Originally Posted by Alligator
Appalachian Trail Conservancy Asks Thru-Hikers to Postpone Hikes The Trek
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Originally Posted by Alligator
Appalachian Trail Conservancy Asks Thru-Hikers to Postpone Hikes The Trek
More...
My guess is Baxter is going to get flooded in June with SOBO's. Hopefully the country will be in better place by then.
Appalachian Trail Hikers Asked To Leave The Trail Due To COVID-19 BPR / Blue Ridge Public Radio
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Just to add the Camino de Santiago is also shut down. No it was not a suggestion there, it was a 'get off the trail now and go home' order.
Read the article; listened to the tape.
The National Park Service has lifted all entrance fees to encourage people to exercise in remote areas. It appears the ATC has decided it knows better. From their website:
We at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC) are now asking you to do the same: please postpone your section or thru-hike. Instead, consider alternate ways of connecting to the Trail and to the outdoors.
What the hell does THAT mean? Watch a video of it on Youtube? The ATC described trail towns as "vulnerable rural communities". What makes them vulnerable? NYC has a much denser population and is therefore seeing the highest rate of infection. Really all a thruhiker absolutely needs is a grocery store and laundromat. What every resident of a trail town uses anyway.
We've gotten to the point that organizations, like the ATC, are now just virtue signaling to show they are hip and in the know.
Remember, whatever you do this weekend, the most dangerous part remains the drive to get there.
Hike your own Hike
Be Prepared
That's the point. Everyone in that town goes to the same supermarket, laundromat, post office, church and so on. If just one clerk at the supermarket or gas station gets infected, the whole town could catch it in no time. And that person bringing it into town could be you. Or you could leave with it and infect other hikers, who go on to the next town.
I live in a popular tourist area. Thankfully we are now in the off season when there are few tourists up here. So long as they stay away, we'll be pretty safe. But once the weather warms up and the tourist start showing up in numbers, which they will, the virus will make in roads here in this rural community. We have a lot of old people and a total of 27 hospital beds in the immediate area. It could become a problem.
Follow slogoen on Instagram.
Thank you, Slo-go'en. Well said!
Springer to Katahdin: 1991-2018
Agreed. The ATC has a strong point in favor of avoiding long thru and section hikes right now. Calling it 'virtue signaling' is absurd.
We'll see how absurd all this is at the end when fewer people have died of it than the flu, car accidents or cancer.
Be Prepared
Math isn't your strong suit, is it? You're clearly looking at this as if today's numbers are the only thing that matters rather than seeing the broader picture of infection and mortality rate. There's a reason people are trying to be proactive here.
Comparing a new-to-human virus to car accidents or influenza is a false equivalency. Both auto accident and influenza avoidance have baseline mitigation techniques specifically designed to avoid fatalities like defensive driving and vaccination. Curiously absent in these comparisons are deaths from guns, which were 39,770 in 2017, the latest year figures are available, which are higher than auto accidents. Go figure. New-to-human viruses however, once free of any constraints via testing and quarrantine as witnessed in the US this year, do not have a vaccine and can move through populations incredibly fast, overloading medical services, making the first weeks following discovery very, very important, as we are seeing now.
Apparently the notion COVID 19 is some kind of hoax or overblown by media is still around. Were this to have been handled capably by career professionals at the start we would likely be in a far different place right now. But it wasn't and we are stuck with paying for inept inaction with lives and trillions in debt.
This is a very real thing, killing very real people, and should be of real concern.
(sharply executed nod to spectators as I step off the soap box)
I hope fewer people die of this virus and it will all be due to our heroic medical professionals. This virus is far more contagious than anyone under the age of 100 has ever experienced. The virus has already mutated and the more hosts it gets the more it can mutate. There is currently no cure other than common sense. Ignoring the threat from COVID 19 is not just absurd but foolish and dangerous.
We're all gonna die!
At least it has pushed the re-election campaigners to the back burner.
A lot of the pols look like the deer caught in the headlights not knowing what to do, while the lower echelon officials at CDC, the Surgeon General, and local emergency management people are doing the real useful work.
What are the drone pols doing? Just follow the money!
"To make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from." - T.S. Eliot
Trail Days 2020 cancelled due to COVID-19 WJHL-TV News Channel 11
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