Pandemic

I am against travel during a pandemic. I am against venturing further than a two hour walk. To be more accurate I was against these things until the vaccines. My attitude since then has changed because of the indifference and incompetence governments have shown. Instead of having a primary and a backup safety measure they have gone for a primary, with no backup solution. Switzerland and other nations behaved as if vaccinations, by themselves, without masks, without social distancing, without any other mitigating measures, were enough.

This morning, as I was doing laundry, I found that I couldn’t focus so I started to look at all the teas that are available at a local shop. I saw that they had herb teas, mint teas, nettle teas, weed tea and more. I also noticed that tea is cheap. You can get twenty cups worth of tea for 0.95 CHF if you’re not picky about the tea you drink.

What do snails have to do with chairs, I wondered as I listened to a book speaking about our addiction to sitting and chairs. It turns out that snails and other animals are programmed to move, walk, slither or other in an individual way. He started, by discussing sleeping in class, and having chalk thrown at him. Movement is an integral part of our lives and apparently, and as we have seen, children move a lot more than adults.

Switzerland is currently following a flawed approach to ending a pandemic, because rather than taking a pro-active approach to preventing outbreaks in various communities across Switzerland they are doing the opposite. They are ignoring the problem until it flares up enough that they can no longer pretend to see it. Today the number of cases has reached 6000 a day for the whole of Switzerland. A rational and moral government, within a healthy democracy, as we have seen in pandemics since the SARS crisis and others, have done everything to contain the threat, but also to prevent it from spreading.

I tracked the run and walk with the Garmin Instinct Solar. It is very easy to use while wearing gloves. You can stop the activity, change sport, start the activity, do the second sport, and then stop the tracking of the second sport, without taking off your gloves. Now that we’re in the cold part of Autumn this is useful. On the flipside anytime the clouds hide the sun this watch is unable to recharge itself.

richard - Nov 1, 2021 I have to use whatsapp for the group of people who live in the same building as me, but other than that my use has stopped. If we were out of pandemic I would meet new people, and I would encourage them to use other platforms than WhatsApp. Due to the pandemic I haven’t had the opportunity to say “I prefer this option, to that one.

I noticed that Facebook has a way of letting you know how badly you are addicted to their website. In the process I learned that I spent zero minutes on their website this week, and one minute last week. I do not spend time on their website because it fails to provide me with a community that I want to interact with on a daily basis. There are a number of reasons for this but the key reason is that they spent so much effort trying to make the timeline more addictive that they made it repulsive.

richard - 11th of Nov, 2021 I want to do a few through-hikes. One project is the Via Alpina. 6000 kilometres of hiking. Leslie - 20th of Nov, 2021 I think I’d like to do the actual Camino de Santiago one day!

Just as I was thinking, “I have nothing to write about because I have been walking around in circles for three or four years I find that at least virtually I have almost achieved a big project. Walking 819 kilometres on the Camino De Santiago. I am now four kilometres from the end. By the end of tomorrow morning I will have completed this goal. In reality nothing special, as I haven’t had to change my routine, suffer or anything else.

Over the last three or four days I have marked two books as finished despite not finishing for a simple reason. I have plenty of books on Kindle, Audible and Kobo that I need to read, but that to read all these books, would take time. I started to read one book and I stopped within pages, every time for the same reason. In today’s context my disgust with one book is rational.