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Ischgl under investigation

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^ It ain't rocket science.

You poke a stick up someone's nose.

If the little machine goes red, you throw them in hospital or home and lock the door.

You list everyone and everywhere they met in the past 2 weeks.

You test all their spiderweb of meets.

Repeat 1-5 million times a week for 1 month until the death plague fizzles out.

If the locals protest, jail them.

If they protest again, shoot them.
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cameronphillips2000 wrote:
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Had it not been the ski resorts,!it would have been St. Patrick's Day, The Cheltenham Festival or Mardis Gras.
The Alps are the centre of European tourism during February. There were also clusters in Tenerife or those cruise ships. The virus was going to get about where people travelled and mingled.


This, exactly.

We're facing a huge forest fire right now, and it's kind of silly to try to locate the first four or five trees that went up in flames.

Can you imagine if instead of ski season, covid19 had hit Europe during the summer music festivals or beach vacations, when everyone's packed cheek by jowl? Or during Oktoberfest? You'd have infection rates 10x. I was in the Dolomites from Feb 8-15, and thinking back, I think I had very close contact with another human being who wasn't my family members maybe 3-4 times, max. And that was probably to pay for our ski rentals. As for skin-to-skin? Maybe not at all. The rest of the time I was bundled up ski gear with a neck tube over my mouth.

My own pet theory -- and why not? -- is that the virus probably hit in Lombardy and traveled north to Bergamo via the highway. but it really doesn't matter now.
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cameronphillips2000 wrote:
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Had it not been the ski resorts,!it would have been St. Patrick's Day, The Cheltenham Festival or Mardis Gras.


Not "would have been", surely it's "was" - can't believe any of those 3 have not contributed, - if you look at New Orleans, Mardi Gras is definitely getting blamed.


Last edited by Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see? on Mon 30-03-20 13:10; edited 1 time in total
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abc wrote:

Why do you see the “trace” as being “problem implementing”

Many country did just that. Not enough, in many cases. But not because they can’t. Only because they didn’t do it early enough or exhaustive enough.


Because they did it by giving the security forces access to everybody's mobile phone to track where they had been, then tracking everybody who had been within 10 ft of a confirmed case, then isolating and testing them, and so on.....Keeping them in detention centres until they were cleared. This can only be done in what is effectively, a Police State.

Nobody knows if that access will be removed afterwards. I suspect the security forces will try to keep that access.

In Western Democracies, such surveillance would not be acceptable to the Public. We would not trust them to remove records afterwards. (same as Police refusing to destroy DNA records of people found Not Guilty, or even never taken to Court).

Quote:
The final one is the crux. If you lock away anybody who might have had contact, you stop the spread.

Well, aren’t we all being “locked away” now?

Not just the sick and their contacts, we lock away everyone![/quote]

We are being asked to stay at home for the sake of others, because we could not take the same action as Countries like S Korea. It is not yet mandatory in the UK, but is in a couple of European Countries, with more probably to follow.

The USA will suffer badly because they failed to take any action over the first cases. Trump was saying only this morning that restricting death to somewhere between 1-200,000 would be a success Puzzled
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@Pasigal, If it had struck during Euro 2020, when hundreds of thousands of football fans were crisscrossing Europe every few days, packing bars wherever they went, it could have been even worse than the packed beaches.
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@brianatab, Indeed. I can't really think of a "good" time for CV19 to hit but ski season is probably the least-bad alternative.

I also agree that it would have been hard for western democracies to take S.Korea/Singapore type action regarding tracking vector paths. Feasible but politically unpalatable. Freedom does come at a a cost; in this case it's those who will die unnecessarily of CV19.

I can only hope there will be some good public health lessons learned, and thankfully this isn't ebola. The next pandemic very well could be. We only contained ebola because a)It killed people before they could travel b)africans don't travel that much c)as a result it was confined to an relatively small area. If ebola had a longer gestation period and had struck a more mobile/wealthier region, we'd have been well and truly screwed.
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@Pasigal, Ebola was relatively easier to contain because it requires actual contact to transmit, making it slower to spread. Plus, as you rightly say, African's don't travel as much, restricting it's area.
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Quote:
We are being asked to stay at home for the sake of others, because we could not take the same action as Countries like S Korea. It is not yet mandatory in the UK, but is in a couple of European Countries, with more probably to follow.

@brianatab, its better that we lock everyone up because we’re not willing to do contact tracing using mobile phone?

Which country puts the contacts in detention center? Singapore? Korea?
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@abc, Even if the population would accept it, It would take a change of Legislation to pass such a regulation. I doubt the General Public, or even Parliament would support it. This would have taken too long to be effective anyway.

It was too late to use mobile phones to trace contacts once the number of cases reached a critical number, making it impracticable. The critical number was probably very small, even single figures.

S Korea is a very densley populated country, with a larger rate of security personnel per capita than many others. So they have the resources. They also have an infrastructure for dealing with these instances because they have been on the front line with previous viruses.We do not.
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Quote:
Which country puts the contacts in detention center? Singapore? Korea?


I understand both of those placed people in (voluntary Puzzled ) isolation until test results were available. They already have the ability and capability in place since the SARS outbreak. The population is willing to accept these inconveniences in the Public interest.
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Quote:
I understand both of those placed people in (voluntary Puzzled ) isolation until test results were available.

I thought isolation was in their own home? Though I maybe wrong.

Quote:
They also have an infrastructure for dealing with these instances because they have been on the front line with previous viruses. We do not.

That’s the crux!

For some reason, “we” in the west didn’t think we need it!

Granted, “we” wouldn’t be able to do it as efficiently as the Asian countries, if only due to our “lack of practice”. But had we done even half as good a job, we would have at least got a glimpse of the problem much earlier instead of going merrily around like business as usual! And probably could have better chance with a less restrictive measure.
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Haven't seen it mentioned elsewhere, but apparently 2,500 people have joined a potential class action against the Tyrolean authorities over this. Just seen it on the BBC live blog.
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Think people are really missing the point here. It is not that Iscghl / Tryol are being investigated because the were hit by COVID-19, but that they deliberately chose to mute / suppress information for commercial reasons. No idea if the claim can be substantiated, but seems reasonable that this should be investigated.
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 You know it makes sense.
You know it makes sense.
The fact that, up until a few days ago, people were meeting in parks, beaches etc. shows just how difficult it is to manage human behavior due to lack of initial understanding.

Anyway, the latest figures show that the mortality rate in Switzerland is totally polarized between the French and German speaking regions. The mortality rate is much lower in the German speaking side. Couple this with the low mortality rate in Germany and I'm walking around letting out a throaty 'ich' every few minute or so, just in case a low level throaty sound is helping stop this thing incubating in the throat. - I guess it's similar to that old wive's tale of gargling.....
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@cameronphillips2000, not sure your Swiss comment is correct see https://npgeo-corona-npgeo-de.hub.arcgis.com/app/115cd04485904fa7a5629b683a949390 . Highest known infection rate (unsurprisingly) is in Ticino, then Vaud, Basel and Valais/Wallis. It seems more geographical and population density related. The lowest rate and number of cases is Appenzell Innerrhoden, which is a rather strange place at the best of times (not far from Austria either).

The relatively low mortality rate here in Germany is a bit puzzling, all sorts of possible explanations. The one that makes most sense to me so far is better air quality (or at least less bad air quality) but at this stage any explanation is no more than a guess. Also by some way the highest number of known infections is in the 35 - 60 year old group who are far less vulnerable to serious complications.

For Austria the highest number of infections is in the Tirol at a far higher rate than elsewhere in Austria and higher than here in the Munich area.
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munich_irish wrote:
@cameronphillips2000, not sure



your Swiss comment is correct see https://npgeo-corona-npgeo-de.hub.arcgis.com/app/115cd04485904fa7a5629b683a949390 . Highest known infection rate (unsurprisingly) is in Ticino, then Vaud, Basel and Valais/Wallis. It seems more geographical and population density related. The lowest rate and number of cases is Appenzell Innerrhoden, which is a rather strange place at the best of times (not far from Austria either).

The relatively low mortality rate here in Germany is a bit puzzling, all sorts of possible explanations. The one that makes most sense to me so far is better air quality (or at least less bad air quality) but at this stage any explanation is no more than a guess. Also by some way the highest number of known infections is in the 35 - 60 year old group who are far less vulnerable to serious complications.

For Austria the highest number of infections is in the Tirol at a far higher rate than elsewhere in Austria and higher than here in the Munich area.



It isnt the infection rate that is different across Switzerland, it's the mortality rate.
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cameronphillips2000 wrote:
The fact that, up until a few days ago, people were meeting in parks, beaches etc. shows just how difficult it is to manage human behavior due to lack of initial understanding.

Anyway, the latest figures show that the mortality rate in Switzerland is totally polarized between the French and German speaking regions. The mortality rate is much lower in the German speaking side. Couple this with the low mortality rate in Germany and I'm walking around letting out a throaty 'ich' every few minute or so, just in case a low level throaty sound is helping stop this thing incubating in the throat. - I guess it's similar to that old wive's tale of gargling.....
By that measure the Tyroleans should have the lowest rate of all, given that they talk like a frog is about to jump out of their throat.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Steilhang wrote:
cameronphillips2000 wrote:
The fact that, up until a few days ago, people were meeting in parks, beaches etc. shows just how difficult it is to manage human behavior due to lack of initial understanding.

Anyway, the latest figures show that the mortality rate in Switzerland is totally polarized between the French and German speaking regions. The mortality rate is much lower in the German speaking side. Couple this with the low mortality rate in Germany and I'm walking around letting out a throaty 'ich' every few minute or so, just in case a low level throaty sound is helping stop this thing incubating in the throat. - I guess it's similar to that old wive's tale of gargling.....
By that measure the Tyroleans should have the lowest rate of all, given that they talk like a frog is about to jump out of their

throat.


The Austrian mortality rate is very low too.
Bizarre theory but I'm going to continue speaking German round the house - though there's only so many times you can ask 'Can you tell me the way to the railway station please'
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@Steilhang, Laughing The compulsion to wear masks isn’t really going to aid communication either, which is difficult at the best of times. Might just switch to pen and paper Confused
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@cameronphillips2000, not sure the number of fatalities is really enough to see statistically relevant info. Currently there are just under 300 fatalities, the largest number of which are in Ticino. It will be a while before we can see whether there really is a difference between the French and German speaking areas. You might end up being right but too early to tell.

Perhaps it is German speakers fondness for drinking beer that is a factor Very Happy
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It might be in the way they record figures. Just seen a UK Govt announcement that they are expecting a spike in deaths tomorrow due to a change in the way they are counted.

Apparently, deaths outside hospitals have not been included in the daily totals. Also from tomorrow, all cases where Covid 19 was a factor will be recorded as such, regardless of actual cause of death.

I have no info about other Countries recording methods.

One would have thought that, in it's endeavours for uniformity, the EU would have insisted on all members collating stats in the same manner.

It would be a prerequisite in determining the most successful form of action.
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munich_irish wrote:
@cameronphillips2000, not sure the number of fatalities is really enough to see statistically relevant info. Currently there are just under 300 fatalities, the largest number of which are in Ticino. It will be a while before we can see whether there really is a difference between the French and German speaking areas. You might end up being right but too early to tell.

Perhaps it is German speakers fondness for drinking beer that is a factor Very Happy


Currently slightly more cases in French/Italian speaking regions. About double the mortality rate in non French/Italian speaking regions. (almost a sample of 16000 now. I've read a few articles on why. They seem to be highlighting cultural/behavioral and regional administrative differences.
It just seems odd to me that, proportionately, German speakers don't seems to be getting so quite so ill.
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brianatab wrote:
It might be in the way they record figures. Just seen a UK Govt announcement that they are expecting a spike in deaths tomorrow due to a change in the way they are counted.

Apparently, deaths outside hospitals have not been included in the daily totals. Also from tomorrow, all cases where Covid 19 was a factor will be recorded as such, regardless of actual cause of death.

I have no info about other Countries recording methods.

One would have thought that, in it's endeavours for uniformity, the EU would have insisted on all members collating stats in the same manner.

It would be a prerequisite in determining the most successful form of action.


One thing that has come out of this is that the EU seems to have little control over health. - only the way the country structures it's debt, to deal with the crisis. Whilst the scientists and medics seem to be pulling together, apparently the treasuries and Brussels are falling out....
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cameronphillips2000 wrote:
... the EU seems to have little control over health...
The individual EU member nations have always had primary responsibility for delivering their own health policies. Anything the EU does is to complement national policies, not determine them.
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@cameronphillips2000, Yes , suddenly the EU, Brexit , Grete Thunberg, global warming etc are all yesterday's news
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blunt - not in our house it isn't.

My brain can take in COVID19 and continue to work on climate change.

They are not entirely separate things.....
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Perhaps the habit of belting out off key versions of Sweet Caroline, Highway to Hell etc in apres spots might have signifcantly increased the chances of virus transmission https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-29/coronavirus-choir-outbreak. A typical apres bar would be far more crowded than a suburban church for a choir practice.
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@valais2, Just referring to the fact that I haven't seen a *news* item about any of those items lately.
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You know it makes sense.
@valais2,
Quote:

My brain can take in COVID19 and continue to work on climate change.
They are not entirely separate things.....
there's a great NYTimes article on CV19 & climate change here ...(requires free registration to read)
Quote:
Coronavirus has led to an astonishing shutdown of economic activity and a drastic reduction in the use of fossil fuels. In China, measures to contain the virus in February alone caused a drop in carbon emissions of an estimated 25 percent. The Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air estimates that this is equivalent to 200 million tons of carbon dioxide — more than half the annual emissions of Britain. In the short term, response to the pandemic seems to be having a positive effect on emissions. But in the longer term, will the virus help or harm the climate?
...
As the United Nations’ secretary general recently noted, the threat from coronavirus is temporary whereas the threat from heat waves, floods and extreme storms resulting in the loss of human life will remain with us for years.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/opinion/sunday/coronavirus-climate-change.html
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 Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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munich_irish wrote:
Perhaps the habit of belting out off key versions of Sweet Caroline, Highway to Hell etc in apres spots might have signifcantly increased the chances of virus transmission https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-29/coronavirus-choir-outbreak. A typical apres bar would be far more crowded than a suburban church for a choir practice.


also, how many times are cups & glasses washed properly? hot enough with detergent to kill the virus? Quite easily live on the glass for hours/days.
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Mr.Egg wrote:
also, how many times are cups & glasses washed properly? hot enough with detergent to kill the virus? Quite easily live on the glass for hours/days.


In the case of the Kitzloch, Ischgl's break-out point, very regularly. The bar staff never re-use glasses and they go straight in to the kitchen and in to the industrial dish washer. Well they did under the old owners and I'd be suprised if the new owners this year had changed the process.
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Bar staff the world over handle used and clean glasses continuously. If they had to wash their hands in between, they would never have time to serve anybody. Transmission of a virus from a used glass to a clean one (or more) is always a possibility, the same as any surface where it can survive for more than a few minutes.
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@brianatab,
This makes me think of two common practices in the UK:
bar staff passing a pint glass to a customer (or just putting it on the counter) whilst holding it by the rim;
when glasses come out of the washer, instead of allowing them to dry off naturally, they are polished with a cloth, both the cloth and the hands holding the cloth probably being dirty.
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Mjit wrote:
Mr.Egg wrote:
also, how many times are cups & glasses washed properly? hot enough with detergent to kill the virus? Quite easily live on the glass for hours/days.


In the case of the Kitzloch, Ischgl's break-out point, very regularly. The bar staff never re-use glasses and they go straight in to the kitchen and in to the industrial dish washer. Well they did under the old owners and I'd be suprised if the new owners this year had changed the process.
The spread of the virus in Kitzloch was supposedly caused by the game of 'beer pong' where you have to spit a ping pong ball into a beer glass & win a schnapps if you get it in... Unfortunately they were reusing the same ping pong ball rolling eyes
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@Steilhang, That sounds pretty grim even if you're not in the middle of a pandemic Skullie
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Quote:

Unfortunately they were reusing the same ping pong ball

@Steilhang, madness
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@Markymark29, there's a reason why I don't do Ischgl!
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@Steilhang, Mmm we went once 15 years ago and never again, those ping-pong balls likely go other places too Laughing
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@Steilhang, no worse than all sorts of things that go on elsewhere. Watching dazed and confused folk (often young chinese students) stagger into the Augustinerkeller to attempt to drink yet another mass as the last stop on a "guided tour" of the beer gardens can be a sad sight not to mention the Italians at the Wies'n.
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Mjit wrote:
PeterGee wrote:
munich_irish wrote:
Maybe the brits might need to look a bit closer to home https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/mar/22/liverpool-atletico-madrid-coronavirus-champions-league . Hopefully there will be no bad consequences here but only time will tell.

As to Ischgl, maybe a business owner did deliberately hide evidence that his staff were infected and behaved recklessly, sure we will find out in the months to come. Equally possible they simply did not understand the enormity of all this until too late, plenty of that has been happening all over the globe.


You may be missing the point. On 1st March 14 Icelanders returned home with CV having visited Ischgl. Iceland declared Ischgl a non go area, in line with parts of ital and Wuhan. Austria declared this was nonsense, they caught it on the plane.

That is I would guess what needs to be investigated.


On the first point the epicentre of the outbreak in Ischgl does seem to be the Kitzloch, which was bought out over the summer for what would have been a very pretty penny, so there may have been a desire to try and cross fingers and stay open, hoping it wasn't Covid19. That said I think it's more likely that by the time one member of staff had gone from "feeling a bit under the weather" to thinking it might be Covid19 after all, they would have already infects a handful of customers and fellow staff anyway...who would have been infectious and working for a day or so before feeling too ill to work,...


On the second point I'm not sure it would ever be possible to say where they caught it if the Icelanders only developed symptoms after returning home (and if they'd had them in resort they should have reported/self isolated in resort, not boarded a plane home). If they picked it up in Ischgl they would probably have infected other people on the plane so others on the plane would have developed it, and then you're in to a chicken/egg game on who had it first. Or maybe they didn't catch it either in Ischgl or in the plane, but just walking past someone in the airport who'd just flown in from Italy, or...


A little money ? They bought it for 12 mill euros - not sure they will get a good ROI on that anytime soon - They did a lot of damage to the name!
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