(Illustration found here).

Although the CDC released easier guidelines today in lifestyle choices for fully-vaccinated folks, the playbook continues it’s still dangerous for COVID-19, and even now, a year later, we still don’t know a shitload of stuff about it: ‘ “As more people get vaccinated, levels of Covid-19 infection decline in communities, and as our understanding of Covid immunity improves, we look forward to updating these recommendations to the public.”‘

In the fight for a return to ‘normalcy‘ in the pandemic war, a major threshold must be reached — ‘herd immunity‘ — where enough of the population becomes immune the virus sort of evaporates and is no longer a health concern. However, apparently right now there’s no true marker for when that happens.
Also, precise measurement for herd immunity for SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, is unknown

Anthony Fauci maybe doesn’t know for sure (NY Times in December):

In the pandemic’s early days, Dr. Fauci tended to cite the same 60-to-70 percent estimate that most experts did.
About a month ago, he began saying “70, 75 percent” in television interviews.
And last week, in an interview with CNBC News, he said “75, 80, 85 percent” and “75 to 80-plus percent.”
…
Hard as it may be to hear, he said, he believes that it may take close to 90-percent immunity to bring the virus to a halt — almost as much as is needed to stop a measles outbreak.

The mask situation is distressing. This process to herd immunity to stop COVID spread is maybe going to be a meat-grinding pisser. A problem in reaching herd immunity are Republicans — from The Washington Post this morning:

While other groups have also been wary about the shots, for instance, communities of color, polling shows that hesitancy has started to wane while GOP resistance to the vaccines remains relatively high.
A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released last month found that 28-percent of Republicans said they would “definitely not” get vaccinated, and another 18-percent said they would “wait and see” before getting a shot.
As a result, millions of Republicans could remain unvaccinated, a potential roadblock to efforts to achieve the high levels of immunity needed to stop the virus in the United States — an irony that isn’t lost on Trump officials who worked to end the pandemic.

“It’s a little bit confounding,” said Paul Mango, who helped lead the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative that sped coronavirus vaccines to market in less than a year.
“I really don’t understand it, to tell you the truth. To me, this was the most spectacular medical development in our lifetimes.”

Republicans, advanced by the T-Rump, prompted by the Russkis. Despite a massive roll-out of COVID vaccines the last six weeks, a disinformation campaign and idiocy of the MAGA-hatters might hinder ‘herd immunity.’ Russia has always enjoyed the T-Rump — via Vice this morning:

In possibly the least surprising news of 2021 so far, the Kremlin has been actively spreading disinformation about two of the vaccines being distributed in the U.S. in a bid to sow division and undermine confidence in the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
…
Russia’s efforts to spread anti-vaxxer disinformation in the U.S. are being aided by the actions of former President Donald Trump, who has refused to endorse the vaccine to his tens of millions of supporters who are among those least likely to get the shot.
…
“We can say these outlets are directly linked to Russian intelligence services,” an official from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center told the Wall Street Journal.
“They’re all foreign-owned, based outside of the United States. They vary a lot in their reach, their tone, their audience, but they’re all part of the Russian propaganda and disinformation ecosystem.”
…
In recent years, Moscow had an ally in the White House for vaccine disinformation in the form of Trump.

Trump has been a vaccine skeptic for more than a decade, going back to a press conference he held in Mar-a-Lago in 2007.

“When I was growing up, autism wasn’t really a factor and now all of a sudden, it’s an epidemic. Everybody has their theory,” he said.
“My theory and I study it because I have young children, my theory is the shots. We’re giving these massive injections at one time, and I really think it does something to the children.”
…
Despite his anti-vaxxer tendencies, Trump did get his COVID-19 vaccine shot while he was still president in January.
But he did it in secret rather than on camera like many world leaders, missing a perfect opportunity to send a message to his followers about the safety of the vaccine.
…
Trying to convince the 73-percent of Republicans unwilling to be vaccinated to take the COVID-19 shot is going to be a tough ask, given that the people who will be charged with getting the message out there — the media — were routinely demonized by the Trump administration for the last four years.

It means that the very people who need to hear the message that the vaccine is safe are the people who are least likely to be receptive to it.

The only person these Republicans are likely to listen to is Trump, and given that he hasn’t even admitted to getting the vaccine, it is likely the former president will continue to stay silent on the matter — leaving a void that the Kremlin will be more than happy to fill.

T-Rump is indeed a monster. The unmitigated horror: “My theory and I study it because I have young children...” Such shit.

Result is anti-herd immunity in a different direction:

Onward…

(Illustration: M.C Escher’s ‘Scholastica,’ found here)