Sverige is now ~60% of the way to its prior peak 7-day rolling average infection rate.
This means a few interesting things:
1. With 71% of all Swedish residents are fully vaccinated, the current vaccines are not effective at preventing infection of omicron. Yes, they reduce hospitalization, but that is not the primary measure of efficacy we use for other vaccines.
2. Any notion of herd immunity from "just getting it and getting over it like a bad flu" is wrong. Many people who got COVID-19 before being vaccinated are getting it again. Antibodies fade fast and we do not know what variants will develop in the future.
3. Any notion of national herd immunity is wrong. The entire world will keep suffering until all countries have access to effective vaccines at the same time to inhibit new variants.
The hard truth for Sverige is that we cannot vaccinate our way out of the pandemic.
We will have to wear medical masks and isolate more, something the government and many people here have not been willing to do.