I just got an email from a girl I met on Whitney eight years ago. She encouraged me to “unleash my wisdomâ€, so here goes:
The problem isn’t the closures, your power-hungry governor, or the local Forest Service employees. It’s the COVID-19 pandemic. In case you haven’t heard, we have enough dead people to reach from the visitor center in Lone Pine to the visitor center in Lee Vining.
I did the morbid math on this and found that the bolded statement above is literally correct and not just hyperbole. Yikes!
Number of Americans dead from the virus = 118,758 as of this morning
Average adult's height: Five and a half feet (Men are about 5'9", women are about 5'4". The overwhelming majority of deaths have been adults and not children)
118,758 people * 5.5 feet / person = 653,169 feet = 124 miles
The actual distance between the visitor center in Lone Pine and the visitor center in Lee Vining is 125 miles. Words of wisdom, indeed.
