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Comment by pugio | Hacker News Reader

I'm an American living in Melbourne right now (and, I guess, for the foreseeable future) and I've been very impressed with the way the government here has been handling restrictions. They're really doing everything they can to impress the seriousness of this on the population, and of the paramount importance of saving lives.

When I chat with my friends and family in the US, I find myself quietly surprised when they mention things like travel or hanging out with friends. "Oh right, not everyone is locked down like we are." It's tough in some ways - my partner and I really miss hiking - but we're more than willing to keep this up until it's clear that we've contained the spread.

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Something like hiking with your partner is such an astronomically low risk activity for contagion that its prohibition would frustrate me a lot. But I guess the way to justify it is that makes enforcement of actually contagious activity easier, since there are so few people in the street they can all be pulled over.

Everything is safe if no one else is doing it, I imagine the concern is that even hiking trails can get crowded. Not if you’re off in a super remote place, but if you’re near a big city and a large percentage of residents all want to go for a hike within 30 minutes of where they live on a Saturday morning, the trails will get crowded. There are bottlenecks like a narrow part of a trail or the public bathrooms where people will have to come into close proximity. And of course you will have people that will inevitably meet up with groups of friends they don’t live with on the hike and spread it that way.

If everyone were to hike as responsibly as possible it would be fine, but in terms of broad stroke rules for public health, it seems you have to err on the side of being more strict than you would be just for yourself because people are always bending the rules and acting unpredictably (whether intentionally or not).

Imagine that everything is prohibited but hiking.

Soon the trails will be full of hiking newbies.

It was impressive the number of people « discovering » they like jogging in Paris when it was one of the only outdoor activity authorized...

Out of curiosity, why can’t you go hiking? That seems like one of the few activities where you can just about guarantee social distancing by going to more remote areas. Is it explicitly prohibited? If so, I have to question the logic behind that.

You can only exercise for 1 hour a day, and you must wear a mask everywhere outside and they have the police out in popular rural areas enforcing this.

I'm not sure if its allowed to drive 2 hours to walk for 1 hour or not. I doubt it.

Sounds like a dystopian police state

A strict, short lockdown is far preferable to the five months so far of half assed containment that has failed to even reduce cases relative to the beginning of lockdown.

To make this work, there must be enforcement. From my observations, most spread is coming from people not following guidelines.

Current lockdown rules restrict us to 5km radius from our homes.. so most likely they can't get to the hiking spots. I'm in a similar situation. It sucks!

It’s pretty much because they don’t want people going more than 5km away from their houses so as to make enforcement easier. Also, Melbourne is locked out from the rest of the state with police roadblocks due to low cases in the country and high cases in the city, so a lot of hiking spots are inaccessible.

Hiking? That's more "social distancing" than staying in your apartment. Better for your health too. My wife and I have been hiking several times a week for the past couple of months. Weather is great!

Reminds me of the current situation with Canada. You can get into Canada on a plane. But you can't in a car. Which option seems more epidemiologically sound to you: a single dude in a car, or a can of sardines coughing and sneezing on one another for hours?

Metabolic and mental health!

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