Something To Ponder?

On my hero dirt ride today I was thinking about how blessed I am to be able to do what I do for fitness, I have been feeling good lately after some scary stuff that has happened in the last couple of years. Today I pushed it a little, nothing to write home about 12 miles 1,500 ft. but a faster pace, this it got me to thinking.
With the recent developments in the game of life and death, I don’t know, WORLD PANDEMIC! Should a fit person be pushing there limits physically and running there immune system down? For that matter a not so fit person pushing it to get fitter? My take is no. With all the uncertainty surrounding this virus I’m thinking I want to be as healthy as I can be with a blustered immune system.
With how contagious this virus is it’s seems we will just about all get it sooner or later, getting quality sleep and whatever else I can, I’m even having second thoughts about having any drinks until there are more answers. Just seems like you could have the virus with no symptoms run yourself down in between and bam! Something to think about.

 

There's a fine line between a healthy motor ready to take on the world and a tired engine susceptible to damage. I say push the redline a little - but don't exhaust yourself. Cardio and muscle fitness staves off illness.

 

Aye, don't overdo it, but still push. Think of it this way...after a ride, your body is doing rebuild/repair activities, which are handled mostly by the immune system. It's on 'yellow alert' but not taxed. Also, if you're out riding, you're not sharing germs with someone (or many someones).

A wine or A beer is probably OK. Harbor Lights or Black Russian...NYET! TBH, though, I knew a guy who backpacked with a gallon of vodka, never filtered or boiled water from stream or lake, and I never saw him get sick! That was unfortunate because he was a loud drunkard in camp.

 

My biggest concern of riding right now is getting hurt, then dealing with the overwhelmed urgent Care/emergency rooms

 

Hah, something else to ponder!

 

I want to be serious about serious things but I still contend this is completely blown out of proportion...
Don’t beat me up for believing this...

 

Now THAT is a valid point?

 

Sorry, your meme is fake propaganda....
https://www.wusa9.com/mobile/articl...year/507-d5244bf4-334d-440c-a5fc-cb438271f437

 

While the right side does have some validity,

The whole point right now is to get to that point where everyone doesn't catch it at once.
So we can all recover and go on with life, while keeping our most vulnerable at lower risk..

 

And I'm not sure how we got China, Italy and many other countries to do this performance for a U.S, election?

 

Fine for individuals under 50 as long as the people they interact with are under 50 and healthy too. My kids are healthy and will brush it off with aplomb. Giving it to me or older individuals they interact with could have more severe ramifications.

 

I think it is being overblown in some respects (anyone know where I can get some TP??), but it is still fairly contagious and you can easily pass it on to people who are more susceptible to infection like the elderly and others with compromised immune systems. Don't be concerned about yourself so much, be concerned about not passing it on to them. As someone else said, this may only be a bit more contagious and harmful than the flu which kills thousands, so perhaps we should take the flu more seriously too?

For the rest of us there will be economic fallout from this. Look at the stock market for one. Second, not everyone has a job where they can work remotely. Lots of companies will be closing locations and/or scaling back hours but not providing employees with paid time off. How are those people going to pay their mortgages and rent, and will the banks and landlords give them a break? We may be able to get cheaper flights but reduced consumer and corporate spending across the economy is going to force companies to cut costs, which will mean layoffs. All of this is the other side of coronavirus fallout that could get ugly on a big scale, as many people don't have sufficient savings to deal with much adversity.

 

Here are a few other things to ponder...

We are now heading into the first week without schools and without organized sports, including professional sports. What a great opportunity for a hard reset on our national priorities! Do we really need multi-million dollar athletes? Do we really need schools? Which will emerge as a higher priority?

Do we really need to commute to work?

The gulf between the haves and have nots is going to explode. We will make sure our daughter continues her education. We may enroll her in math acceleration courses, online academies or take her places to enrich her understanding of science, geography, political science, the arts and the human condition. She will have planned play time with like minded friends. She will ride her bike and go skiing. She will play her piano and learn to cook. She will make sure she does any assignments that the school arranges, because that's what she values.

In the meantime, children of the working poor will likely be tended to by older siblings or pretty much left alone. They won't read anything. They won't have any structured learning. They won't do their online assignments even if their schools get them a Chromebook and a wireless hotspot. Hard to study in an environment that is chaotic, unsupervised and/or filled with people who do not value structured learning. The teens will find each other and entertain themselves in the ways that unsupervised teens are wont to do (sex, drugs, gangs, vandalism, gaming and social media bullying).

Final thought for the moment. What if during this "panic pause" the internet suffers a colossal failure - the kind predicted for Y2k? We would be stuck at home with our children and no way to post our amazing insights on our mt. bike forum, or keep ourselves entertained with false information and instant stimuli. And we couldn't order from Amazon!

 

I agree that the lack of schools is going to exacerbate the inequities, particularly when it comes to kids. My wife (again, a teacher) was pointing this out to me last night. My daughter's school (public) provides laptops that all students of certain grades bring home every night. Her instruction during this period will be online, some of it through lessons recorded and posted by her teacher. My wife's school is sending home paper packets, because they came to the conclusion that enough of the students don't have computers at home, or parents that will be able to support them with the technology, for that to be viable. Many of my wife's students who fall into that situation you describe above are, as you would expect, behind the other students anyway, and require more individualized attention in order to keep up. They will inevitably fall even further behind during this without that one on one instruction.

 

One name.....Anthony Fauci!!!!

 

Does appear to be climate related:

 

Flipping through Netflix last night I came across a docuseries called Pandemic. Decide WTH, so watched the first episode.
I recommend taking the hour and watching this. It is covering exactly what is going on and the probability ( certainty) of it occurring. The world is currently in the midst of mitigating the damage, even if there are short and long term consequences to our governments measures.

@evdog I thought about the rent and mortgage dilemma last night. A person's company may cut hours, send them home without pay, or close for a while. But the rent and mortgage is passive, it needs to get paid and is unaffected by this. I can feel the pain of those in the situation and even if they do manage to pay it without current income, how far behind will it put their finances? Worse yet, more folks become homeless....

 

I agree with your other points. It is one of the reasons why some school districts are really struggling with the concept of distributed schooling - because many of their students don't have access to computers.

However as far as the Internet goes, I just wanted to point out that it is a global distributed network designed during the Cold War specifically to prevent the kind of massive failure that you are suggesting. It is like a hydra with an infinite number of heads - or a galaxy-sized game of wack-a-mole. Various groups have been trying, more or less non-stop, to take down the Internet from the day it was created. The largest issues I can recall date back from the very early days (late 1990's) when there were fewer trunk lines and nodes. For example, in 1998 when the online game Everquest launched, it almost took down the entire San Diego Internet because it was being hosted locally in San Diego, was using up more bandwidth than all the rest of San Diego combined, and there was only a single trunk line down from LA. Now there are numerous redundant lines, content hosts are using distributed hosting setups, and the capacity of the Internet in general has expanded many thousand times versus those early days.

 

Well I’m a bit over 50, the latest dribble so far is it is killing people in America in there 60’s, 70’s, and especially 80’s. Seems I am completely over reacting, talk about a derail, it’s like a highly contagious virus.
Just thought I was passing on some friendly advice to the go big or go home people since there is so much of it to go around now with more than just one kind of flu and how contagious it really is. Who wants it?

 

Bingo!
I’m with you Herzy, we can’t become couch potatoes

 

No two people think exactly alike. To some, our opinions and actions may seem like over reaction, to others it may seem like under reaction. Live your life the way you feel it will serve you best but try to include compassion for others in your formula because we all matter.

 

Yep. Preach it Snakes!
I was at Costco yesterday at the request of my husband (thx babe)
It was a sh!t show! Thankfully my kids were with me so we were able to tackle a large list and keep cool heads. I like to smile and make eye contact with people when out and about anyways, but yesterday especially...I think that helps to remind people to take a breath and maybe even smile back.

 

Last weekend I had back to back days. 40 miles and 4k with Jennifer then 63 miles and 7k on Sunday. Saturday was mostly a cruiser but Sunday I had someone pushing me and I felt good so I went with it. Sunday I felt as I normally did after a big weekend but I woke up Monday feeling kind of lethargic. I went to work and felt off all day. When I got home I passed out. Jennifer woke me up around 8 and said I should eat something. After eating I started to feel better and by Tuesday I was back to normal. Or so I thought. Somewhere along the line I picked up a bug that's been giving me massive stomach cramps and bloating all week. I actually woke up last night in excruciating pain and was ready to go to the ER but thankfully a trip to the bathroom alleviated the pain. This morning I feel better and am hoping the bug has passed for the most part.

I'm guessing I compromised my immune system as I pushed harder than normal and I didn't hydrate as well as I should have. On Monday I drank a over a gallon of water as I normally do but peed maybe twice all day and it was dark.

I'd like to think I'm pretty healthy as it's very rare that I even catch a cold. But as I get older I realize I'm only human and even I need to take a break sometimes.

 

Exactly what my post is about, sorry to hear about your illness Ed! Happy to hear it wasn't something else as I know you have somewhat of a heart condition. Ed's experience is something to ponder in this time of crisis that really isn't a crisis at all? OVER 50? Carry on.

 

The one truth about all statistics... they don't matter if you're the statistic.

 

Really thoughtful thread and excellent comments above. Another consideration for aging individuals is the effect of over-exercising on their hearts. There's a chance I messed mine up. Used to love interval training and elevating my rate to 180 or so repeatedly when I was way too old for it. Have seemed to recover through the years and am really blessed, but maybe cautionary tale.

 

Interestingly, I just received an email from my server host detailing all of the security procedures they were undertaking to ensure the continuity of their operations.

 

Going to be interesting to see the effect, if any, of kids being on the internet all day, video conferencing since everyone who can will work from home, all the forums going crazy and other things not delineated here on the capacity of the web.

 

In one of the strange by-products of this panicdemic... business for online adult video performers is booming. Apparently when they more or less shut Vegas down, the sin business went online.

 

The "porn brokers", which I hadn't heard about, and food delivery services.