I'm sharing that one.

@SpikeTalon the quote is something my hubs says.

Is there scientific data that actually says that herd immunity didn't occur? Or does it say it doesn't develop as quickly as we might hope. And how do you define devastating results? Being the one out of 100 people to die of anything is devastating to that one person, but to someone terrified that millions are going to die in a given population and the end result is actually only thousands, those results are not devastating but heartening. Any death is to be regretted in this scenario but when the fear of death prevents the living of life the fear is the greater disease.

Herd immunity is the inevitable outcome of the pandemic. Sweden will achieve it sooner than most.

@pbuck0145 The U.S. has a little less than 2 million people infected known. It's population is about 330 million. It could go either way. We could end up getting herd immunity before a vaccine arrives of rates of infection shoot up for some reason, or we might get a vaccine before that happens.

We'd probably have to have at least 50% of our population getting it before something like herd immunity develops.

In the meantime, we've kept our hospitals from flooding like they did in Italy. We're giving the virus fewer chances to mutate into something like a stronger version of the flu that would stay around forever that we'd have to develop a new vaccine for every year, and immunity doesn't last forever. I don't think they're aware of how long it would last yet.

New Zealand had pretty much stopped it in its tracks. If other nations let it spread out everywhere and after a few months, or a year, that stops making people immune, other nations could have it sweep through their populations twice before New Zealand gets it once.

Also, you can always open up the economy, but once the disease gets out of control your choices get a lot more limited. We've been taking the more cautious route because we're always learning more about the disease.

With the Spanish Flue, St. Louis Missouri kept lots of businesses closed and forbade large gatherings and closed down schools. Their death rate was something considerably less than that of Philadelphia, which just let a parade go on in the early stages.

I'm surprised at Georgia's infection rate not shooting skyward despite them opening up lots of businesses...but that doesn't necessarily mean keeping businesses closed was the worst choice. It's sounding like some large percentage of cases are asymptomatic. Maybe keeping things locked down allowed asymptomatic variants to spread faster than the symptomatic variants, inoculating more people with weaker strains or something without them coming to harm. It's hard to tell at this stage.

Much better to point out the obvious a day late than to deny the obvious.