio for Influenza (hospitalizations/deaths)? Or other diseases such as swine flu or SARS?

Why the fear of this disease? Why close down races and not close down a store like Wamart and Target?

#1: Because it's a sudden acute respiratory virus with a name that sounds intimidating (COVID-19)

#2: People don't feel empowered to do anything to increase the chances of fighting off the virus if they contract it. Many people feel it's a death sentence or they'll need a ventilator and none will be available - they're assuming the worst case scenario. This might true if it's a sickly elderly person with serious underlying health problems.

People don't understand that we, as humans, have an innate immune system which has done pretty well through human history fighting off pathogens or none of us would be here. Strengthening the immune system is top priority in cases like this.. Are people eating healthier and knocking off the junk food? Probably not. Are people getting outside and excercising? Probably most aren't. Are people aware of that vitamin D3 can offer protection against respiratory infections. Probably many aren't.

Great video on coronavirus and vitamin D3 reviewing the meta-analysis study on D3 and respiratory infections:

More on the immune system's response to coronavirus:

People simply don't feel empowered against this virus. They feel they're a ticking time bomb.

You can't go through life in fear of coronavirus or any other viruses.

You can run but you can't hide.

0ii-op wrote:

WWRD wrote:

This is a ridiculous and shows governments general tendency towards fascism if give leeway.

No, governments more often trend toward communism.

Both are Leftwing ideologies, only Fascism is just the place over to the right from Communism. Which is why you can have de facto Fascist states, like modern China, while remaining in theory de jure Communists, with all the external trappings of devotion to Marxism still in place.

Life, liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness wrote:

Are people aware of that vitamin D3 can offer protection against respiratory infections. Probably many aren't.

mo farah is probably doing really well right now then.

I think most of this is stupid, but why can't the decision be made that you have to have a mask, or a bandana( everyone can make a bandana) to go hiking or fishing instead of shutting everything down? Don't touch anybody else's stuff and they can't blow snot on you.

Fascinating that Wisconsin has free state parks/trails now...I grew up there and visit a few times a year, and it’s crazy that a state can have so many fat people, high property taxes, but charges separately to bike on many state trails, county trails, and state parks. Whether I’m on those or free trails, I see less people on along run on a Saturday then I’d see on my neighborhood bike paths on a weekday morning in Colorado.

But this is good, I hope more Sconnies get outside even if they’ll be b1tching about how ‘FIBS’ are coming up from Chicago and using the trails for free as well.

4 things you can guarantee about medics:

(1) A lot of them will disagree with each other.

(2) A lot of them use conjecture based on worst case scenario, not objective evidence.

(3) While they might have medical degrees, most of them have forgotten the scientific basis they studied a long, long time ago. They have forgotten how well viruses replicate in crowded conditions between sweaty human beings and don't understand how thin walls cannot protect against this. Equally, they don't understand how risk is minimised in the outdoors and how a good immune system developed with exercise, fresh air, a healthy diet and Vitamin D protects against such viruses. Everything is based on lowest common denominator e.g. everyone must take protective measures designed to protect elderly, infirm people who have never exercised and have other health conditions.

(4) Some of them exhibit a strong desire to play god and control people, based on heavily restrictive risk avoidance strategies which are not proven. So some doctors would very happily lock people down in their own homes, which will obviously cause ill health and disease in itself, based on over-eating, lack of exercise, likelihood of Type 2 diabetes and worsening of other conditions.

Not all doctors, of course, but some of them. I live in the UK, and a lot of NHS GPs are like this here. The moment you admit to any ache or pain, or mild illness, they instantly advise to stop exercising. They are far, far too cautious because they generally deal with obese people who have poorly developed motor skills from childhood. They don't understand how robust people can or indeed should be. Get one of these doctors in charge of a country's medical advice, and you have lockdown.

Governments here in Europe are in a no win situation. Imagine the social media spite if they didn't order lockdown, and 20,000 people died of causes attributed to corona virus. Although its estimated that 2/3 of CV deaths might have died anyway, and the seasonal flu in 2013/2014 killed 20,000 in Britain (a country in which 600,000 per year die anyway) and you have optimal conditions for a huge number of deaths in the next year or so indirectly caused by the lockdown by suicide from people losing their ability to earn a living or losing their homes and businesses/jobs, not having their treatable health conditions treated before they become life threatening or limiting (already a problem with long waiting lists in the NHS).

Its socially unacceptable for a government to say that a certain number of deaths might result from this virus but overall the vast majority of the population will have no more than a mild sensation of feeling unwell for a few days. Its socially unacceptable to say that people over 70 or those with certain underlying health conditions might die from complications from any such seasonal virus - we all have to pretend that 75 year olds dieing from pneumonia is a great tragedy. While pneumonia/respiratory failure/asthma/bronchitis is one of the most common causes of death in over-70s.

The newspapers over here are full of examples of 83 year olds passing away from pneumonia which has had Covid-19 attributed as the cause of death, and pictures of the family mournfully exclaiming how it was a terrible shock, and premature, and very unexpected. And the newspapers are also really making a big issue of publishing the very few examples of younger people (often obese) who have died after testing positive for Covid-19. There are very, very few examples but they are nearly always published in detail by the media.

Statistically, the daily death rates being given make no sense, unless compared against the equivalent rates of death in previous years.

And since Spain and Italy, who have been locking up people in hot, crowded and probably now bacteria filled apartments for weeks now are not seeing any reduction in death rates and new infections, could it be that this is actually more dangerous than say, allocating people an hour every second day to walk to the beach or park and monitor that they keep the requisite distance apart?