62 replies to this topic

[longhorn1]

Staying at home, walking 7-10 miles a day, better known as "Our Sanity Walks", and dreaming of our next trip. We should all follow our state guidelines. Stay Safe everyone. JD

[craig333]

 

[smlobx]

I can respect trying to minimize the amount of people who come down with Covid-19 by self isolating. That was the whole mantra to make sure that we didn’t overwhelm the medical community.

 

If you remember some of the numbers that were thrown about it was truly terrifying...hundreds of thousands of people dying. Hospitals overwhelmed...

 

Fortunately that didn’t turn out to be the case. the Navy ship that was brought to New York a few weeks go as now going home because it only had a few patients. The shortage of ventilators never really materialized. The last I heard was that the feds still had 70,000 in their stockpile... A study in New York estimated that over 2.7 million New Yorkers have had Covid -19 and didn’t even know it...for the vast majority of people the virus is really a non issue...

 

Now if you are over 65 (which I know several here are) and/or have other potentially contributing factors like cancer, respiratory disease, smoke etc. then the likelihood of potentially contracting the disease is signinficantly higher. Those people should be very careful and do their best to minimize their exposure to other people... According to the research I’ve been able to follow only 1% of Covid cases have no contributing factors.

 

The problem for me is that by self isolating you are doing nothing to remove the virus from our population. It is and will be there for the foreseeable future. Until a vaccine can be developed, hopefully by the end of the year if today’s news is to be believed we will all be at risk to some degree until a herd immunity can be achieved.  So are you prepared to self isolate for the next 8 months? 
 

I’m not.

 

 

Some of the sites I’m following include:

 

https://informationi...aphic-datapack/

https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/

https://covid19.heal...ates-of-america

 

The last site mentioned has a lot of data and allows you to dig not only into each state but county as well. The bottom line is that the vast majority of the country will be well on its way to being almost flat (as far as mortality is concerned) by the middle of May...

Hopefully we’ll all be able to enjoy the great outdoors soon.

Edited by smlobx, 29 April 2020 - 09:15 PM.

[lqhikers]

How we (wife and myself) are reacting to various rule's.

Ready for negative replies !

 

We live in a area that has walking trails within 1 block of our house.

When ever we are out at least 50% of neighbor's go without covering

and rarely keep distance.

Sign's are posted to not allow parking of out of area cars that come to use trails.

Since we spend at least 1 hour a day walking we come into contact with unknown

number of carriers every day.

A couple of weeks ago we posted that we might explore the Bradshaw trail as

it starts about 10 miles from us, but instead checked out Kofa Wildlife refuge web site

and saw that visitors are welcome if they practice existing health rules.

So here is where it gets interesting from the stay at home model.

 

Went to Costco to have prescription filled (authorized) while there filled up with gas.

Before we went we loaded camper with enough supplies and water for 10 days.

Drove to Kofa did not stop or come into contact with anyone, ended up at BieEye mine

(end of road).

 

Found a side trail set up camp spent 8 days without talking to anyone and only saw

3 rigs pass on main trail.drove home again without stoping.

 

So for myself and my wife what we did is wrong in some peoples eyes, but as someone who

is now in my 79th year and dealing successfully with "C' we can live with not following government's

confusing rules.

 

Yes we will be taking more stay away from people trips.

 

Next one will be to Mojave Perserve as it is also listing on web site as open

to road side camping.All campgrounds closed.

 

just my thoughts yours may differ.

 

Les,lqhikers

[BlueSky]

Being selfish and being contrarian are two different things.  Just like being considerate and being manipulative are different things.  Sweden took a different approach.  Weld county CO is taking a different approach too.  It's OK to have different beliefs. In fact, the USA was founded on it being OK.  Let's try to be nice and understand different points of view.  We may learn something valuable by trying different things. Since I started this thread I will fess up to what my plan is.  I am going to wait to go camping until after May 8 when the Stay at Home order expires. I guess I am getting mellow as I get older, and it is not a terribly long wait and I'll be more relaxed.

[AWG_Pics]

We are staying put until things officially loosen up some. Time is too precious to spend it bucking the system. Life is too precious to put others in danger by me being 'free and unfettered' to spread the virus around. I am not doing this for the government -- I am doing it for my friends, neighbors and family. And for the front line workers that must interact with the public just to make a paltry living. (The government response has been awkward, and contradictory. But that is because there is very little reliable 'data' right now. And seriously, it is government -- what do you expect?)

 

This too shall pass, in time. Meanwhile I will do home projects, fiddle with mods to the camper and spend time with my lovely wife. And occasionally do Zoom meetups for exercise class, family catch ups and neighbor happy hours.

Edited by AWG_Pics, 01 May 2020 - 02:32 AM.

[smlobx]

First of all, I respect each and every one on this board. Having the ability to have a reasoned and respectful discussion makes this one of the better forums I visit.

 

I believe that the US, and virtually the whole world, was caught off guard by this virus. Initially, after the various powers that be realized that there was a potentially serious issue many countries took rather draconian steps to limit movement. Now, after a few months we have a better idea of what we’re dealing with and it’s “beginning” to look that despite all the media’s portrayal the disease is on par with the conventional flu....Think about that for a minute..

 

According to the CDC ( https://www.cdc.gov/...n-estimates.htm ) we have lost somewhere between 24 and 62 thousand people to the regular flu this year. This tracks with the long term averages . The important thing to keep in mind is that we loose that many people every year EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE A VACCINE.... Yet we don’t get all worked up over this annual event. Now I would bet that the vast majority of us over 50 get the flu vaccine every year but if you remember there had been a growing movement against the flu vaccine (for reasons that confound me..). I wonder what those people will think of the Covid vaccine when it’s developed.

 

As many of you may know I sold my residential construction business last year when I retired. However I have been keeping in touch with several of my subs as we have undertaken several major projects around our home. Construction has been deemed an essential component of our economy so these guys are all still working 50 hours a week and interacting with various suppliers etc. No one I know has been affected by Covid and I hope this continues... now living in NYC or some other densely populated center will probably be different but a lot of that is common sense....As an example the Governor of NY JUST announced that they would start cleaning the subway cars in NY...start after tens of thousands of people have died...Common sense can do wonders..just saying...

 

Sorry for the rant..

[Smokecreek1]

Nothing wrong with a rant smlobx-it's good for the soul, especially now that you have joined us retired "folk."  Staying home and not out camping like usual as things dry out is getting harder of late. I've  been talking to several of my friends who are day fishing up in my usual camping areas   here in NE California (BLM/USFS primitive CG'S in Modoc/Lassen Counties ) and it looks like some of the regular camping/fishing bunch  are out happily camping and fishing away as usual and I should be there with them !  They were also saying that both FS and state fish and game folks were also out and about-and that is good.

 

Above average temp's are drying out things up there and that plus the added  fact that Modoc County (as of today) has started going it's own way and ignoring the Ca.  Covid rules sort of changes things too .I also are hearing that the feds may open up CG's  on Public Land to camping again.  I think that that may lead to even more folks flooding into the back country-and that is bad! I could head  out somewhere but I get this picture in my mind  of  how things must have looked just before they opened up  the west to homesteading-ya know all those people, wagons, horses and things all lines up (and carrying Covid) and waiting for the starting gun---and think maybe I'll just wait a while. 

 

Smoke

Edited by Smokecreek1, 01 May 2020 - 06:54 PM.

[smlobx]

Like the land rush of the 1800’s where the government would give you a stake of land if you managed to survive on it for a number of years...

 

Fishing in Northern California...the only time I did that was when we rented an RV and toured the area about 20 years ago.Managed to spend a couple of days on the Smith River with no one around..very nice.

[AWG_Pics]

According to the CDC ( https://www.cdc.gov/...n-estimates.htm ) we have lost somewhere between 24 and 62 thousand people to the regular flu this year. This tracks with the long term averages . The important thing to keep in mind is that we loose that many people every year EVEN THOUGH WE HAVE A VACCINE.... Yet we don’t get all worked up over this annual event. Now I would bet that the vast majority of us over 50 get the flu vaccine every year but if you remember there had been a growing movement against the flu vaccine (for reasons that confound me..). I wonder what those people will think of the Covid vaccine when it’s developed.

 

 

I am uncomfortable with the information shared above. We are two months into this pandemic, for the US anyway, and have at least 64,000 deaths so far with no real end in sight. At the current rate it will be no surprise, except an unpleasant one, if there are over 150,000 to 200,000 deaths in the US by December from the coronavirus. Comparisons to the flu are wrong. 

 

One of many articles about flu versus Coronavirus:

https://www.cnn.com/...aths/index.html