Covid in Norway: Health Bureaucrats Call for Another Booster Among the 75+ While Calling Out 'the Swedish Way'

One more day, another set of contradictions--why is anyone still listening to these people?

Oh my, look at this—in the same week that Norwegian public health officialdom has all but admitted to ‘vaccine failure’ while attempting to re-write their own ‘history’ of the past three years (see yesterday’s post), the below was taken from a piece that relied heavily on Preben Aavitsland’s slanderous, if extra-disingenuous, commentary on neighbouring Sweden.

Dear reader Rikard, you were 112% correct. ‘Enjoy’.

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Norway’s top epidemiologist: Sweden handled Covid well

Preben Aavitsland says its response was unfairly demonised

By James Elliott, unherd / The Post, 16 March 2023

One of Norway’s leading epidemiologists has claimed that criticism of Sweden’s Covid strategy was excessive. Preben Aavitsland, who served as Director for Surveillance at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, argued that other countries ‘hid their own insecurities by scolding Sweden’ because the country ‘undermined their mantra that we had no choice’. [so, you’re saying there was a choice? why didn’t you choose Sweden’s way?]

In comments made to Swedish paper SvD, Aavitsland explained that while Norway’s ‘harder line’ may have prolonged the lives of old people, he added that the model of ‘long, hard lockdowns’ that was inspired by Italy and China made Sweden ‘the contrast they did not want’. Sweden ‘forced them to explain to their citizens why they acted as they did’, the epidemiologist explained. ‘For these people, it would have been better if everyone had done the same.’ [what a wonderful world we could’ve had…]

Unlike the rest of Europe, Sweden largely avoided implementing mandatory lockdowns, instead relying on voluntary curbs on social gatherings, and keeping most schools, restaurants, bars and businesses open. This made Sweden an outlier, turning the country’s then-chief state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell into a hate figure, as he received death threats and urges to resign throughout the pandemic. This month, he told his successor to ‘have ice in your stomach’.

Despite avoiding strict lockdowns, SvD claims that Sweden’s excess mortality was the lowest out of all EU nations, including Nordic countries. While this claim is disputed, numerous studies have shown Sweden’s excess death rate to be among the lowest in Europe. Figures by the World Health Organisation, for example, show that in 2020 and 2021, the country had an average excess death rate of 56 per 100,000 — compared to 109 in the UK, 111 in Spain, 116 in Germany and 133 in Italy.

But Aavitsland stressed that a pandemic response could not be judged on excess deaths alone. ‘We also have to look at how people’s physical and mental health has been affected, school results and drop-outs, unemployment and social economy and other things’, he said. [who made you an ‘expert’ in these things?] He went on to compliment the Swedish Public Health Agency’s communication over Norway’s, saying that it created less fear. ‘They gave more advice than threatened punishment’, the epidemiologist noted.

Fear may have been one reason as to why there were so few protests from the Norwegian population, which surprised Aavitsland. He said that it was ‘almost a little scary’ what the population ‘accepts without protesting’:

We forbade families to visit their grandmother in the nursing home, we denied men attendance at their children’s births, we limited the number who were allowed to attend church at funerals. Maybe people are willing to accept very strong restrictions if the fear is great enough.

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Bottom Lines

Shame on you, Preben.

Shame on the cowardly politicians and the spineless ‘journalists’.

It’s even worse if you’d consider, for a moment, that the situation was infinitely worse in other places, incl. Germany and Austria.

In many ways, it still is much worse, mainly because ‘experts’, cowardly politicians, and the spineless ‘journalists’ in these two German-speaking countries are still not trying to come clean.

Ditto for the courts.

I’m so disgusted by this, I cannot eat as much as I’d like to throw up.

‘Covid’ is an intelligence test. It’s now obvious that ‘western liberal democracies’ failed.

Not once—when ‘experts’, cowardly politicians, and the spineless ‘journalists’ ramped up the fear factor.

But twice—right now, when we’re refusing to hold these people to account.

Epilogue: Why Our History Matters

The other day, while I was working late, some student association was outside and practiced drumming. I was reminded of ‘our’ WESTERN history, specifically, the 1830 Revolution as depicted in Victor Hugo’s masterpiece Les Miserables.

Here’s what I mean:

Another rendition of the same some, sung by 17 different individuals in as many different languages.

Look at the dramatised version of a people yearning to live free.

This is what these ‘experts’, politicians, and their willing executioners in legacy media want you to ignore.

Here’s the lyrics—you know what they mean (my emphases):

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?

Then join in the fight that will give you
The right to be free!

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

Will you give all you can give
So that our banner may advance?
Some will fall and some will live
Will you stand up and take your chance?
The blood of the martyrs will water
The meadows of France!

Do you hear the people sing?
Singing a song of angry men?
It is the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again!
When the beating of your heart
Echoes the beating of the drums
There is a life about to start
When tomorrow comes!

I’d just take exception to the line ‘join in the fight that will give you / The right to be free!’

Everyone is born free. It’s a natural right, which may only be suppressed, but it cannot be taken by anyone else.

Onwards.