covid 19 closing beaches, any more to report?

[Foil]

why are beaches closing using covid 19 as the reason?
flag beach on fuerteventura closed yesterday, including the school and hire centre there, it's mostly a quiet beach in winter,
and the little boat trip to lobos island just off Flag beach, they have just started to charge people as they get off the small boats to land on the island, I thought that was a non inhabited island with a lighthouse and not much else.
tourist trade has now fallen off a cliff,
but now the locals cant use their beaches. is any other place taken these steps as most beaches rarely get more than a dozen kitesurfers anyways, unless its a tourist beach in summer.

one case of covid 19 reported on fuerteventura from a guy who had traveled from Italy.

some beaches are deserted most of the same, surely these are not included,

[Havre]

I think why is quite clear - better to "overreact" than "underreact" at this point.

Quite astonishing how little the average person seem to understand and process in terms of information coming from governments etc. In the case of Spain it seems like they didn't want there to be any ambiguity about what is allowed and what is not.

[bragnouff]

Not too sure of the reason in Fuerte, I assume they follow Spain's guidance. I've seen official recommendations from various sports governing bodies in France (FFVL for kiting) asking to avoid any unnecessary activity that could result in an injury. The idea being that the hospital beds are, or are about to be in short supply, and the hospital staff being stretched out would rather not have to deal with accidents that could have been avoided through abstinence. In case of accident it could mean you're not treated correctly because of the overload, or you're treated, but someone else isn't.
That's a debatable reason, but my experience over the last 20 years of kiting has shown that you might really think that you'll take it easy, play it safe, and enjoy kiting with all those good intentions, but the most serious accidents still happen in the most stupid cases, and not really in extreme challenging conditions where you'd expect them. Shit happens, that's a fact.

[Leon van Bergen]

I have read that any kind of water sports is prohibited in Belgium from March 12, also at open sea ..

[Foil]

Not too sure of the reason in Fuerte, I assume they follow Spain's guidance. I've seen official recommendations from various sports governing bodies in France (FFVL for kiting) asking to avoid any unnecessary activity that could result in an injury. The idea being that the hospital beds are, or are about to be in short supply, and the hospital staff being stretched out would rather not have to deal with accidents that could have been avoided through abstinence. In case of accident it could mean you're not treated correctly because of the overload, or you're treated, but someone else isn't.
That's a debatable reason, but my experience over the last 20 years of kiting has shown that you might really think that you'll take it easy, play it safe, and enjoy kiting with all those good intentions, but the most serious accidents still happen in the most stupid cases, and not really in extreme challenging conditions where you'd expect them. Shit happens, that's a fact.

great point made and understood.
however when a blanket ban happens and it makes no sense at that place and time, ie remote island locations without anyone in hospital at that time needing a bed or treatment then the ban may well be ignored and then we have a bigger problem and local confusion, and trust wavers in the decisions made for that region, many regions do need the strict rules and the population then see its a valid reason to take decisions that restrict movement.

[Toby]

Spain has started emergency plans .

This includes no one is allowed to access the beaches.
Canaries belong to Spain.

BTW...influenza killed 25.000 people in 2017/2018...and Life kept normal.

[Flyingseb]

BTW...influenza killed 25.000 people in 2017/2018...and Life kept normal.

By the way, this is just confusing people that still don't understand the seriousness of the situation. Downplaying it is what causes it now to spread with more force than ever.
Are you sure you want to be proved wrong with a larger number of deaths, by the end of the crisis?
Influenza is not responsible for overwhelming our health care system, that is more or less adapted to deal with it every year.
Now, in Italy, in France, like before in China, doctors have to choose whose going to survive, and whose not, because they lack of life saving equipment.

[UKSurf]

bTW...influenza killed 25.000 people in 2017/2018...and Life kept normal.

This is nothing like the seasonal flu, this is a highly infectious SARS variant that is spreading like wildfire and that no one has any resistance to. But I hope the people outside of the medical field who are comparing this to the flu are right and that lots of people are not going to die....

[gator1]

Beaches seem to be the safest places to be for corona.
Sun, fresh air, warmth.

They should advice people to wear masks, but I think they wont because there is no stock and they don't want people to use up the supply.

Just a side note: 180,000 people die from sugar in a year, 80,000 from alcohol, 8 million a year from tobacco. This doesn't get in the news because its boring.

[Havre]

Normal masks really only works on people that are sick - not keeping healthy ones healthy.

All these sides notes are not really all that relevant. You could always refer to some situation worse and we are therefore just to accept anything that is better than that? Would be rather absurd way of going about our business as humans.

The big issues now are uncertainty and time. My guess is that some weeks from now (maybe months) life will go back to some sort of normal and a lot of people will get sick. Some will then say "I told you so", but the point is that some weeks from now hospitals etc. are hopefully better prepared to handle a bigger wave of sick people - in terms of equipment, how to organised a hospital that will basically have one COVID-19 section and one "normal" section. And hopefully there will also be a better understanding on how patients should be treated - antivirals etc.