J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by andymol2

Ski club of GB policies quite comprehensive with fewer of the caveats about what they define as off piste.
Virgin too.

Just filled my Locator form - for UK a negative lateral flow within preceeding 24 hours of arrival time or a negative PCR within 48 hours. For some countries the PCR can be up to 3 days before arrival but not the UK.

This presumes you are fully jabbed. Gets more complicatd if you are travelling with children who are not vaccinated but of an age where they are vaccinating in Italy.

One might opine that barricading the front door after the enemy has entered through the back door and the windows is not a successful strategy.

It is abundantly clear that there is no possibility of eradicating this strain of coronovirus any more effectively than we have any other coronovirus in our past.

In the past new coronoviruses have hit human kind. Killing many, especially the elderly and infirm. Children mount an effective response as they do against most infections and sail through it courtesy of an immune system that is in tip top learning mode. Adults have a rougher time but generally do OK. Once the peaks have passed the numbers dwindle forming part of the winter colds, going round every few years infecting the next generation of children and re-infecting those who's immunity was dwindled giving them a bad cold. Ultimately that is what will happen to covid. We will hopefully, using the vaccines diminish the severity of the pandemic but we won't eradicate it.

At what point do countries open up to travel properly with a vaccine requirement until the numbers have dwindled to the point that we stop checking vaccine status? Not for a few years but pre-travel testing is expensive and ineffective.

They once claimed to have eradicated head lice from the Isle of Wight, only for the next ferry to come in.

That's where we are with Covid, let people who are unlikely to end up in hospital travel freely and restrict the unvaccinated both because they could end up in hospital but also act as superspreaders.

A word of caution for those of you who may have taken part in the vaccine trials:
The Novovax and Valneva vaccines which seem to have worked well but are not yet currently licienced in the UK don't yet seem to be acceptable for the UK (and presumably EU) vaccine certification requirements. I know we have been told we can re-vaccinate (with Pfizer) those whou took part in the Novovax trials so that they can obtain a vaccine passort. Seems a poor way to thank those who did the public spirited thing and took part in the trials!

Sauze once had a reputation as a party town but seems to have rather lost that reputation and seems a pleasant place to go out for a quiet drink.

The Milky Way is a big resort and it's easy to access Sestriere and San Sicario. The link over to Sestriere can be affected by weather.

I will gladly go again at some point in the future. The Italian resorts tend to cater for those with Coeliac disease better than the French resorts which makes life easier when skiing with my eldest daughter so another thumbs up from me.

Crowd funding not going well then!

Ultimately many of the ski areas kept having their opening put back and those that are open seem to be for locals only so the abandonmentof the season was pretty much certain.

I guess they kept their options open for as long as they could before accepting the enevitable and reaching the point that it became economically pointless to open up for at most a week or 2 at the end of the season.

Who really wants to go skiing without the mountain restaurants being open or something to do in the evenings even if the lifts did open? Holidays are supposed to be fun and a covid secure holiday isn't the same for many. And who is going to book for this season with the very high chance of your holiday being cancelled and having to fight for a refund.

I doubt we can interpret too much into herd immunity from one small area with its permanent poupulation and a vast transient pupulation in normal winter months.

When Isgl flagged up as a potential Covid hotspot last year (albeit on an Icelandic public health website) we thought they had got it mixed up with a place of similar name in the far East.

We can only summise as to the impact the European ski resorts had on the spread of Covid in early 2020, with lots of relatively young and healthy people in crowded, wet bars - ideal for transmission of Covid to people who would go home and be relatively unlikely to be significantly unwell.