Schif

I hate to the the nihilist in the room, but come on. None of this matters. We can slow it with restrictions but we can't stop it. We can lock down, drop the numbers, feel good about it and then they will spike again. We are talking about something that went from one small area in China to the entire world in the span of a few months. If this virus had a motto it would be "Can't stop won't stop". A vaccine will take years to get this under control and there is nothing we can do. We are just animals stuck to a big spinning ball we can't really get off of and sometimes things kill off a bunch of us for no real good reason. Once you kick back and realize we are all just along for the ride it starts to feel less bumpy.

I think this round of restaurant shutdowns will actually be useful from a data perspective. We will get a chance to see if cases drop due to the restrictions or not. I would hypothesize that most of the transmission is happening at private gatherings and not public spaces. The thing that really sucks is that we don't have enough data on what's going on to make decisions. The smart and "follow the science" thing to do is to run a multiple regression analysis with the independent variable being number of cases and find the coefficients and statistical significance of all of the dependent variables, which are the things that you want to implement and/or shut down. In the absence of that we are taking educated guesses and shooting into the wind with policy choices.

I mean none of this is even remotely enforceable right? It's kind of the honor system and it's going to make people think twice. I think there is a big difference between crossing a state line to go to a big party and crossing it to go infect a few dozen innocent fish.

You're putting all those poor fish at risk

Blue looks good there. Makes me want to get a drone as a hobby

i guess this just means we have to take advantage of the situation and show up on their couches for a few long weekends.

I kind of hate you work from home types who can just go away for an extended period of time.

Philly restrictions have always been tighter than the rest of the state. I'm sure skiing up in the Poconos will be just fine.

OK, for the lawyers among us, what would these restrictions technically be called? Executive actions? Ordinances? Where do they fall in the spectrum of legality. They are clearly not laws. I'm just trying to understand what kind of legal jiu jitsu these guys are doing to get around: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Amtrak's model should shift to a luxury travel experience on some of the longer, less utilized lines through the middle of the country and focus on trying to make northeast corridor travel less expensive to entice travelers or commuters.

This is kind of depressing. Are we all going to be in our 60s and still posting on a message board?

I don't love drinking when I golf. I would prefer to have one afterwards.

I think a switch from pressure washing to ski waxing might help.

your guilty pleasure is also having an old fashioned with rum in it, which I'm extremely skeptical about. In other news, I poked around on google maps and looked at the Utah resorts and it seems that the majority have been mapped out by Google Street View. I guess they put the camera mount on a backpack and sent a guy on a very difficult work trip.

I'm not really in the mood for groomed runs. Maybe on day 3 at DV I'll cruise groomers when I'm tired anyway but for the most part I would prefer to be exploring on a snowboard.

I've got my hopes up for sliding down a hill and then drinking beer from the trunk of my car.

With all the talk of big government restrictions and such, where do you guys think personal choice, personal risk assessment, and individual responsibility and/or lack thereof fall into the thinking here?

I think the initial, seemingly overnight, shutdown was in response to fear and an unknown. It was a seemingly logical reaction to what, at the time, where it looked like we could be in a full blown horror movie kind of situation. We didn't know much about this virus and it was killing tons of people. Now we know much more, we know how to treat it, we know who is most susceptible to it and we have things in place to mitigate some of the risks. It would take more political capital than he has left in the tank for Wolf to order another shut down. In drips and drabs some restrictions might come out but for the most part what we are seeing now will be the status quo for a while.

When it comes to lockdowns and rules I think a lot of people are not comparing apples to apples. Not only is our country extremely diverse and ranges in geography greatly but you forget how absolutely huge this country is in terms of population. We are number 3 in the world behind India and China. Greece can much more easily enact controls over its 10 Million citizens than we can over our 327 Million.

I don't know how to feel about this. I can see the Chai working well, but does the rum throw the flavor from what you would expect?

I don't think there is any legal way for a national lockdown to be implemented. I think skiing will be annoying but not closed this year. My theory is still that unless tickets are restricted we will see a large influx of people getting on the mountains as they see it as a relatively safe outdoor activity. I think it will be similar to how one week I was out in Wissahickon and enjoying the scenery alone and the next week you were dodging tons of people and a family who thought a stroller was a good idea on a hiking trail. Come mid January people will be clawing at the walls with nothing else to do so they will turn to skiing.

I'll just need to step up my two planks game for an eventual trip to Alta. I wouldn't want to miss out on grinding the spine there.

I do love a good old fashioned.

OK, I need some honest feedback here. Most of PASR has been relatively nearby when I get on a pair of skis, not saying I ever keep up, but some of you guys have witnessed, even if it's brief, my use of skis. If I was to go out to Utah I was planning on snowboarding, but @skiincy is Ikonic and suggested Deer Valley and Alta in addition to Snowbird. If I, a relatively new skier, was go go to Deer Valley and/or Alta would I be able to ski the majority of the mountain and have fun doing it?