A hiking adventure – Ivana Trump – Long COVID – Evening statistics
Outside of the two international trips, life has been fairly uneventful in these past several days – until yesterday, which abundantly made up for the recent lack of incident.
I was leading a hike with the Capital Hiking Club, which has a somewhat lower age level than that of Wanderbirds or the Vigorous Hikers. It was a hike with much to recommend it, mainly along the Appalachian Trail between Big Meadows and Skyland, with a side trip to the summit of Hawksbill (it is rather puzzling that the AT does not go to Hawksbill directly, since it is the highest peak in Shenandoah National Park) and, for those who chose the longer hike, a second side trip to Miller’s Rock. Although it was raining slightly on the way to the trailhead, the rain ceased for the day by the time we began our hike and the temperature was quite comfortable for mid-July. Indeed the summer season up to this point has presented a welcome contrast to those of previous years, with very few days breaking the 90-degree mark and the nights for the most part cool enough to sleep comfortably with open windows.
We had problems, however, with a few first-time hikers who greatly over-estimated their capabilities. Something of a warning sign occurred when, during the bus ride to the trailhead while I was describing the route, one hiker asked “What do we do if it starts raining?” I certainly did not expect such a question but I promptly replied, “We keep on hiking. There’s nothing else you can do. I’ve hiked in the rain many times, and, as you see, I’m still on my feet.” This response, if it did not cause my interlocutor to bask in the light of reason, at any rate reduced her to silence, which answered the purpose just as well.
However, as the hike progressed, MM, who was sweeping the hikers, noticed that both the person who had questioned me about hiking in the rain and her companion were both having difficulties, slowing down after the first two miles to a pace of less than a mile per hour. In addition, one of them was swaying from side to side as she walked. MM was rather alarmed, since such a symptom could have indicated that the hiker was suffering some sort of stroke. So he lost no time in steering them to the first possible point where they could access Skyline Drive, told them to wait there, and then ran to the bus to instruct the driver to pick them up (a distance of about 7 miles along Skyline Drive; MM is an excellent jogger).
The hike, as I mentioned, included a side trip to Miller Rock for those who wished for a longer hike. I had arrived at the bus a little before 2:30 but it was not until about 2:45 that another hiker arrived who wished to do this option. 2:45 was, as I thought, approaching the outside limit as to when people should attempt this side trip if they were to return to the bus by 3:30 – the distance of the round trip is about 2½ miles. He and I, therefore, went off together and as a result I was not present when MM arrived. Some other hikers had returned to the bus at this point, but MM explained the situation and they agreed to wait at the hike endpoint and to assure anyone else in the group who arrived while the bus was absent that it would be returning shortly. After these arrangements were made, the driver drove the bus to the point where the disabled hikers were waiting so that they could board it. By the time I and the other hiker had completed the side trip to Miller’s Rock, the bus had returned to the hike endpoint.
But even after this issue was resolved, we were waiting for six other hikers after most of the group had completed the hike. Eventually three of them appeared. They told us that one of the remaining three was evidently dehydrated, pausing frequently and continually drinking water, and that the other two had stayed with him to guide him to the end. We waited for half-an-hour longer, and then three of us, myself included, were dispatched to go back on the AT and try to meet them, carrying water and salt tablets to aid the dehydrated hiker. (MM was hesitant at first to include me in this venture, since I had already hiked 12-13 miles. But I thought it best to accompany the other two, since I was familiar with the route and knew of the best bailout points, which the others did not.) We went more than two miles from our endpoint without encountering our truants, at which juncture I decided that we should stray from the bus no further. I told one of them to remain on the trail to intercept the missing hikers if they showed up. Then I and the other bushwhacked a short distance to Skyline Drive, where I told him to go back to the bus and explain that we were unsuccessful and that we needed to be picked up. I had calculated how long it would take him to get back to the bus and how long the bus would take to drive to our location. But we waited for much longer than that amount of time. At last I bushwhacked back to the AT and told the other would-be rescuer that we needed to get back to the bus. He had questioned every hiker who passed by on the trail, and the answers from all of the people he questioned said the same thing: they had seen no sign of the hikers missing from our group. There clearly was no point in waiting any longer. So we bushwhacked back to Skyline Drive and then walked on the road back to the bus; fortunately the route along the road was shorter than it had been along the AT. As we went back we wondered what could possibly have happened, where the missing hikers were at the moment, and why the bus had not arrived at our location.
What had happened was this: the two hikers accompanying the dehydrated hiker had done a very sensible thing – they had gotten off at the first road that cut across the AT and made their way to Skyline Drive, where they had hitched a ride to get him back to the bus. This occurred about twenty minutes after I and the other two had been sent to intercept them. So MM rounded everyone up and had them board the bus, all set to pick up me and my companion. But the bus was parked on a narrow strip of road surrounded by grass on all sides, and in its maneuvering to turn onto Skyline Drive one of its rear tires sank in the soft ground, rendering it nearly immobile.
It appeared as if we would need the services of a towing company to pull the bus from its location. A few members of our group had gone to the lodge at Skyland to try to obtain the services of such a company. (There was no cell phone service anywhere in that area outside of the lodge, which aggravated our difficulties not a little.) But a couple of people who were experienced in steering vehicles calculated that if the bus could manage to get its front wheels onto the strip of road again, it would be barely possible for it to return to its former position. The area was full of trees that left hardly any room for the bus to maneuver, but there was a minimal amount of space in which the bus would shift its position by going back and forth numerous times, cutting the wheels at a sharp angle with each cycle. Eventually, thanks to the skill of the driver and the sharp eyes of those providing steering directions, the bus was extricated and we were able to depart once all of the passengers were rounded up again. I was not the least thankful of the group to be seated in the bus on its return journey, for I had in the course of my search for the missing hikers gone a considerable distance, both from the hike endpoint and back to the bus again, resulting in an additional four miles to the hike I had already led.
The hikers in the group accepted these mishaps with good humor and no one was lost or even seriously injured. So it all ended well, but it was rather a relief when we were able to leave the park.
In turning to the news, I find that Ivana Trump, the first wife of our ex-President, is dead. I would not find this cause for much comment, were it not for one circumstance: she is probably the only person, living or dead, who ever got the better of Donald Trump in financial negotiations. When she divorced her husband after the disclosure of his entanglement with Marla Maples, she demanded, and received, one of the largest settlements on record. She brushed aside Donald’s plea that his businesses were on the verge of bankruptcy, doubtless aware that that was their normal condition. She must have possessed some unusual personal qualities; for strange to say, Donald Trump, who is so quick to be roused to anger and so retentive in holding grudges, appears to have borne her no resentment for having acquired a disproportionately large amount of his wealth. The two were on civil terms with one another after the divorce was finalized; and he even hosted her costly wedding to her fourth husband, while his sister, who is a federal judge, officiated. She appears, also, to have been an attentive parent, solicitous for her children’s welfare, and in her business dealings she displayed none of the chicanery that characterized the murky financial history of her ex-husband. Perhaps the effect of her passing is best summed up by one anonymous Internet commentator: “RIP, the wrong one died.”
As the pandemic continues we are finding out more about “long COVID,” as it is called, and the data are not encouraging. Nearly a quarter of those who test positive eventually come down with symptoms that last 12 weeks or longer. The most troubling of these is fatigue – but extreme fatigue that makes the simplest of exertions, such as brewing a cup of coffee or walking from one end of the room to the other, a source of exhaustion. Researchers have found a correlation between long COVID and obesity; and that is troublesome as well, for the U.S. obesity rate was up to 41.9% in March 2020.
Worse still, it is possible to come down with long COVID despite not getting a positive COVID test result. The data are scanty and few detailed studies on the subject have been completed, although there are numerous personal accounts by people who have been disabled for months with COVID-like symptoms despite consistently negative COVID test results. These, of course, are anecdotal and since COVID is still a fairly new disease, it will take some time for firm data on this issue to materialize. A few physicians are starting to track patients with long COVID symptoms, whether or not they have tested positive for the disease. For example, Dr. Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, a rehabilitation and physical medicine doctor who leads University Health’s Post-COVID Recovery program in San Antonio, said about 12% of the patients she’s seen never had a positive COVID test.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 567,583,273; # of deaths worldwide: 6,387,495; # of cases U.S.: 91,265,296; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,048,834.