Don't feel bad or like a fool.
While what I posted earlier is true, let's look at the reality side of it now. We can see how many times the countdown has been viewed in real time. So far this year it has been viewed 76,053 times and there are 10,676 posts. So it's been viewed roughly 7.1 times for every time someone posted. The vast majority of that is going to be all of us active people getting on and reading but not posting. Then there are also the members we know like RJD, Jayish, Jeff, and Maureen who get on and read but don't post much. So while yes, the forum is open for everyone to read, in reality, that's not happening. Sure there may be a few people who stumble across the site and start clicking through and reading, but there aren't hundreds or thousands of them. I doubt there are even tens of them throughout the year.
In fact, I just checked and there are no guests viewing the site at all right now.