Dark times and our forum

Hi - well, all of you will be watching the news ... you will be seeing that dark times are upon us, not just individual nations but as a species.. Now, I am not here trying to be sensationalist - moderators please note - but I think it is germane to my post .... you will know of the lock downs in various countries, including your own .... in the UK our government, advised by scientists, is going for 'herd immunity' - that if 80% of our population catch this plague then we will be immune as a nation and their forecast is 80% of the population will get the virus .. but do the math ... currently the death rate seems to be between 2.7 and 4.7% but if only just 1% of UK infections lead to death then we are looking at losing just over 500,000 of our people - in the USA at 1% they could be looking at losing 1.9 million citizens! - may the Good God help us if the rate is higher .... and this is the same everywhere as all the 'containment' and 'delay' policies are not to do with stopping the virus but with slowing it down enough that our health systems can cope .... and we are not expecting the peak for at least three months, and are told that it will return in the winter to decimate us again...

So - our forum .... we are a family. Sure, sometimes we don't get on, sometimes we think the moderators are too harsh, sometimes we think that they are not harsh enough ... sometimes we wildly disagree with a post - normal 'family' stuff .... we are global and therefore we have to accept that we are going to lose some of our friends .. virtual friends, true, but friends nonetheless ..... but ... I think that we have to keep this forum going, keep it alive - ok, everyone planning has now postponed and the truth is we don't know when we will be safe again .. now, this forum is definitely the best there is online but Ivar is not rich, so he has a shop which subsidises this venture ... he needs to keep this forum going, via ads, via shop sales, via subscriptions .. if we, because of the "me" reason that we are not going this year, drop away from the forum - will it still be here when we come back?

I also have a Camino shop - caminostore.org (raises funds for my first aid supplies) .. now, I closed it in October as I sold my home and travelled to Spain for a while, the plan being to open it again when I settled into a new home. I now have a new place and will be settling in next week, but have decided not to open again until this is all over as Ivar and I sell many of the same items (though I make unique pendants and earrings and Many other items that he doesn't! ) but I have decided not to open my shop again until late autumn or possibly even next spring .. as I want it that if pilgrims want to buy pilgrim items let them buy them from Ivar's outlet, which also supports not only Ivar but our forum, our virtual family.

So - dear friends, fellow pilgrims - veteran or virgin - let us keep posting, keep asking questions, keep giving advice, about equipment, fears, possibilities, and keep using Ivar's shop outlet, throughout these grim and dark times, so that when this dark time has passed and all becomes clear again that Ivar and this forum isn't one of the casualties of what will definitely be a global economic disaster - just saying, just my point of view ...