Semi-educated predictions on when we can climb?

David Reid wrote:

Oh it's out there. I got it from a friend who was showing zero symptoms.

There’s a story going around about a guy in Chicago who killed 10 people because he went to a funeral with a slight cough.  It affects people differently.

revans wrote:

Like LSD? 

More like herpes, is the implication at least

from a friend, something to think about:  "The current approach of isolating and shutting everything down is only furthering infections and our ability to fight the infection in the long run.
This statement came from a known immunologist:
Our current everyone-stay-home approach is anything but enlightened by immunological theory. Quite the opposite: As billions of people worldwide are currently in their homes, in close confinement, in situations of extreme fear and psychological distress, being told by their governments to go to the grocery store as rarely as possible, we are creating an environment which is more and more conducive for facilitating a virus with enhanced virulence in the future. How are we doing this?
1) Lowering everyone’s resistance to viruses by scaring, stressing, and discouraging them from normal activities including buying food and drink.
2) Keeping everyone at home in effect creates just the immunosuppressive scenario that fosters flu during the winter time — cold, close quarters and stress.
3) Discouraging direct human contact including hugging and kissing, and directly loving one another suppresses immunity. With social distancing, our species never would have made it this far.
4) Preventing young people from being exposed to COVID 19 short circuits “herd immunity.”
In stark contrast to the quixotic fantasies driving our stay-at-home American approach, which sees all new viruses as equally terrifying, British health authorities are taking the more sober approach, one which is solidly based on contemporary virological, immunological and evolutionary biological theory: letting children go to school, to acquire COVID 19 and become naturally immune is absolutely the best way to assure that this new virus learns to peacefully coexist with we human beings. Viruses have always been with us, and are part of our very genomes.
I have met few modern immunologists who believe, as Dr. Fauci does, that washing one’s hands 50 times a day is the best way to stay healthy. At the Ghost lab at the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Immunology in the 2000s, we often discussed how over-cleanliness and over-protection from viruses and bacteria was a very poor public health approach: too much hand washing actually prevents normal development of the immune system, and leads to autoimmune and other immune-regulatory disturbances later in life. That “hygiene hypothesis” is well known and well accepted by most immunologists."

Aidan Mickleburgh wrote: and am more likely to overwhelm EMS by crashing my car on the way to the grocery store than by breaking a leg or something bouldering. 

Definitely a good point about the grocery store va the woods, but this is BS. You're driving to both, so that's a wash (likely a longer drive to the crag, which tips it the wrong way for your argument), but there's basically zero chance that you're going to break your leg in the store and zero chance that you'd need a mutli-person rescue, so the crag travel/accident odds are much greater than the store travel/accident odds. I saw a grounder and rescue last year - took about 15 people a couple of sweaty hours to move the guy 50 yds to the road over uneven ground. That is a significant amount of contact for those folks.

Sean Cobourn wrote: from a friend, something to think about:  "The current approach of isolating and shutting everything down is only furthering infections and our ability to fight the infection in the long run.
This statement came from a known immunologist:
Our current everyone-stay-home approach is anything but enlightened by immunological theory. Quite the opposite: As billions of people worldwide are currently in their homes, in close confinement, in situations of extreme fear and psychological distress, being told by their governments to go to the grocery store as rarely as possible, we are creating an environment which is more and more conducive for facilitating a virus with enhanced virulence in the future. How are we doing this?
1) Lowering everyone’s resistance to viruses by scaring, stressing, and discouraging them from normal activities including buying food and drink.
2) Keeping everyone at home in effect creates just the immunosuppressive scenario that fosters flu during the winter time — cold, close quarters and stress.
3) Discouraging direct human contact including hugging and kissing, and directly loving one another suppresses immunity. With social distancing, our species never would have made it this far.
4) Preventing young people from being exposed to COVID 19 short circuits “herd immunity.”
In stark contrast to the quixotic fantasies driving our stay-at-home American approach, which sees all new viruses as equally terrifying, British health authorities are taking the more sober approach, one which is solidly based on contemporary virological, immunological and evolutionary biological theory: letting children go to school, to acquire COVID 19 and become naturally immune is absolutely the best way to assure that this new virus learns to peacefully coexist with we human beings. Viruses have always been with us, and are part of our very genomes.
I have met few modern immunologists who believe, as Dr. Fauci does, that washing one’s hands 50 times a day is the best way to stay healthy. At the Ghost lab at the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Immunology in the 2000s, we often discussed how over-cleanliness and over-protection from viruses and bacteria was a very poor public health approach: too much hand washing actually prevents normal development of the immune system, and leads to autoimmune and other immune-regulatory disturbances later in life. That “hygiene hypothesis” is well known and well accepted by most immunologists."

The only problem with what you're saying is that NO ONE has ever suggested that social distancing is a long term fix. In this country, it has ALWAYS been a short term fix so that our healthcare system doesn't turn into scenes from Italy. Unfortunately the world is a much more dynamic place than a lab. 

Sean Cobourn wrote: from a friend, something to think about:  "The current approach of isolating and shutting everything down is only furthering infections and our ability to fight the infection in the long run.
This statement came from a known immunologist:
Our current everyone-stay-home approach is anything but enlightened by immunological theory. Quite the opposite: As billions of people worldwide are currently in their homes, in close confinement, in situations of extreme fear and psychological distress, being told by their governments to go to the grocery store as rarely as possible, we are creating an environment which is more and more conducive for facilitating a virus with enhanced virulence in the future. How are we doing this?
1) Lowering everyone’s resistance to viruses by scaring, stressing, and discouraging them from normal activities including buying food and drink.
2) Keeping everyone at home in effect creates just the immunosuppressive scenario that fosters flu during the winter time — cold, close quarters and stress.
3) Discouraging direct human contact including hugging and kissing, and directly loving one another suppresses immunity. With social distancing, our species never would have made it this far.
4) Preventing young people from being exposed to COVID 19 short circuits “herd immunity.”
In stark contrast to the quixotic fantasies driving our stay-at-home American approach, which sees all new viruses as equally terrifying, British health authorities are taking the more sober approach, one which is solidly based on contemporary virological, immunological and evolutionary biological theory: letting children go to school, to acquire COVID 19 and become naturally immune is absolutely the best way to assure that this new virus learns to peacefully coexist with we human beings. Viruses have always been with us, and are part of our very genomes.
I have met few modern immunologists who believe, as Dr. Fauci does, that washing one’s hands 50 times a day is the best way to stay healthy. At the Ghost lab at the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Immunology in the 2000s, we often discussed how over-cleanliness and over-protection from viruses and bacteria was a very poor public health approach: too much hand washing actually prevents normal development of the immune system, and leads to autoimmune and other immune-regulatory disturbances later in life. That “hygiene hypothesis” is well known and well accepted by most immunologists."

Yep, this makes sense to me. And contrary to popular thought, the more that get the virus, the better.  Except the vulnerable.

Sean Cobourn wrote:This statement came from a known immunologist:

Who is not cited by name, because? 

J Gargamel wrote:

Based on everything the infectious disease doctors are saying. Its actually GOOD NEWS that so many more people have the anti-bodies.  The experts have said from the very beginning that 'herd-immunity' is the best protection.  .. ...    Its a GOOD THING that up to 85 times more people than predicted may already have the anti-bodies.   It would also support the tinfoil-hat-wearing groups point that the massive shut down was out of proportion to the threat and just a cover up...   

But, at this point its impossible to ever know for sure. 

A silver lining, we as a country have learned a lot ourselves.

This, of course, supposes that:

1) the TEST is not giving a "false positive" for the Covid antibody(ies).  Why might this be?...maybe the test "reads" an antibody that is similar to the Covid, or maybe the test was designed, or manufactured poorly. Also, what, EXACTLY does "85 times more likely" mean?  It does NOT mean that in 100 people 85 tested positive for antibodies. (Which, I would think, many people might think it means. )  In my state 1287 cases reported in a population of 1.4 million, or about 0.9 cases per 1000 people.  Let's call it 1 case per 1000.  Then, if 1000 people are tested for antibodies and instead of finding 1 case, they find 85 cases..that's "85 times more likely", BUT..even if antibodies provide protection, there are still 915 people of those 1000 susceptible to infection. (Note, that's just my interpretation of "85 times more likely"; anyone with direct knowledge of the study, please correct ! )

2) that antibodies (as they usually do for most viruses ) provide an immunity to the disease.

I'm glad stupid people are not presently calling the shots.

Sean Cobourn wrote: 
4) Preventing young people from being exposed to COVID 19 short circuits “herd immunity.”

I wonder how many people talking about herd immunity understand what it means and how it translates to this situation. For a disease with higher average # of secondary infections in a susceptible population (R0), you need a greater percentage of the population to be resistant to get herd immunity. It's not known exactly what the R0 is here, but the last estimate I saw was 2.8, which would mean you need like ~70% of the population to get infected to get herd immunity. 

If you look at the current best estimates of infection fatality rates ( medrxiv.org/content/10.1101… ), this means A LOT of deaths. It's true that the deaths are heavily weighted towards older people, and I've heard many people say they don't care about deaths of old people. I just want people to understand what herd immunity means.

Death rate tables:

GDodds dodds wrote: Been staying local and staying distant lately. Curious if anyone has any semi educated insight into when you might be able to cross state lines and climb etc...?  Is it too early to ask? thoughts? different areas open sooner rather thn later etc..?

GDodds - According to the IMHE (produces one of the models being used by the gov), Maine might be able to open up May 18th. You can check the expected opening for different states here: covid19.healthdata.org/unit… . I think this is probably as good a semi-educated guess as you are likely to get since it gets updated with new data and various state governments are using it as a guide (so even if the model is inaccurate, the people making the reopening decisions are using it to make the decision).   

Hope this helps - I didn't read all of the replies because the forums are turning into a cesspool, so this might have already been posted 

Sean, where is the beginning quote mark, from your immunologist friend's commentary?

Ted Pinson wrote:

Anyways...I didn’t know there were so many epidemiologists on MP!

I had a coworker casually throw out that he was an expert on this. Someone called bullshit, but turns out he has a doctorate in epidemiology with a focus on national response.  The crazy part was his dissertation from two years ago is written theorizing what is currently going on. I read it and the little I understood had me constantly saying wtf.

Long Ranger wrote:

Who is not cited by name, because? 

Dwight Schrute.

Ted Pinson wrote:

Anyways...I didn’t know there were so many epidemiologists on MP!

New graduates from Google University. Last December they all received their degrees in constitutional law.

In the coming weeks I expect to see a lot of new experts in economics.

Artem Vasilyev wrote:

Wouldn't this mean that we are on a path to herd immunity? 

Not without a vaccine unless you're willing to wait years. It looks like we will need at least a 70% infection rate to achieve herd immunity - that's an awful lot of deaths to have.

If cases are much higher than what is reported (likely), then the death rate is therefore lower than what was previously assumed. 

It's very likely that Covid-19 deaths have been/are being severely undercounted.

Personally I'd be very curious to test and see if I have antibodies against COVID.

Also remember that right now, we don't know if having had COVID-19 confers any immunity or for how long.

Big Dick Johnson wrote:

The movie Contagion from 2011 has tons of direct inferences to today.

'Contagion' was written to closely parallel a Nipah virus outbreak (one of the viruses I work on) which first emerged in Malaysia in 1998-99 from flying fox bats, and re-emerges almost every year in India and/or Bangladesh. Probably the most 'scary' virus IMO...

Marc801 C wrote: Not without a vaccine unless you're willing to wait years. It looks like we will need at least a 70% infection rate to achieve herd immunity - that's an awful lot of deaths to have.

It's very likely that Covid-19 deaths have been/are being severely undercounted.

Also remember that right now, we don't know if having had COVID-19 confers any immunity or for how long.

Basically this. Not enough people are stopping to think how long herd immunity takes and at what cost. Everyone just wants to get back regardless of cost. The best weapon we have is being used. Just pray that researchers find a vaccine that is effective and doesn't cost $80,000 for treatment of one individual (Remdesivir). 

Edit: Should be noted that Remdesivir is an antiviral and not a vaccine.

Max Manson wrote: Stanford researchers have been doing a lot of antibody testing lately and (not surprising at all) are finding out that WAY more people have had the virus than previous estimates. I think they found that in their test pool, 50-85 times more people had the antibodies than the models said. Meaning the death rate could be 50-85 times lower. The testing is not exact, and it was just in the Bay Area, but it definitely shows the estimates were way low. I’ll find the link to the actual study. Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but hopefully as we learn more things like this, the process of getting back to normal will speed up

There appear to be some pretty significant issues with that particular study: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal-flaws-in-stanford-study-of-coronavirus-prevalence/ 

Also interesting to note that the actual observed prevalence of antibodies in the study was 1.5% whereas the 85x is based on an adjusted prevalence of 4.2% (demographic based adjustments applied by the researchers get them from the 1.5% to 4.2%). Not my field but, as a layperson, it seems surprising that statistical adjustments account for that much of the result.

Marc801 C wrote:

New graduates from Google University. Last December they all received their degrees in constitutional law.

In the coming weeks I expect to see a lot of new experts in economics.

While I agree with your stances here Marc anyone who has been around on MP knows you are the Dean of Google University