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I've been threatening myself with taking my collection of used soup tin cans and going up into the forest to do some plinking. Just haven't found a good spot far enough away from attracting attention and having a good, safe backstop. Now, the forest is closed as are all the trailheads. There is some noise about starting to issue tickets to violators.
Cool photos. Thanks for documenting and uploading. Interesting process.
The range at Farragut never opens till summer, and closes shortly after summer is over. And at that, they are only open Fri, Sat, and Sun. Last year, for the first time, they opened on Mondays. It was a trial and if they did well, would continue this year. Have not heard if they will be open on Monday this year.
I always went on Fridays because it was too crowded over the weekends. Last year, on the Fridays I went, I had a shed all to myself, or shared it for a short while with one other person. It's a nice range, and pretty inexpensive.
Actually they kept the range open all winter but only Fri-Sun since 1 Jan. They had to close though after 27 Mar. I went a couple times every week testing out different loads. At least the snow wasn't too bad last winter.
It makes no difference at all where a virus originates. It's all about the virus itself.
If a virus is highly infectious, it moves fast. If not very infectious, it moves slowly.
Viruses land in the middle between living and non-living things. They replicate and have DNA, but they don't have any of the other things that constitute life. All science really knows about their 'life' is they all depend on living things to replicate.
Once they quit replicating, they disappear. But they don't really reproduce themselves like all living creatures do. They come into being through mutation alone, so no one knows why some types survive. We know nothing about all the viruses that once arrived through mutation and disappeared because they never found hosts.
All living things have been attacked by viruses ever since life began. So everything that is alive has developed an immune system to protect itself against them. Every immune system in nature wipes out more viruses by far than those that survive.
Mutation is continuous in all viruses and living things. But life adds complexity, and complexity is the reason why some of us are humans and some of us are monkeys. Complexity slows mutation down a lot.
Viruses mutate much faster because they are so simple. They have no cells; they are sub-cellular. This allows much faster mutation.
Our immune system is very sophisticated after fighting viruses for several million years. The viruses that were our worst threats have all disappeared because life's immune systems wiped them out ages ago. Constant mutation demands constant defense, so our own immune systems eliminates almost all of the most dangerous viruses to life.
There is no COVID-19 yet in Bonneville county, but it will come. Pretty soon too, because it is highly infectious.
Will the folks in Idaho Falls blame Rexburg for infecting them? Probably.
But will blame slow the virus down? Nope.
Viruses are nature's slot machines. As long as the wheels keep spinning really fast, sooner or later the right combination will come with a really bad payoff jackpot.
Most of the time, the virus' payoff is the common cold. A few quarters in the cup.
I've been threatening myself with taking my collection of used soup tin cans and going up into the forest to do some plinking. Just haven't found a good spot far enough away from attracting attention and having a good, safe backstop. Now, the forest is closed as are all the trailheads. There is some noise about starting to issue tickets to violators.
Just curious-where did you see that? It seems as if they are trying to make this as punitive and painful as possible for the peasants. Millions of acres of national forest closed-but people allowed to cram into Tubbs? I went up Ohio Match and Hayden Creek the other day-lots of people at the Hayden Creek shooting area (that was last Friday).
Lets hope Idaho doesn't get is totalitarian as Washington-where they have banned fishing! While, of course, leaving pot shops open.
The "lockdown" needs to end soon, and get people back to work. Other states are at least making plans-I hope Little starts "unlocking" at least part of the state in the next week.
I hope everyone will excuse my long post here but I hope it gives some useful perspective and info:
Please keep in mind that Idaho has been blessed to not have an early wide area outbreak or really big proportions and got enough warning to take precautions soon enough. It is not at all like in the NYC area, where people are truly very scared; the rates of death there continue each day in the 500-1000 range. NY state alone has over 10,000 deaths now, mostly in the NYC area.
Realize that, in very rough terms, around 10% of an area's population has to become immune before the herd immunity effect even starts to be a factor in slowing the spread of a disease. Even if you estimate the numbers of immune people as 3 times the known cases in any area, Idaho perhaps has 0.2% of the state's population immune now.... so basically places like ID still have no area-wide immunity.
The NYC area is furthest along the road to even a small degree of herd immunity. It will take very roughly another month for that area to get to that point, and there will be many more deaths in that time. It will take several months at the current rates of infection for ID to approach a small degree of herd immunity effect.
So in the meantime, we have to hope that this virus can be effected adversely with warmer temps and longer days like seasonal flu. That may or may not happen. A quick vaccine or more effective treatment for the critically ill would be even more wonderful. But this type of disease spread is a natural phenomenon, like earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, tornadoes, etc. As such, human standards of control and management go out the window. It does what it does and our normal methods of negotiation and compromise for human crises are of little to no use.
The ramp-down of the disease spread with the present control in places will be SLOWER than the ramp-up that has occurred in the last 4-6 weeks; that is just the way this works. So, realistically, the controls have to remain in place for some weeks to come, and opening up to 'business as usual' does not seem to be a realistic option.
But it is totally reasonable to ask 'what next'? Perhaps some limited relaxation of limited business operations with a lot of controls and monitoring in place at the businesses. But opening up shopping stores and restaurants and vacation spots should not happen any time soon. Any places where contact can occur have to be limited and monitored for the time being. And it seems reasonable that can happen at different times for different areas.
Even with that, realize that any opening up WILL involve some level of re-acceleration of disease spread and deaths; controls and monitoring will not work to completely contain this particular disease, which give no good warning (i.e., clear symptoms) when its newest hosts are infectious to others. Those who advocate 'opening up' need to acknowledge that their position absolutely means an increased infection and death rate from this disease. There is NO getting around that until herd immunity or vaccines or treatments improve, and folks need to start accepting that contact = infection = the worst for someone. Keeping the disease spread slowed down is the only method we have today to minimize that 'worst for someone'.
Just curious-where did you see that? It seems as if they are trying to make this as punitive and painful as possible for the peasants. Millions of acres of national forest closed-but people allowed to cram into Tubbs? I went up Ohio Match and Hayden Creek the other day-lots of people at the Hayden Creek shooting area (that was last Friday).
I think that's a mis-interpretation of what the Forest Service has done. They have closed all campgrounds and "developed recreational sites" in the Panhandle forest districts. As far as I know most hiking trails are still open.
Even with that, realize that any opening up WILL involve some level of re-acceleration of disease spread and deaths; controls and monitoring will not work to completely contain this particular disease, which give no good warning (i.e., clear symptoms) when its newest hosts are infectious to others. Those who advocate 'opening up' need to acknowledge that their position absolutely means an increased infection and death rate from this disease. There is NO getting around that until herd immunity or vaccines or treatments improve, and folks need to start accepting that contact = infection = the worst for someone. Keeping the disease spread slowed down is the only method we have today to minimize that 'worst for someone'.
We also must acknowledge that deaths and other adverse health impacts will occur as a direct result of the economic disruption that will ensue if we continue the current restrictions. It is well known that suicide rates increase as the unemployment rate increases. Rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic abuse, emotional depression, etc. all increase in difficult economic times. It's been estimated that an additional half million cancer deaths occurred as a result of the "great" recession.
This is not strictly an epidemiological question, and it is not a simple trade-off of mitigating COVID-19 health impacts vs. dollars.
There are "some" types of business that can reasonably get back to work. Scenarios where workers aren't close together and can be donned with masks and gloves in many cases would significantly help. But things like restaurants sadly just won't work. People are in too close a contact unless it's a deal where they have booths with high solid backs and such, but those are rare. I want grocery stores and all stores that especially use carts to stay ON it with sprays and wipes for ALL carts when exchanged for use. This is something I called for many years ago but people thought I was a nut job. Think about it......how many peoples hands, who you have no idea where they've been, grab the typical shopping cart? Yeah it's pretty gross. Let alone poopy diapers that are seated in them. There are a number of things that for years we've ignored......and at this point should NOW pay attention. For years I've been grabbing a hoodie or shirt sleeve to grab a door handle that wasn't automatic. I never wanted to grab that which thousands before me had. The typical person hygienic habits are woefully inadequate
In general, I think we need to start to be more selective rather than applying the same restrictions across the entire state/country. Boundary county has zero cases. Why should Boundary county be treated the same as Blaine or Ada counties? Doesn't make sense to me.
Even here in Bonner county we only have 4 cases, all of which occurred when people traveled outside the county and came into significant contact with another infected individual. They don't release a lot of individual details, but from what I understand none of them contracted COVID from casual contact with another individual - they hung out with them for a while. Our 4 cases represent 0.009% of our population for those that are counting. None of them have required hospitalization. Even in Kootenai county I don't believe any of their cases have required hospitalization.
It's become very clear that the real risk is to the elderly, and those with certain other health conditions. I read a paper the other day that concluded that after being elderly, being obese was the next most prevalent factor correlated with requiring hospitalization. To me, it makes more sense for those who are at risk of serious complications to isolate themselves, as well as those who come into regular contact with such people (e.g. people who live with elderly parents), and let other young & healthy individuals make their own judgement. Some will likely continue to isolate themselves, but others may have a different assessment of the risks involved.
I've been threatening myself with taking my collection of used soup tin cans and going up into the forest to do some plinking. Just haven't found a good spot far enough away from attracting attention and having a good, safe backstop. Now, the forest is closed as are all the trailheads. There is some noise about starting to issue tickets to violators.
Just curious-where did you see that? It seems as if they are trying to make this as punitive and painful as possible for the peasants.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cnynrat
I think that's a mis-interpretation of what the Forest Service has done. They have closed all campgrounds and "developed recreational sites" in the Panhandle forest districts. As far as I know most hiking trails are still open.
The Forest Service has closed campgrounds, fishing sites, trailheads and lookouts throughout the Panhandle until June 30 and in a recent press release threatens to fine people up to $5,000 for defying the orders.
That is where I read what I wrote. I guess I should take what the author of the article, Ralph Bartholdt, and what the CdA Press writes with a grain of salt. Since they did not mention the trails, I did wonder how people got to the trails if the trailheads were closed. Poor editing and editorializing in a news article/press release. Shame on them.
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