This seems an important point to remember in most US public discussions. If people can't even agree on basic facts, how can you make decisions?

So my question is more like, how are countries that, in say six months, that’s population only have 10% exposed to COVID-19 going to coexist in a global world with countries that are past herd immunity and operating freely again.

Covid is a new disease. Will it have long term effects?

I've been following the research since December/January on New England Journal of Medicine, Virological.org, Lancet etc. And I think there is not yet enough evidence to suggest that there is immunity conferred by contracting Covid-19.

Does anyone know of any studies claiming that "herd" immunity is even possible with Covid-19? The latest article I could find is: COVID-19 and Postinfection Immunity https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2766097

If there is no immunity or limited immunity conferred from infection then Covid-19 will be with the USA and other countries that have given up on control measures for a long time.

I suppose this depends on what the null hypothesis is? Is the null hypothesis "You have immunity after being infected" or is it "You don't have immunity after being infected". You assume it's the latter and you're saying there's not enough evidence to reject it. But you could just as well assume it is "You have immunity after being infected" and we're gathering evidence to see whether that can be rejected or not.

https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYXJ0MTkuY2...

https://www.mvcr.cz/mvcren/article/coronavirus-information-o...

There is a map with green, orange and green countries.

UK and Sweden are red, most of western Europe orange.

For green countries, Czech citizens can go there and back without the need to present negative tests results and enter quarantine. Same thing for residents and nationals of those countries.

For orange countries, Czech citizens can go there and back without the need to present negative tests results and enter quarantine. Residents and nationals of those countries are banned from entering Czech Republic.

For red countries, Czech citizens can go there but need to present negative tests results and enter quarantine. Residents and nationals of those countries are banned from entering Czech Republic.

Possibly for most, but for New Zealand and Australia it looks ok.

It's great that we've got rid of the virus for now in NZ, but yes, there are many questions, including whether there will still be an incentive to even try for a vaccine once major countries reach herd immunity (if and when that happens).

But it truly astonishes and depresses me that the US - the country that went to the moon, that invented the internet, that built a military capability that literally saved the world in ww2 - seems to have given up.

How hard would it really be to do proper contact tracing in a population of 300 million? Yes it's a big job, a very hard job, but the big jobs, the tough jobs, that's what Americans do!

two of those are in part result of propaganda

Eh, no.

We (the USA) did really go to the moon, though I know some USA citizens dispute that.

It was really USA universities and corporations (with DARPA funding) that built the foundations of Ethernet, TCP/IP and the Internet. Yes, plenty of contributions from others (including foreign grad students), but still, USA institutions.

The USA produced a lot of war material for all the Allies in WW2. A lot went to the USSR to keep them in the fight. This in no way should diminish the absolutely unprecedented loss and sacrifice of the USSR peoples in the Great Patriotic War, who bore the brunt of it. But without the USA, I really doubt the Allies could have stopped the Axis powers.

It was a team effort - without combined efforts of the USA and the Soviets (and to a lesser extent the UK) the Axis powers might have prevailed.

Sometime near the end of the cold war I realized that the West's propaganda machine was in fact better than the Soviet version. Nobody in the USSR believed "Pravda" but everybody believed the NBC Nightly News. :)

One might argue however that we need such a mechanism since in 2020, as the Scots might say:

"People can ni' agree on the color o' Shite"

Regarding defeating the axis and specifically Germany (Italy was not a military colossus) there is data that shows that the USSR had a bigger impact in defeating the nazis.

No one denies the contributions of the US in both of those feats, but also it is undeniable that the narrative isn't always factually true.