The Pandemic Dilemma

My parents are elderly and they both have pre-existing conditions on top of that, as do most people their age.  The pandemic poses very serious risks for them and they have done very little outside their home for the last four months while the virus has been raging all around them.  This is led to a shrinking of their world that is worsened by the poor response of our state and federal government in providing leadership throughout the pandemic, and it is people like them who suffer the most.
I read this week that Sweden's approach, which was to essentially ignore precautions, keep everything open, trust in the good behavior of others, in the hopes of saving their economy has been a total bust.  People have died at a higher rate and their economy has not fared better than those places that shut down.
That is because this is not a political force.  It is a biological one, and as Neil deGrasse Tyson famously says: "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it."
COVID doesn't care if you are tired of the lock down or you think it is a liberal hoax.  It is a virus.  The more you ignore it the better it does.
My youngest son asked me the other day if I knew how the Black Plague ended, and when I said I did not, he replied:"When people learned to quarantine."  There we have it.  History, something we are poor at learning from and therefore destined to repeat.