Covid is 'Like the Flu, the Cold', Norwegian Public Health Officialdom Explains (Again)
Service posting for those who live in jurisdictions that are run (over) by people who don't know shit from shinola (like in Austria)
The below piece comes to us courtesy of Bergens Tidende; translation and emphases mine, as are the bottom lines.
This is the Institute of Public Health’s Covid and Influenza Advice Now
The Norwegian Institute of Public Health (IPH) expects influenza and corona cases to increase throughout the winter. This is their recommendation.
The number of new hospitalisations with confirmed COVID-19 has increased for several weeks.
The seasonal influenza outbreak has not yet started, but IPH believes that it may come around Christmas time this year. ‘The incidence is still at a low level, but it has also been increasing for several weeks’, IPH stated in its latest weekly report.
If you feel ill, IPH’s most important advice is to monitor your general condition and breathing.
In the event of new respiratory symptoms and reduced general condition, you should stay at home until you feel well.
‘Your GP and the emergency room are available if you are worried and need advice’, says the IPH’s point man Preben Aavitsland to NTB.
Poorer Immunity with Less Illness
Even if you want to stay healthy, long periods without illness can lead to weaker immunity.
Can you avoid getting sick? Aavitsland answers:
You can try to postpone the next episode of Covid or influenza, for example by getting vaccinated and staying away from other people, especially indoors. The longer you delay, the weaker your immunity will be the next time you are infected, and the disease may get worse. This is something people have to decide for themselves.
We have to live with the fact that Covid, influenza and several other respiratory viruses will be here forever. This means that we will all be infected from time to time.
Difficult to Distinguish Symptoms
During periods of high levels of illness, it can be difficult to distinguish the symptoms of the various diseases, Aavitsland adds:
You can't normally distinguish between the symptoms of influenza, corona, and whooping cough. But in infants, whooping cough can cause coughing fits that are so severe that the child has trouble breathing in.
In week 45, there were fewer than five hospitalisations for whooping cough and RSV infections in children aged between zero and four years.
Testing for Covid is Unnecessary
The IPH monitors the spread of the coronavirus through several different systems. These include monitoring the amount of coronavirus in wastewater and weekly questionnaires to a focus panel. Nevertheless, Aavitsland says that Covid testing is optional:
You decide for yourself. It's not necessary, because our advice is the same regardless of whether you get tested or not, and regardless of what the test shows:
If you are elderly or belong to a risk group, testing may still be relevant so that you can take anti-corona medication if necessary.
[note that this is where the piece changes from ‘splainin’ some things’ to shilling for Big Pharma]
Recommended Immunisation for Risk Groups
This is the advice from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health about who should take a booster dose of the coronavirus vaccine this winter:
People aged 65 years and older, and nursing home residents.
Persons aged 18-64 years who are part of a risk group.
Adolescents aged 12-17 years with serious underlying disease.
Children aged 6 months to 11 years with serious underlying illness if the child's doctor considers this to be important.
Pregnant women in the 2nd and 3rd trimester. Vaccination in the first trimester may be considered if the pregnant woman has additional diseases that increase the risk further.
Bottom Lines
Preben Aavitsland is a kind of bete noire for me and these pages, as regular readers know. My first impulse is to get out the notion that Norwegians are less adamant about pushing nonsense on the resident population than, say, Austrian or German ‘experts™’ and legacy media outlets that are quite full with ‘recommendations’ for wearing masks, getting still more jabs, and the like.
As a funny-but-sad aside, here’s what ‘virologist’ and Zero Covid Hawk nutjob Dorothee von Laer, MD, of the U of Innsbruck, Austria, told people on the nightly news and most ‘legacy media’ just yesterday (translation, emphases mine):
‘We have another disease that we have to expect every winter, namely corona’, says the virologist. The new variants Eris and Priola ‘seem to be a bit more contagious, which is why they will probably prevail in winter’, the expert estimates. The good news based on previous experience is that they do not make people more ill and cannot bypass the immune system [please don’t ask me how that works, I can’t logically explain this]. Von Laer therefore believes that the risk of hospitals being overloaded is rather low. Postscript: ‘But I'm not a clairvoyant’. [no?]
The population should be ‘reasonably protected’, but not from infection with coronavirus, says the virologist. In the case of vulnerable people, ‘if you visit your grandma’, you should think about wearing a mask again, because you can be contagious even if you don't have any symptoms, says von Laer [is that so?] In her opinion, there is no need for a general mask requirement, but she also wears one privately, for example when she visits her father with a heart condition. However, it is important to get tested, and preferably with PCR tests rather than rapid antigen tests. Rapid tests are not sensitive, so ‘many cases slip through the cracks’, says the virologist.
What shall—or could—I say that friend-of-these-pages Peter Mayer, editor of TKP.at, hasn’t said already? Citing Prof. Christian Schubert, MB, one of von Laer’s colleagues at the U of Innsbruck, Mayer’s piece—which I recommend to read in full (there’s Google Translate for those who don’t read German)—cites Schubert as follows:
These public announcements by a renowned virologist are doing something to millions of people in Austria. They are perpetuating the unfounded fear of COVID and are therefore very likely to harm the health of the population. We know from psychoneuroimmunology that fear and panic weaken the population's immune system. People who are permanently anxious are very likely to have significant immune deficiencies. Permanent stress inhibits precisely those immune factors that we need to successfully defend ourselves against viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 and permanent stress also reduces immune protection after a vaccination and increases the risk of vaccination side effects and damage.
Note that Professor Schubert wrote these words two years ago—while von Laer advocated for 1G only—i.e., only ‘vaccinated’ individuals should be permitted outdoors. Von Laer was permitted to repeat her nonsense yesterday in the evening news broadcast by state TV station ORF.
Hence, I repeat: testing isn’t necessary, and Norway does not recommend more modRNA jabs for the general population.
I do maintain that these jabs shouldn’t be offered at-all, and that Dr. Aavitsland hasn’t learned a whole lot in these past almost four years (has it really been almost four years?!). In fact, he and his ilk—the ‘experts™’—have apparently un-learned a lot of textbook knowledge on immunity (I’m not an MD, but some of the crap advice he said in the above piece is clearly, well, cringe-worthy to irresponsible to criminally negligible).
To say nothing about ‘experts™’ like Dorothee von Laer and her ilk.
#we won’t forget.