I’ve repaired Mint, at the heart of the issue was the glibc package name was somehow missing a ‘1’ at the end and so package version mis-matches resulted.  I had to force a manual install and then re-apply several hundred updates.  Because chasing this down was not easy I am making a backup now that it is fixed so I don’t have to do this again.  Mint should be available by approximately 1900 Pacific Standard Time March 1st.