Virus and RGV Rv parks
Has anyone heard of any Rv parks in the Rio Grande Valley that has had an outbreak of the virus. We are headed that way and we’re wondering how safe it is.
Forum Discussion
steelhunter wrote:
Could also be the first person you meet in Maine. The fact remains the vast, vast majority of all people are not contagious and your chances of having an encounter that leads to you becoming infected is not materially effected by what state you choose to park your rig in, but much more by your behavior once you set the jacks.wapiticountry wrote:
Statistics on infection rates are misleading to most people. The state with the highest infection rate currently is North Dakota with a rate of 120 per 100K people in the last 7 days. The lowest in the contiguous 48 states is Maine with a rate of 12.5 per hundred thousand. Statistically, that shows that the rate in North Dakota is 10 times that of Maine. Sounds really scary, but as a practical matter it also means that you would have to have close contact with 1000 North Dakota residents in order to meet up with 1 infected person.
No it doesn't......it could be the first person you meet up with in North Dakota- Unfortunately, the Mexican border has never closed. It is open to Mexico bound tourists and inbound to the U.S. for Americans and American nationals (permanent residents non-citizen).
Mexico is a hot spot with over 106,000 recorded deaths and according to a group of six ex-Mexican national secretaries of health, as high as 285,000 deaths.
We have friends in Hidalgo and McAllen and it's bad right now. We have lost one friend or colleague every two weeks for the last four months. One is on a ventilator now in critical condition, her brother came to Mexico to visit and was positive but didn't know it. Mexico is only doing a temperature test if that. Big mistake.
The state of Arizona makes it very clear that there are no travel restrictions or testing requirements. wapiticountry wrote:
It is my very slightly educated guesstimate that the Southern states are going to fare better than the northern states over the next few months simply because in the south there are fewer days everyone is forced indoors
....I wish that were the case, however, of the 12 top countries in the World with the highest case-per-100,000 number as of this morning, 7 of the 12 are tropical or sub-tropical (this includes Aruba, Andora, San Marino, Bahrain and three others).
Mexico has gone rogue, so no possibility of ever really knowing how bad or worse via-a-vis other States, with Mexicans and US people piling south and north to/from Mexico.
Responsible behavior is everything in keeping infection rates low; social distancing, masking. The only thing that works. We skipped the south snowbirding this year and ran every scenario and probability we could devise. We made the decision at end of October. No matter how much we all want to avoid "humans" on a cross-country down "south", it is virtually impossible to avoid coming into contact with individuals. Reiterating, impossible.silversand wrote:
And you can do that at home? Avoid all human contact? We make the trip south in 4 days, living in our RV, just walking the dogs and pumping gas... kinda exactly what we do at home. Staying at home cold and socially distant, which means no interaction because we don't gather inside with friends right now, or sitting on a beach socially distant or on the deck looking at the ocean. Easy choice for us since the same human interaction will occur at home or on the road.
No matter how much we all want to avoid "humans" on a cross-country down "south", it is virtually impossible to avoid coming into contact with individuals. Reiterating, impossible.
DaveMagicbus: And you can do that at home? Avoid all human contact?
We interface with one couple (our neighbor) around a campfire 6 times over the last 7 (on edit) months. We interface with no one grocery, and pharmacy shopping. Home delivery (dropped on the driveway), and curb-side pick-up (deposited on sidewalk outside the grocery store) only. We have elected not to go near a dentist, till a "vaccine" is well distributed. No doctor's appointments, no hospital visits, ZERO family visits. No visits from anyone into our house. We left the winter tires on over summer. I do the oil changes myself. I dropped our rig off at our indoor marina storage -the hangar door (the place is as big as 7 Walmart super-centeres) was open, my parking spot numbered, I backed in, disconnected batteries, put the keys on the dashboard, and walked out the door to my wife waiting in the SUV, then home. No human beings in the hangar. All pre-paid by Internet.
The number one rule in a global catastrophe (say a thermonuclear war, global pandemic, alien invasion (LOL) ) is: don't move; stay home.. I could write a 400+ page book on why this strategy is the only strategy. Hundreds of reasons. But one of the top reasons is: .....when you break shelter in a major wide-spread catastrophe/war/pandemic, your chances of a close encounter is exponentially higher than staying put. I am not saying that "our" chances of close contact with potential infection is absolutely zero locally, but we know our surroundings exceedingly well, know how, how far, and when to "go out" to minimize risk. You give all that up when you have to travel thousands of miles across, what I would call metaphorically, a 2000 mile mine field.
Our strategy going forward will be: ....wait till wide-spread and proven vaccines are deployed, re-evaluate the epidemiological situation across our "travel route", then, if favorable, follow our prescribed route rigidly to our snowbird destination (RVing to the condo). However, we aren't naïve enough to believe that sars-cov-2 will disappear magically, by say, next November or even 2023; but we, even with widely deployed vaccine, will continue to mask, stay socially distanced from all shopping genres, and maintain zero individuals (but for our flu-buddies next door) in our social circle perhaps for another several years. Yeah, sounds harsh, but what'r'ya'gonna do. We are in a high risk age group.- All I can say is wow. We are very cautious but I simply couldn't live the way you are living. Never have and hope to never have to.
Dave - That's OK Dave. Everyone has their limits.
This approach isn't for everyone, certainly. It is our personal approach and decision.
Luckily, though we are in a vulnerable age group, we are in quite good health/physical/dental condition, and therefor can avoid medical facilities and dental for the short-term. This isn't the case for everyone unfortunately, and I don't propose or advocate to anyone avoiding their medical appointments, just to be clear. silversand wrote:
....We have elected not to go near a dentist, till a "vaccine" is well distributed. No doctor's appointments, no hospital visits, ZERO family visits.
Sounds great, but if you have, like a lot of us, a chronic condition that requires monitoring by physicians on routine basis, then you have to go to a lab to get blood draws, and to the offices because things like 12-lead EKGs, carotid artery ultrasound, etc., con't be done via tele-a-med visits.
Have to put fuel in the car every 2 months (hybrid getting 50+mpg) so that means a 'limited' exposure. It is possible to be very careful when moving in an RV. A lot of RV parks now do everything over the phone, you pull in, go to your assigned spot, hook up, pull out in the morning all without every interacting with anyone in the park. You've stocked your rig with appropriate food and water before leaving for your trip, you are just doing fuel stops/RV parks, no human interactions, arrive at your winter destination, isolate, go grocery curbside pickup, etc., same as you would at home. But it is warm. And for those who are full-timing, they have no choice but to be very careful. They have no "home" to stay put in, though a lot of them are doing much longer stays.silversand wrote:
....I wish that were the case, however, of the 12 top countries in the World with the highest case-per-100,000 number as of this morning, 7 of the 12 are tropical or sub-tropical (this includes Aruba, Andora, San Marino, Bahrain and three others).
Andora and San Marino are mountainous and not tropical.
Bahrain is a different case. I spent a lot of time in Kuwait (similar weather), basically their summer is like a northern winter. You don't go outside unless you have to and then only for as short of a time as you can get away with. If winter increase in spread is higher because people concentrating inside, Bahrain is just now coming out of their peak period. Qatar is also on that top 12 list and similar situation.
Other than Aruba and French Polynesia, I'm not seeing tropical locations heavily represented in the top 12.
Most of the countries in the top 12 are very small which tends to lead to wider variation in per capita numbers. This is particularly true of islands where dumb luck of getting or not getting cases early on, is likely the real reason for how many overall cases they have now. If they didn't get cases early on, they could implement rules and very effectively police incoming travelers to keep it out.
All else being equal, there is still support that warmer locations will do better. The problem is things are never equal and other factors can overwhelm the weather impacts.kydale wrote:
Has anyone heard of any Rv parks in the Rio Grande Valley that has had an outbreak of the virus. We are headed that way and we’re wondering how safe it is.
I haven't heard of any parks with outbreaks. Our park requires all incoming residents to quarantine for two weeks before they are allowed into any of the buildings and masks are required in all buildings. They have been trying to hold most activities outdoors whenever they can. The Thanksgiving meal could be picked up outside the hall. Happy hour and dances have been in the street outside the hall. Wear your masks, social distance and wash your hands and you should be OK.
