On the Reston Loop – Impressions from fellow-hikers of the pandemic and its effects – Evening statistics
I went with the Vigorous Hikers today on the Reston Loop, another route that benefits from being done in winter, since it traverses portions of the Cross-County Trail that tend to get muddy and even submerged in warmer seasons but were frozen firm today. The trail system in the Reston area has been greatly extended over the years. Even though we took a shortcut that reduced the original route by a mile, we completed well over 17 miles and it would have been easy to extend the route still further. In addition to being a lovely day, the temperature climbed steadily until it was well over 40 degrees in the afternoon, which seemed almost balmy in comparison with the chillier temperatures we have seen over the past two weeks. There were occasional ice patches, but nothing so severe as to warrant the use of spikes.
During the hike I spoke with BF, the hike leader, who is a surgeon. I was curious to hear what he, as a medical professional, thought about vaccine mandates. Although he is a proponent of the vaccines he is not an advocate of mandates. He pointed out certain factors that I had not reflected upon. For example, one reason for increased resistance to the vaccines is that people have not had much first-hand experience of its ill effects. When the polio vaccine was first distributed, people in general received it very readily because a large number of them had had the experience of visiting a friend or relative in a hospital who had received an iron lung. When COVID patients were placed on ventilators, they usually were isolated from everyone else and consequently people have not seen them with anything like the frequency of what was seen during polio epidemics. Then, too, the COVID vaccines are somewhat different from others. They are not especially effective at preventing people from infecting others and, although hospitalizations are overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated, so-called breakthrough cases have occurred more frequently than anticipated. The vaccines are excellent at mitigating the severity of the disease once it has been caught, but the immunity they confer diminishes over time. Finally, the vaccines have been bundled up with other measures that have proved to be decidedly unpopular, such as lockdowns. For young males, the vaccines appear to increase the risk of myocarditis – slightly, but not altogether negligibly. All of these factors have helped to fuel the passions of the anti-vaxxers.
BF added that on a purely personal level, the workload for hospitals in which he has worked has not increased substantially. He admitted that this circumstance is probably due to the area in which he is working. This region is one of the more highly vaccinated places in the country and in addition people are more ready to take prudential measures, such as mask-wearing indoors, more readily than, say, residents of Wyoming or Arkansas.
MC, another one of the hikers, has recently recovered from the virus and he shared his experiences with me. He was relatively fortunate, in that the period that he felt ill was relatively brief, about ten days in all. But it was severe while it lasted, draining him of energy to the extent of making the simplest exertions seem like a crippling struggle for at least two days and inhibiting activity such as going to the gym or hiking out of doors impossible for yet a week more. He was afflicted by a series of migraine headaches as well. It ended as suddenly as it came: in the course of one night he felt a renewed burst of energy and by the following morning recovery was nearly complete. He had previously been an advocate of “natural immunity” but he told me today that no one would wish to undergo the disease, no matter how many antibodies it conferred upon recovery.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 381,785,205; # of deaths worldwide: 5,704,098; # of cases U.S.: 76,514,428; # of deaths; U.S.: 913,905.