You're not even going to make an attempt to back up your vague and ridiculously foundationless assertions? What fun is that?

Caution and/or common sense doesn't equal fear. It amazes me how many experts there are everywhere. The thing is killing 10,000 Americans per week, not to mention sickness and possible long term lung damage. It doesn't make you fearful if you decide to take precautions against it.
Even the real experts don't know as much as we wish they did.

Fify

If you don't have a leg to stand on, you make simply claims and then cast aspersions upon the manliness, intelligence, gumption, etc, etc, etc of those that oppose you. It's long been a common schoolyard bully tactic, but it seems to have gained popularity among some adults recently, though I can't fathom why.

Sad!

They don't want to be inconvenienced.

Not going on group rides this season.

After almost 50 years of cycling , I can honestly say my group rides have been very few and far between. I ride alone and at this time the multi use paths are not on my riding plan. I use a ten meter rule for distancing which is easy as long as I stay on surface streets . I have friends that have had this virus. Two that come to mind , one young man in his thirties and healthy was rushed to the hospital twice and coughed up blood( no preexisting condition) for several days , is on the mend but I’m afraid the lung damage is permanent. The other is a young woman who travels to ski resorts as an instructor , sever neurological damage loss of feeling in all appendages and not sure if it will ever resolve. This is not the flue or anything close , you don’t have to be unhealthy to be severely impacted or killed from this. Be careful and use the guidelines that are recommended it ain’t that hard. You can still ride your bike just be smart. 90,000 deaths and still climbing in this country alone, nothing to ignore.

As with most things these days, the extreme positions have taken control of the debate. Both extremes are making stuff up -- and when made up stuff is repeated often enough, it becomes "true." And these days, people become passionate and destroy relationships over stuff they don't even really know about.

Be reasonable. Be safe. Treat this like any contagious disease. And don't destroy others just because they disagree with you.

Personally...I'm avoiding group rides until this thing is done. Just up the road in Durham, it seems like there's still a fair bit of Rona going around. I'm sticking to solo road rides - no trails, either. I don't see anything changing when I move to Wisconsin in a few months. The kind of people I generally ride with do a lot of spitting and snot-rocketing; other groups are perhaps more polite :)

If you think aerolized droplets in the air is nonsense watch how long the fumes from a passing oil burning car linger.

In the interest of accuracy, I would assume a lower number, maybe significantly, of the car driving death rate as traffic has plummeted and is still way lower than normal.

I've spent years studying and observing fluid flow (air is a fluid, just not in liquid form) as a competitive sailor, studying naval architecture and fluid dynamics, bike racer and the past 40 years, avoiding cigarette smoke as it made me physically sick. (A result of changing my body's acceptance of toxins because of exposure to bad stuff building fiberglass boats for years.) Objects create vortexes that trail behind for distances relating to Reynolds number, I won't go into a long discussion of Reynolds number, but in short, if it is large (higher speeds, larger objects) the flow is turbulent and the vortexes can extend far behind. I can smell marijuana from a car window when that car is 25 yards up the road. I also developed the awareness of turbulence on my face as a a racing sailor. On cold, wet days as skipper, I could not feel the wind on my body - many layers of clothes! - , nor wet a finger and hold it up to the wind since both hands were occupied, To win, I had to know that air to my sails was "clean" - no turbulence from sails upwind and the wind direction, When I crossed over to bike racing, that awareness helped big time in headwinds and crosswinds. That aerosol from our breath as cyclists could extend far behind and at the elevation of our face; oh yeah. I cannot measure the aerosols but I feel the turbulence.. Inhaling that air deeply, infections are going to spread, Good thing - cyclists are typically young and healthy, Unlikely to get very sick. And the people they then infect? Well its not their issue so all is good.

I don't feel that way. First I am 67 years old. I suspect I would pull through, but that is a h*** I don't need. Keeping my housemate safe if I get sick? No, that is something I would not put money on and it is a given is that if he gets infected, he will not live. I don't need that on my conscience,

So, like a racing sailor, I will do my best to seek out "clean" air. (Even though we all know "dirty" air is faster for a cyclist.)

Ben

After two months of hard core compliance, I'm back to group rides.

I noticed a lot more group riders this weekend. I am still riding solo, but it’s understandable that patience is wearing thin.

This is a tough subject because of the scarcity of clearly reliable information, the difficulty of fairly weighing all kinds of risks, and the destructive hostile politicization of Covid issues.

I've been pushed by the Covid problem to work on alternatives for group riding. One big one that has been seriously helpful so far: intercom helmets. I'd only vaguely followed occasional things I saw in the past 2-3 years about some developments in bluetooth handsfree intercom helmets, but I did a fair bit of research and ended up coughing up with the jack to buy a pair of Sena R1 helmets at $129 each. Sena claimed a range of 1/2 mile, and the reviews on Amazon looked good, but I still had grave doubt about how well they'd work in the wind. Out here on the prairie we have plenty of wind. Well, dang, they worked pretty darn well in the wind. My friend and I did a 65-mile ride with a fair bit of wind, and we talked all the way just like we were sitting beside each other in a car, only we spent most of the time way apart, like 100-600 yards. It still felt like we were together on the ride, as we were seeing all the same things. I've now got five friends who also have these helmets, and we've had a bunch of rides with three of us along, all spread out. We haven't ridden with four of us yet, but these helmets will work with up to four riders. We've also done a couple of rides where two of us wore these helmets, and two other riders were along who didn't have them. That works well too.

I'm aiming to put together some small group rides with maybe 8-10 riders, with the group riding in well-separated pieces of 2-3 riders here and there, and using these helmets to help with communicating. If people get out of intercom range, they can still call each other through the helmets using their paired smartphones. Anyway, this is one way of trying to wangle some social riding without the Covid risk.

I have to say, actually, it's been a blast to, for the first time ever, be able to just carry on long conversations easily while riding, no need to be right beside each other, no need to yell, no dodging cars to talk. Shoot, we catch up on the movies we've been watching, everything.

I do want to mention that I saw a lot of posts up above that I thought were good, and I particularly liked posts by Merlinextraligh and 79pMooney. I can't find how to "like" a post - if someone wants to send me a private email to tell me how, I'd appreciate it.

Group rides have been going on here for the last month.

Hopefully even though you're a "newer," twice-posting forum member, you still have these buttons on the bottom right of each post:
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...2c39fd44f1.png

For most people, no need to hide
 

Some of our government leaders would like us to hide under our covers and
wait for them to hold forth on when it is OK to come out.

If you are healthy and under 40 years old, you will be fine.
If you are healthy enough to ride a bike you are not sick and are not going to infect anyone.
Virus transmission outdoors is preposterously unlikely, unless you are kissing somebody.

You're wrong: The "lockdowns" aren't unconstitutional.
You're wrong: it's not just a certain segment of the population that is likely to be harmed by the virus. Some are more at risk, but it's killed and made deathly ill people of all ages and physical statuses.
You're wrong, it's not the "wuhan virus" despite what political factions call it to gain some sort of political points. You're wrong to politicize this virus.
You're wrong: healthy people should indeed alter their lifestyles, not so much to protect themselves, but to participate in a meaningful public strategy (well within the constitutional authority of federal, state and local government) to protect others and avoid overloading the health care system. "Healthy people" with robust immune systems can indeed be infected unknowingly and therefore infect others.

You have no "right" or freedom to infect someone else, just as you have no right to pollute your neighbor's or public property with your septic runoff or noxious smoke from your fireplace, or to pollute anybody's body with the smoke from your burning tobacco. Just as you have o "right" to endanger other people by ignoring traffic safety laws, even if you feel you can do that safely - speeding, drinking, ignoring signals, etc. You have no right to yell "fire" in a crowded theater. You have a right to endanger yourself - for the most part - but not others.

The government can and will limit your "rights", constitutionally, in many ways.

Does that help?

For whatever reason, while the "Quote" and "Multi Quote" and "Quick Reply" buttons do show up on my screen below all posts, no "Like" button shows up on my screen below any of the posts. And I've tried logging in with (fully-updated) Firefox, Chrome, and Edge browsers, so it doesn't appear to be a browser-specific thing. If there's a forum manager or techie anyone could suggest whom I might contact for help with that, I'd be much obliged.

healthcare system overloaded?
 

The hospitals here in South Florida are sending emails to customers trying to talk
them into coming in. They are begging for customers.

The situation in Missouri where I have family is similar. I have a family member who is a financial
advisor in MO. He told me his Doctor clients are taking early retirement because they
don't have anything to do.

Your above referenced study is a joke.
A non peer reviewed theory based only on computer calculations performed by people in the aerodynamics field.
:rolleyes:

It is in fact the Wuhan Virus.
Or more commonly, the Chinese Virus.
It is not politicized.
Back in the day did you also rant against West Nile Virus, Zika, and Ebola?
So woke :rolleyes: