Covid in Norway: Unexpected Admissions Edition

According to the IPH, 'most Covid deaths occur among those who took at least 3 doses', and evidence about their proclivity to monkey with the data

So, this is quite unplanned, but since I think it’s quite telling, I’d better share this now.

Unexpectedly, the Institute for Public Health (IPH) came out with a report for week 45. In and of itself, that hardly qualifies as ‘big news’, but—there used to be bi-monthly reports only for some time now, hence the question is: why now? And what’s so important?

Basically, the IPH deemed current events important enough to change its policy of bimonthly reporting (in place since week 23). I’m quite certain this also reflects, to certain degrees, the uptick in Covid hospitalisations and deaths since then, which Joel Smalley reported about yesterday:

COVID-19 in Norway

I’m quite convinced that this is also because the IPH had to discontinue their daily data-gathering, citing ‘budgetary constraints’ while promising to somehow make up for it. Perhaps the return of weekly reports is due to this change. Who knows?

But.

Given what’s in the report for week 45/2022, there may be other things going on, too.

IPH Admits that ‘most Covid deaths occur among those who received at least three doses’

Yep, you read that correctly.

Click here, go to p. 11 and read the following (my emphases):

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the average age of Covid-associated dead was 83, the median age is 85, and 2,306 (or 53%) of them were men. In week 45, the median age was 84 (78-84 years). 39 new Covid-associated deaths were registered in week 45, after 46 in week 44. This is an increase compared to the preceding weeks in which the number of weekly deaths was relatively stable between 23 and 36 deaths from week 34 through week 43. It is expected that the number of Covid-associated deaths will increase. The majority of those who die of Covid-19 are vaccinated against Corona as vaccine uptake is very high among the oldest: 93% of all people 75 and older received three or more doses.

We note, in passing, that in the past four weeks, a mere 8.9% of all Covid-related hospitalisations occurred among those aged 0-54. Yep, you read that correctly: according to Table 3 (p. 7), there were 667 hospitalisations for Covid-19, and a mere 60 occurred among individuals falling into these age brackets.

The report is mum about pre-existing conditions and the like, but I’d argue that it’s quite fair to say that Covid-19 is not a big deal for people under age 55.

By contrast, there were 153 hospitalisations among the 64-74yo (22.9%), 228 among those 75-84 (34.2%), and 149 among those 85 and older (22.3%). In other words: 79.4% of all hospitalisations for Covid-19 occurred among seniors.

This isn’t nice or anything, but it’s quite consistent—and telling how little younger age brackets are at risk for a severe course of disease (based on the assumption that hospitalisation for Covid-19 is a proxy of this).

Wait, there’s more. Much more, I’d think.

IPH Has no Idea What Covid Was Before Omicron

Come again: what? You see, buried under a truckload of graphs, more or less vacuous text, and quite a few tables, there is the following passage (my emphases):

The Institute of Public Health receives information about consultations at doctors’ offices and emergency rooms where a diagnosis code has been set. In this report, data is used for consultations with Covid-19, Influenza, and a selection of respiratory diagnosis codes in order to be able to monitor the proportion of consultations with the various diagnosis codes over time.

This monitoring provides an indication of the development of the disease in the population and an overview of any outbreaks, without giving an exact number of sick people. Attention to outbreaks can affect the level of doctor visits in primary care and the figures should therefore be interpreted with caution. It may take several weeks before the data is complete as it is based on bill cards submitted by doctors to KUHR/HELFO. The graphs below may therefore change, especially in recent weeks.

The below report is based on data extracted on 16 November 2022.

Naturally, this caught my attention, mainly because this is the data repository mentioned above. You know, the one whose disclosure was discontinued due to ‘budgetary constraints’ as of 15 Nov. 2022.

Here’s what the data—current as of 16 Nov. 2022—shows, visualised by IPH in Figure 20 (source; p. 33):

Caption: share of consultations for Covid-19 (R991, R992, R33), Influenza (R80), acute upper respiratory infection (R74), and other respiratory illnesses according to ICD codes, 9 March 2020-13 Nov. 2022.

Note the strong correlation between ‘all respiratory illnesses’ (light blue) and ‘Covid-19’ (dark blue), but do pay attention to the details: Covid-19 here relates to ICD codes R991, R992, R33).

And these three relate to the following:

• R992 = confirmed, or ‘real’, Covid-19 (the dark blue line below)

• R991 = suspected/possible Covid-19 (the green line below)

• R33 = proven via sequencing (the light blue line below)

Now, please look at Fig. 21 (p. 34):

Caption: share of consultations with ICD codes R992 (confirmed), R991 (suspected/possible), and R33 (proven via sequencing) for all age brackets, 9 March 2020-13 Nov. 2022.

And now look at the above-reproduced Fig. 20 again.

Do you notice something (fishy)?

According to my Mk.1 eyeball, the light green line (suspected/possible, i.e., based on a doctor’s hunch) has been responsible for the majority of Covid-19 diagnoses, that is, until about a year ago when Omicron broke through ‘injection-provided protection’ and spread quickly.

Upon this encounter, Norway’s public healthdom quickly capitulated and declared that mandates don’t work.

It would appear that this occurred approximately at the time when ‘reality’ hit the lockdown and mandate hawks like a brick.

Note, further, that ‘testing’ and ‘proven’ (via sequencing) results never really correlated as well as the lines indicating ‘suspected’ Covid-19 and ‘testing’.

To me, it looks as if doctors and healthcare providers categorised virtually anything as ‘suspected’ Covid-19 until Omicron. I’d love to know if there’s some ‘guidelines’ or ‘recommendations’ from the Health Directorate and/or IPH somewhere.

So, now we also know that a sizeable share of ‘the numbers’ underlying the ‘public health emergency’ (sic) were ICD-coded R991, i.e., ‘suspected/possible Covid-19’, and that these ‘diagnoses’ had little to do with factual reality.

Bottom Lines

This is a brief update due to the availability of the weekly report.

After Joel posted his analysis, I wrote to the IPH asking them a bunch of questions. They have until tomorrow at noon to answer, and I shall update you in due time what they said (if they bother to answer).

Until then: let’s keep pushing back against the empire of lies.

We need factual reality to make a comeback.