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[Ford_Prefect]

33. I accept your correction about what is and hasn't happened in Sweden. I stand corrected, thank you.

My answer above was not intended to apply to Sweden beyond what I read in the Guardian and NYT. I regret that they were so ill informed and inaccurate.

As to the use of the term "Herd Immunity" I must beg to differ. I stand by my remarks there. They are specific to that term and the repeated misuse of it.

We have a broken national political system here which we are trying to repair, an almost non-existent official response to the scale of our pandemic (until this week), and a media who too often write whatever feeds the best and most click-worthy headline which the editors insist upon. As such the careless and often uninformed way such terms are thrown around mangle truth. It has no place in describing human situations at all. I understand the desire to reach such a condition but it is so far from accurate to apply it this way. It is like trying to use interface as a verb. Habit and lazy thinking may make its use common but they cannot change what it actually describes. You can't get there from here may be even more accurate.

Inoculation will help build a population with resistance, but that is not on a genetic level nor, as it seems, is it durable or transferable. So far 5 to 11 months seems a likely average depending on the person, the vaccine, the degree of exposure, and the range of virus mutation. As we go forward and more is known that could change and improve. Breakthroughs have been surprisingly early and one has reason to hope such revelations will continue. However we also note that world wide there have been markedly different reactions to COVID-19 infection both as to symptoms and severity.

Appropriate behavior and reasonable precautions could have reduced the impact and spread of COVID-19 dramatically. Without referring to the departed idiocracy by name, their attempts to profiteer their way through the pandemic as well as the complete lack of leadership skills at many levels of their corrupt administration and the wanton, unproven accusations of political manipulation by anyone who offered a different view of how severe and how large the threat was were almost as damaging as the Disease. Indeed they may have made it many times more difficult to respond to the entire situation, what with nearly 1/2 of Americans believing COVID is a hoax, that the efforts to control it through masks and social distancing are political theater, or that the vaccines are not to be trusted nor accepted, that Public servants, doctors and other health professionals and the federal government are in on the hoax and trying to control the minds and behavior of a large portion of our society against their will, we have a lot on our plate to thank the Useful Idiot (and Lord Rupert) for.