December 13-15, 2021

Working on a club hiking schedule – The Bull Run Occoquan Trail – Lawsuit against the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers – A possibility of the pandemic ending in 2022 – Evening statistics

I have been negligent about journal entries this week because I am in the middle of devising the hike schedule for the Capital Hiking Club for the first quarter of 2022.  The lack of availability of a bus is quite a handicap.  It means that I cannot schedule hikes whose starting point differs from its endpoint.  Such a proviso confines me to loops and there-and-backs (sometimes also referred to as “roundabouts”).  Most of the hikes in the CHC’s repository involve hikes with different start and end points, so these are not very helpful.  Sometimes they can be modified to become a loop or a there-and-back, but not often.  It may be asked why, in an area that contains numerous long trails such as the Catoctin Trail (26 miles), the Dickey Ridge Trail (18 miles), the Tuscacora Trail (252 miles), and so on, to say nothing of the Appalachian Trail itself, I do not simply set up there-and-back hikes on these.  The answer is that the hikes must conform to certain criteria, such as offering a longer option in the range of 9-13 miles and a shorter on in the range of 6-9 miles, and the trails do not have many areas where such a setup is feasible.  In there-and-back hikes, the differential between the longer and the shorter option is halved, and the trails do not always have convenient landmarks at sufficiently close intervals to use for turnaround points.  I don’t mean to say that the issue is insurmountable, but it does mean that it takes a much greater amount of time to work out the details.  In such little insidious ways the virus makes its effect; had it not been for the new surge of the pandemic, we would have been using buses again by now.

Yesterday I went with the Vigorous Hikers along the Bull Run Occoquan Trail.  I generally use this trail during the spring season, when it is particularly rich in wildflowers (the masses of bluebells in April are famous) but it has its attractions in mid-December as well.  The views of Bull Run through the trees are more numerous with the absence of foliage.  It was a splendid day, beautifully clear and with warmer temperatures than usual, quite spring-like.  We started at the parking area at Rte. 28 and went to a log bridge beyond the marina and then returned, using a slight detour up to Hemlock Overlook.  The hike leader said in his notification email that it was 21 miles round trip but our measurements after the hike was completed indicated that the distance is at least a mile more.  Even though I have been on the trail this past April, it has changed since my previous visit.  The trail no longer skirts around the playing fields of Kincheloe Soccer Park but adheres to a gravel road that passes through them and the path past the soccer park, where it goes through an area that is extremely miry all year round, is now protected by a boardwalk.  For a while the hikers were spread apart on the hike, but eventually we settled into a main group and a smaller group of three in the vanguard, of which I was one.  The three of us did start to flag towards the end but on the whole we kept up quite a reasonable pace:  we began the hike a few minutes past 8:00 and returned between 2:30 and 2:45 – 6½ to 6¾ hours in all, including a stop for a leisurely lunch, to cover 22 miles and an aggregate elevation gain of 3000 feet.  The trail seemed all but effortless after my recent experiences of the Appalachian Trail in New Jersey; the rocks on the trail are minimal and the ups and downs, though steep in a few places, are quite brief. 

Karl Racine, the Attorney General of Washington DC, has sued the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers for their role in the riot of January 6th.  “Our intent is to hold these violent mobsters and violent hate groups accountable and to get every penny of damage we can,” Racine said. “If it so happens that we bankrupt them, then that’s a good day.”  It would indeed be an occasion for rejoicing if these felons receive any kind of penalty proportionate for their offenses.  Up to this point the federal charges levied against the rioters have for the most part been misdemeanors.   Prison time would of course be the best solution, but I have no objection to heavy monetary compensation from them; the damage to the Capitol has been estimated as costing well over $30 million. 

It appears that COVID might lose its pandemic status at last in the coming year.  Vaccination rates have risen.  The amount of fully vaccinated are as follows:  95% of all seniors 65 years and older, 72.2% of all adults 18 years and older, 65% of Americans 5 years and older.  In addition, therapeutic measures are being developed.  Two new anti-viral pills, one developed by Pfizer and one by Merck, have been tested upon high-risk individuals and the initial results are encouraging:  in both cases the rate of hospitalization went down substantially within the group given the actual pill as opposed to the group given a placebo.  This means that, if the pills live up to their expectations and receive approval for general dissemination, COVID could become a relatively easy disease to treat.  This does not mean that vaccines can be dispensed with altogether.  It will still be imperative to ensure that as few people contract the disease as possible, so that the virus does not keep continually mutating.  Nor do we know what the long-term risks of the pills might be.  Still, it undoubtedly would be an improvement if coming down with COVID would eventually be on a par with, for example, coming down with pneumonia:  something to be taken quite seriously, to be sure, but far from being a death sentence for a substantial number of the persons it afflicts. 

Opposed to such promising developments is the fact that we have already lost well over 800,000 people to the pandemic (nearly 1 in every 400) and that we are likely to see many more casualties during the winter months, when people as a whole tend to go out of doors less frequently and indoor gatherings are more common, particularly during Christmas and the New Year.  The omicron variant continues to transmit much more rapidly than previous variants and its overall level of severity is still unknown.  At the rate people are currently dying on a daily basis, I do not see how we will emerge with less than 1,000,000 fatalities in all by the time the spring season begins.  I earnestly hope that I am mistaken.

Statistics for 12/14 as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 271,708,666; # of deaths worldwide: 5,336,408; # of cases U.S.: 51,136,442; # of deaths; U.S.: 821,335. 

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 272,447,652; # of deaths worldwide: 5,345,057; # of cases U.S.: 51,286,915; # of deaths; U.S.: 823,360.