Is coronavirus changing your ski plans?

[mustski]

You should all come to Club Med Val Thorens and work from here! Then you gave goid reason to self isolate! Question: what will all those employees do when they begin to feel housebound after working at home all day?

 

[BlizzardBabe]

I realize you're thinking about the unborn and the newborn babies..... but ?

I'm thinking about them primarily b/c of underlying health conditions/compromised immune systems. I just learned this morning that the newborn was hospitalized over the weekend (I don't know the cause). My real concern is for my mom, who is 88. While she's very healthy, she does live in a resort property where there are visitors coming in and out 24/7.

 

[BlizzardBabe]

Question: what will all those employees do when they begin to feel housebound after working at home all day?

They'll probably get a little stir crazy and decide to go out and breathe on people.

 

[mustski]

See this Is my point - a quote from the first paragraph of USA Today: “

Two members of Congress have quarantined themselves. Six states have declared a state of emergency. Seattle is under siege.”
Ridiculous!

 

[BlizzardBabe]

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/index.html

 

[MissySki]

You should all come to Club Med Val Thorens and work from here! Then you gave goid reason to self isolate! Question: what will all those employees do when they begin to feel housebound after working at home all day?

Well they can go out since they aren’t sick! For me it cuts off 3+ hrs of commuting per day, so I can do a variety of other things with that time, including get outside. We have quite warm temps. Here at the moment, 50s in the mountains, 60s at home. I’ll potentially do a couple of days working from a lodge or something to get some runs in too. We’ll see.

 

[Marigee]

So I just heard from my sister in St. Louis. Our Alma Mater, a Catholic girls' school, has a father-daughter dinner dance every year. One father and daughter showed up, despite the fact that his oldest daughter had just returned from studying in Italy - AND had been diagnosed with the Coronavirus!

 

[marzNC]

For some sense of timing, an article from March 2 about what U.S. airlines are doing is worth a read. I think it's being updated as the situation evolves. Apparently Jan. 21 is the date being used by travel insurance companies in terms of whether or not a trip cancellation may be covered.

March 2, 2020, Today
Coronavirus travel: See list of US airline cancellation and fee waiver policies (UPDATED)
" . . .
Does travel insurance protect my trip for COVID-19 claims?

If you have a flight scheduled in the next few months and you’re thinking about canceling because of COVID-19, it’s important to not only check your travel insurance policy beforehand but also the date of purchase. Many insurance companies cite Jan. 21, the day COVID-19 became a named event, as the cutoff date for coverage related claims arising from the disease.

If you haven’t left for your trip and want to cancel, you could attempt to upgrade your travel insurance to a “cancel for any reason” option if the insurance company allows it; this lets you cancel your trip 48 hours before the scheduled departure time. Be aware that you may only be refunded about 50%-75% of your trip if you upgrade to this option.

 

[marzNC]

Just received an email from my medical provider system (UNC Health). Includes basic info about how to go to see a doctor and criteria for being tested for COVID-19. Also makes the point that there are always standard procedures in place at UNC Health offices and hospitals during flu season to help avoid transmission.

How to Proceed
It is recommended that persons experiencing flu-like symptoms including fever, cough or shortness of breath and have traveled recently should contact their primary care physician by phone before visiting their physician’s office, an urgent care location or a hospital emergency room. Your physician will be able to help you make the decision of what action to take.

Testing for Coronavirus / COVID-19
Currently, all testing for COVID-19 is performed by the NC Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Testing is done only under specific circumstances. Only those who meet all of the following criteria should request testing: 1) Recently traveled to a country with a CDC Level 2 or Level 3 Travel Health Notice for COVID-19, 2) experiencing fever, and 3) experiencing respiratory symptoms. UNC Health expects to begin testing in the coming days, but again only for patients who meet criteria. Individuals who meet all three criteria should contact their doctor or local health department. A clinician and public health officials will decide if a COVID-19 test is appropriate.

 

[Christy]

Towards whom?

Toward the politicians/public health officials/policies that are 100% aimed at snuffing out this thing at all costs, so it seems.

This is how I'm feeling at this moment, and I don't know that I'm right. But the policies enacted, and the ones proposed, are having a tremendous impact on local businesses, the larger economy, kids' education, and much more. It's hurting most the people that can least afford it (hourly workers/the poor). We still have less than 100 cases and nearly everyone that died was in a nursing facility. Certainly there will more, a lot more. But I'm inclined to treat this more like the flu, where we recognize, as a society, that there will be costs, but life goes on as usual.

 

[mustski]

Well they can go out since they aren’t sick! .

Then what is the point in telling everyone to work from home? I understand the avoidance of public transportation. However in 2 weeks, everyone will return to work and will have been out in public the whole time anyway. It accomplished nothing in the public health sense.

 

[BlizzardBabe]

Looks like our Spring Meeting next week will be converted to a teleconference. All the bigger companies (and some small ones) are cancelling. That said, some of the larger companies are also in the oil & gas sector and may be restricting travel b/c of the drop in oil prices as well. The good news for me is that I won't have to escort nervous people to meetings on the Hill!

 

[marzNC]

Vail Resorts issued a press release last week because the first confirmed case based on testing in Colorado was a man who had been skiing at Vail and Keystone. He had no symptoms when starting his ski trip with friends. He had traveled in Italy recently before the travel warning was issued. The Australian doctor who self-tested after returning home in late Feb also skied at Vail. Turns out that there were students from a local Eagle County high school who traveled in Italy in mid-February. On March 6, another Vail tourist tested positive.

March 5, 2020, Vail Resorts
VAIL RESORTS RESPONSE TO CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19)
https://news.vailresorts.com/corpor...oronavirus-covid-19-in-summit-county-colo.htm

 

[Christy]

Well, working from home does slow the spread. Public transit, large office buildings, crowded lunch spots, etc do make it easy to spread the virus to so many people. It's not perfect of course as a workers still will go to the store, a coffee shop, etc. But the close contact with others is drastically reduced--it's pretty easy to keep social distance in those latter situations.

 

[santacruz skier]

I've been doing a little running and riding my bike to minimize contact (instead of gym for instance)..... Thought about yoga yesterday (my own mat) but then blankets and blocks are for anyone to use. So I passed and rode my bike.

However, as mentioned before, I'm flying on Saturday and then again at end of month on round trip flight to Colorado (to Denver and then to Gunnison)....
Ordered some items from travel link that @marzNC posted.

 

[UtahDesert]

Slowing the spread is important, because that makes the burden on medical facilities more manageable. I found that the following graphic made it clear for me:

 

[Alpenglow]

Passing on skiing myself, but still going to the gym (not sure about yoga anymore given the earlier comment about blocks/blankets).

For longer ski trips, I think if I was driving and staying in a hotel room/private room, it might be a reasonable thing since your hands are primarily in gloves when you are skiing.

That being said, I work for a university which recently banned both domestic and international work travel until April 15th. So assuming the risk for work-travel and personal-travel are the same?

 

[contesstant]

My daughter and other Chinese-American college students were getting stares in Asheville, NC last week. There are relatively few Asian faces in western NC. Not surprising given that SARS also started in China. But before the age of social media, having people react in an unusual way when seeing an Asian face when there was a virus going around wasn't something that happened as openly.

My sense is that the east coast cases are linked more closely to the outbreak in Italy than recent travel in Asia.

This makes me angry. I'm sorry people are behaving that way towards them.

Oh man. Our state is looking at putting in place mandatory but yet unspecified restrictions. Could be anything from mandatory shutdowns of any kind of gathering to actual area closures. I'm not sure how you pull this off in a free society. I'm not inclined to find out either. I think there is a limit of how much personal freedom I'm willing to sacrifice here.

I read today that there's been 20,000 flu deaths this season so far, and the flu of course kills children and young people. Meanwhile this thing may have a higher mortality rate and spread faster, but it's killing the elderly. Nearly all the deaths in WA have been at one nursing home in Kirkland WA. I am starting to feel some resentment.

On the other hand.

View attachment 12393

The Smithsonian did an article on the 1918 pandemic. It was relatively "mild" at first, then mutated in the fall into something very deadly, to all ages.

 

[marzNC]

That being said, I work for a university which recently banned both domestic and international work travel until April 15th. So assuming the risk for work-travel and personal-travel are the same?

Not really. A university or a company, large or small, has to make decisions about travel for the greater good of their entire community and staff. Also probably looking at the short and long term implications to the bottom line. An individual has a very different decision process based on their own personal risk tolerance, family situation, medical history, and the locations involved.

All the UNC colleges cancelled summer programs to China in early February. I assume other universities did the same. The cancellation of ongoing programs in Italy happened later. Some of those students are still traveling in Europe, some opted to fly home. At the same time, some universities told their students and staff starting spring break to avoid any international travel. Some are keeping on-campus housing open for students who planned to travel.

There are still a lot of unknowns about COVID-19. But what's pretty clear is that it's very contagious. No organization wants to have lots of people around who are sick or should be self-isolating for two weeks.

 

[marzNC]

The Smithsonian did an article on the 1918 pandemic. It was relatively "mild" at first, then mutated in the fall into something very deadly, to all ages.

Still a lot of unknowns about COVID-19. I didn't understand the difference between H1N1 and SARS/MERS at first. Turns out there still isn't a vaccine for SARS. H1N1 is a flu strain that is now accounted for in the annual flu vaccine. MERS (2012) was based in the middle east and stayed much more contained than SARS (2002).

For those with a subscription to the NY Times, I'm finding a lot of useful background info. A point I picked up from the following article is that for the same fatality rate, the impact of a virus depends somewhat on how contagious it is. So whether the rate for COVID-19 is 0.1%, 1%, or 3%, if it is allowed to spread relatively unchecked, that is more potentially devastating to at-risk populations than the average flu strain that is not as contagious.

Feb. 29, 2020, NY Times
How Does the Coronavirus Compare With the Flu?