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Skiing shutting down in Europe. Already. Can it happen in North America?

newboots

Angel Diva
It's so upsetting that the means of slowing this down are simple, reasonably easy, and (if we started right away and kept the numbers low) require minimal disruption. Handwashing, masks, social distancing. Are there sacrifices? Of course - restaurants and bars leap to mind, along with a lot of other things.

But this is not impossible. It requires self-discipline, support from the government and private industry (PPE and mask manufacturers, for example, or the distilleries making hand sanitizer), financial support for affected industries, and community support. It really isn't rocket science. And in a nation as [supposedly] advanced as ours, this is a travesty.

Mr. Blizzard said this evening, "After 9/11 the whole country pulled together. Not now. Things didn't have to be this way." I don't know the answer, but I'm very disappointed in us.
 

Simygirl

Certified Ski Diva
I cannot believe how quickly the cases are going back up. Speaking of optimism, My ski club organized a trip to Sugarloaf,ME this December which I signed up for. But there are very strict traveling rules and we were asked to quarantine 2 weeks prior to traveling from NY and to room only with people we know(easy to do). And there is still a possibility they will cancel. I have to say that refunds for trips earlier in the year were not a problem. Got hotel and ski lifts credit. Wondering what they’ll do this winter as people got more comfortable and probably started booking vacations. I hope ME would not be too crowded and that the resort will enforce social distancing rules.
 

Simygirl

Certified Ski Diva
It's so upsetting that the means of slowing this down are simple, reasonably easy, and (if we started right away and kept the numbers low) require minimal disruption. Handwashing, masks, social distancing. Are there sacrifices? Of course - restaurants and bars leap to mind, along with a lot of other things.

But this is not impossible. It requires self-discipline, support from the government and private industry (PPE and mask manufacturers, for example, or the distilleries making hand sanitizer), financial support for affected industries, and community support. It really isn't rocket science. And in a nation as [supposedly] advanced as ours, this is a travesty.

Mr. Blizzard said this evening, "After 9/11 the whole country pulled together. Not now. Things didn't have to be this way." I don't know the answer, but I'm very disappointed in us.
I’m with you! If we all wear a mask, we can almost live a normal life. Mask up and ski down!
 

Christy

Angel Diva
18+% positivity rate today, 10 deaths two days in a row. I give it two weeks until we have 20 deaths to follow the nearly 2000 daily cases. Those numbers might sound low to those who live elsewhere, but Utah is not that densely populated, and some of the most sparsely populated counties have a 30% positivity rate!

Oh, that's bad. Things can turn around fairly quickly where there is the political will. Yakima was that bad in June but then Gov. Inslee put the statewide mask order in place and really clamped down on things in Yakima in particular, and didn't take all that long for their numbers to improve drastically. Of course people there were up in arms as it's a conservative part of the state but there was enforcement and it worked.
 

contesstant

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Yikes, no those numbers are pretty bad. One of the worst parts to me is that Utah isn’t testing anywhere near enough people with your percentages so high. I look at the following link to compare state data just because it’s what MA uses for our travel restriction data etc. According to this you are testing at only 16% of what you should be. The extrapolation of new infections per day per 1 million people is quite high too..

https://www.covidexitstrategy.org

I’m with @ski diva, I’ve been pretty optimistic about the season getting going but the past few weeks have really turned in another direction that we need to fix. Otherwise I’m not sure how long the lifts keep spinning.
Our state epidemiologist keeps stressing that we are not testing enough here. She's had protestors outside her home for the past several days. Her address was spread across some sort of medical "freedom" group. Unreal. The governor is already essentially ignoring her warnings. I believe it's because the Lt. Gov, who is the head of the Covid "task force" here, is running for governor and can't piss off the ultra hard-core anti-mask types for fear of not winning. We're in Utah, the R is going to win. It's an unwritten rule.

Then, we have this: https://www.abc4.com/news/top-stori...-keep-utah-covid-19-numbers-artificially-low/

So yeah, we'll see what ski season entails. I wish I had gotten a Powder Mountain pass this year. No trams or gondolas. Not crowded, as they limit capacity anyway. But, they are sold out.
 

fgor

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
I want to hope the ones that were open for bike season learned a few things. I know when Deer Valley opened for biking this summer, DH went, and I ended up writing them a letter asking them to actually enforce the rules they had shown on their website, because from what I was hearing, it was kind of a free for all, hoping people would just maintain distancing on their own and wear masks and all of that. To their credit, they did. It did sound like they improved over the summer, created lift mazes with separation and asked people to wear masks in lift line. But to my knowledge they never limited attendance and there was still a lot of social pressure from impatient folks in the lift lines to fill up the chairs and quad up. You shouldn't have to feel like you're risking an altercation by following the rules. But I get that's a difficult issue for resorts to manage.

You would HOPE that all the resorts learned from the ones that were open during the summer on how to best implement safety policies and this winter goes smoother.

Hopefully resorts do their part in implementing strong policies for their staff to follow around lift lines, mask wearing etc. We had a resurgence in covid in NZ during the ski season a couple of months ago. All the ski areas required masks in the lift lines (and on the lifts technically? we do not have gondolas at my mountain so i didn't have to worry about enclosed spaces luckily) and, initially, distancing between bubbles. The staff, to their credit, were very strict about enforcing it. I saw a man get removed from the front of the lift line because he refused to wear a mask, so the lifties refused to let him ski. Fingers crossed the NA resorts follow similar policies so that everyone can feel a bit safer skiing this winter.
 

MissySki

Angel Diva
Our state epidemiologist keeps stressing that we are not testing enough here. She's had protestors outside her home for the past several days. Her address was spread across some sort of medical "freedom" group. Unreal. The governor is already essentially ignoring her warnings. I believe it's because the Lt. Gov, who is the head of the Covid "task force" here, is running for governor and can't piss off the ultra hard-core anti-mask types for fear of not winning. We're in Utah, the R is going to win. It's an unwritten rule.

Then, we have this: https://www.abc4.com/news/top-stori...-keep-utah-covid-19-numbers-artificially-low/

So yeah, we'll see what ski season entails. I wish I had gotten a Powder Mountain pass this year. No trams or gondolas. Not crowded, as they limit capacity anyway. But, they are sold out.

If it makes you feel any better, the governors here have gotten a ton of bad feedback and protests at their homes too. Especially when things were shutdown more early on and people were getting antsy. I thought that was horrible, they are truly damned if they do or damned if they don't, no matter what they do they will upset some group. Business owners especially were, and in some cases still are, blasting him. Our governor is R technically, but honestly has been wonderful and hasn't behaved in that stereotypical way being seen some places at all with Covid. I feel lucky to have him right now. MA is super D though, so I kind of think of him as a R in name only. :smile:
 

marzNC

Angel Diva
Business owners especially were, and in some cases still are, blasting him.
Certainly plenty of different opinions even in states in New England like MA.

Ironically, in the southeast there were places where small business owners were supportive of a mask mandate in order to get cover for the idea. These were business people who understood that if all customers were wearing a face masks that would really decrease the chance that the staff in the shop would be much less likely to be exposed to someone who was infected with COVID-19, and didn't know it. Very often the owner was also actively working in their small shop or restaurant. Being able to put up a sign that said "by order of the government" was helpful to them. That's one reason even in southern states without a state rule about mask usage, there were towns, cities, or counties that had/have required masks indoors.
 

Jenny

Angel Diva
Well, our legislature took our governor to court to whine that she didn't have the power to issue the restrictions she was issuing without talking to them first, and they won. And our cases started going up , as expected. I'm sure it's partly because they are R and she is D, but I also think there's an awful lot of the men being PO'd that the top three positions in our state all went to women in the last election. I mean, even the president refers to her as "The woman from Michigan".

So we're totally in a good place here.
 

MissySki

Angel Diva
Certainly plenty of different opinions even in states in New England like MA.

Ironically, in the southeast there were places where small business owners were supportive of a mask mandate in order to get cover for the idea. These were business people who understood that if all customers were wearing a face masks that would really decrease the chance that the staff in the shop would be much less likely to be exposed to someone who was infected with COVID-19, and didn't know it. Very often the owner was also actively working in their small shop or restaurant. Being able to put up a sign that said "by order of the government" was helpful to them. That's one reason even in southern states without a state rule about mask usage, there were towns, cities, or counties that had/have required masks indoors.

I don't think there has been much pushback from business owners here regarding having to wear masks. I think they get the importance of that, at least I hope so.. We have REALLY good compliance. I read some article that ranked mask wearing compliance by state, and MA was one of the highest at that time, I'll try to dig it up. The most argumentative stuff I've seen from business owners has been in regard to capacity restrictions still now or when certain business types couldn't open at all while others could etc. Essentially saying that the governor was picking winners and losers by allowing some to open while others couldn't and there wasn't always a logical reason as to why one didn't fit the opening criteria versus others. In some cases I didn't completely disagree, like when hair salons could open but nail salons couldn't for weeks afterward. That didn't really make sense to me, but that's just one example of something I was also stumped on at the time so it sticks out in my mind.
 

marzNC

Angel Diva
Ironically, in the southeast there were places where small business owners were supportive of a mask mandate in order to get cover for the idea. These were business people who understood that if all customers were wearing a face masks that would really decrease the chance that the staff in the shop would be much less likely to be exposed to someone who was infected with COVID-19, and didn't know it. Very often the owner was also actively working in their small shop or restaurant. Being able to put up a sign that said "by order of the government" was helpful to them. That's one reason even in southern states without a state rule about mask usage, there were towns, cities, or counties that had/have required masks indoors.
One sentence didn't come out right. What I meant is that some small business owners understood that requiring customers to wear masks would help protect the owner and their staff from getting infected.
 

newboots

Angel Diva
Our governor is a very moderate R, as well. He implemented restrictions very early, and consistently based decisions about business closure, mandating (as opposed to recommending) masks, and all the rest on the data. So refreshing! He held press conferences 3x/week, now 2x/week since March, and various cabinet members and sometimes outside experts were invited. The transparency and common sense were so helpful. We (Vermont) are a very rural state, and there are people here who object strongly to the loss of freedom in choosing whether to wear a mask, quarantine, and the like. But I think most of the scofflaws are young folks and men who feel it's demeaning, or that it "won't happen to them."

I read a column (In Her Words, 10/22/20) in the NY Times about mask-wearing and toxic masculinity. Horrifying. I'm not sure this link will work, but I hope so:

Toxic Masculinity and the Wearing of Masks

A quote:
“There has been a very dominant strain of men who clearly feel that wearing a mask would so expose their vulnerability that they would rather risk death from the virus.”

— Anand Giridharadas, author of “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.”
 

MissySki

Angel Diva
Our governor is a very moderate R, as well. He implemented restrictions very early, and consistently based decisions about business closure, mandating (as opposed to recommending) masks, and all the rest on the data. So refreshing! He held press conferences 3x/week, now 2x/week since March, and various cabinet members and sometimes outside experts were invited. The transparency and common sense were so helpful. We (Vermont) are a very rural state, and there are people here who object strongly to the loss of freedom in choosing whether to wear a mask, quarantine, and the like. But I think most of the scofflaws are young folks and men who feel it's demeaning, or that it "won't happen to them."

I read a column (In Her Words, 10/22/20) in the NY Times about mask-wearing and toxic masculinity. Horrifying. I'm not sure this link will work, but I hope so:

Toxic Masculinity and the Wearing of Masks

A quote:
“There has been a very dominant strain of men who clearly feel that wearing a mask would so expose their vulnerability that they would rather risk death from the virus.”

— Anand Giridharadas, author of “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.”

Wow, this is so mind boggling.. I don't know any men like this.. at least I hope I don’t! It seems like the social norm now wherever you go, so odd that some would feel that specific way about it for themselves personally.
 

marzNC

Angel Diva
The difference between the concept of wearing a face mask for health reasons between Asian cultures and "western" cultures in Europe, N. America, S. America, Australia, and New Zealand goes back generations. Slightly different between "western" cultures but same result.

In the Mountain West, the concept of the "bad guy" in Western cowboy-and-Indian movies is probably alive and well. Not just among men either. It was the bank robber or train robber who wore a mask, not the hero who saved the female school teacher.
 

newboots

Angel Diva
Wow, this is so mind boggling.. I don't know any men like this.. at least I hope I don’t! It seems like the social norm now wherever you go, so odd that some would feel that specific way about it for themselves personally.

A couple of other quotes from the article:

"That mask-wearing has become such a gendered issue isn’t surprising for public health researchers. A 2016 paper by the Los Alamos National Laboratory found that men are less likely than women to adopt protective behaviors, like washing hands, social distancing and wearing masks. More recently, three different studies — published this summer by Cambridge University Press — arrived at the same conclusions.

'Masculine toughness is consistently related to higher negative feelings and lower positive feelings about mask wearing,' noted the authors of one of those studies conducted in June."

In many areas, particularly urban areas in the Northeast, we see a sample of people who are not representative of the whole country. Sampling error!
 

SkiBam

Angel Diva
One local hill (Mont St. Sauveur) is opening tomorrow (actually I just got an email and they're opening in 10 minutes!). I just called to ask about my pass and was told not to go to customer service to have it activated this weekend (unless I'm planning to ski) as it's going to be busy!

Tested my boot heaters and they still seem good after many years.

I'm definitely hopeful about this ski season. We're in what's called an orange zone in most of the Laurentians, which means certain restrictions, mainly indoors. (There's an entire chart detailing all this.) Even if we go to the highest level of alert (red zone) we can still ski, with lift spacing, no indoor eating etc. It all remains to be seen how lift lines work but I can pick my times and go when it's not crowded. Anyway, we'll see...
 

BlueSkies

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Wow, this is so mind boggling.. I don't know any men like this.. at least I hope I don’t! It seems like the social norm now wherever you go, so odd that some would feel that specific way about it for themselves personally.
When we were doing outdoor dining I saw many couples walking past where the woman was wearing a mask and the man not!
 

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