Covid? Nay, Influenza in Norway: Requiem for Sars-Cov-2 morphs into Fearmongering over Influenza

Now watch as public health officialdom and legacy media trips over its tied shoe laces (again), which would be funny--if the flu shots were actually helping--thus, the scene is set for a replay…

In view of this week’s Covid in Norway update and the figures we discussed, there is one other ‘change’ over here: the Institute of Public Health (sic) is ramping up the fearmongering over the flu. As reported by none other than state broadcaster NRK (and the usual supporting cast of legacy media) two days ago, public health officialdom now ‘fears a large wave of influenza’ in autumn 2022.

NRK laughably quickly set up its own live ticker for the occasion, which included references to a couple of statements Dr. Camilla Stoltenberg, the head of the Institute of Public Health (IPH), made. In an interview with TV2, Ms. Stoltenberg drew attention to an imminent revision of the ‘vaccination recommendation’ concerning the Covid booster injection. Contrary to the fearmongering presentation by both TV2 and NRK, however, the Covid jab recommendation has not been changed so far.

Sidenote: as an aside, I did receive both an email and a text message by the municipality that invited me to arrange for a jab according ‘to all those in risk-groups (in addition to those over 65 years of age)’. This is what digitisation, ‘smart, and lean’ neoliberal gov’t does: blanket text messages that are annoying—and, since I’m neither in a risk-group (more on this below) nor older than 65, I honestly don’t know why both me and my wife got these messages…

Two days before NRK set up the live ticker (which, incidentally, hasn’t been updated sind Thursday, 20 Oct., 9:31 a.m. local time, by the way), Sofie Retterstøl Olaisen had published an article telling the public that one could, in any case, get both a Covid jab and the flu shot at the same time.

The piece by Ms. Retterstøl Olaisen is about as ‘good’ as can be expected, by the way, opening with a number of suggestive (disingenuous) questions that seem to be designed to Segway the audience into yet another round of questionable medical interventions:

Have you been out and about a little longer this autumn?

Has the cold lasted a little longer than usual?

Perhaps you are one of those who take a little more time to consider whether you should take the flu vaccine?

If you are one of those who are sitting on the side-lines, infection control official Ole Kristian Losvik in Bodø believes that this year is the year to get vaccinated.

As an aside and in case you’re asking yourself who that infection control official is, well, Dr. Ole Kristian Losvik is Bodø municipality’s chief public health official. According to local newspapers, he started in this position in December 2021 (yes, you read that correctly, less than a year ago). If that isn’t exactly the kind of reassuring track record you’d like to see in people who are handing out medical advice, you may also consider his LinkedIn profile for a moment: Dr. Ole (we’re all on a first-name basis here in Scandinavia…) graduated from The Arctic University in Bodø in 2011, and before he underwent medical training he got a degree in e-commerce from the South-Eastern University College (class of 2002, in what appears to be a single-year curriculum) and studied journalism at Nord University from 2002-2004.

Upon graduation in 2011, he worked as a ‘substitute’ (legevikar) in the Nord U hospital in Tromsø on a temporary basis (until 2012), notably in the cardiovascular and pulmonary ward; he then worked in the neuro-surgical dept. at St. Olav’s Hospital in Trondheim (2012) before doing some ‘research’ in Tromsø again (on ‘pain management for poor countries’, 2012-2013). Dr. Ole then (finally) did his residency (turnus), again at St. Olav’s in Trondheim, before working as online content creator (blogredaktør) for the Journal of Norwegian Medical Association (2013-2014), again as residency-related doctor in Røros, municipal/GP in Oppgård (2014-2016)—before he kinda left patient care all together. Since 2016, Dr. Ole worked in numerous ‘ways’, from senior advisor at the Directorate for E-Health Services (2015-2019), became a ‘full-time product developer’ with Norsk Helsenett (2020-2022), and worked for his own small business, Losol AS (est. 2020) as ‘knowledge architect’ (kunsskapsarkitekt).

Dr. Ole did all this before he became Bodø’s Chief Municipal Doctor in Dec. 2021—a glorified, very unsteady, if not almost ‘bipolar’ career between ‘journalism’ and…what exactly? His LinkedIn profile claims he’s done a ‘research doctorate’ in medicine, but his track record doesn’t indicate a lot of, well, research activity (with the exception, perhaps, of his two-year stint in Tromsø). Be that as it may, this biographical section is way too long already—and all I wanted to say: squeeze yer eyes, dear readers, and see if you can find anything about ‘vaccinology’, ‘immunology’, or the like—which, of course, would render Dr. Ole the go-to gut for these issues on the threshold of a flu wave.

If there isn’t anything like it, though, may I offer you an alternative hypothesis as to why Dr. Ole is quoted so prominently by state broadcaster NRK? It goes a bit like this: Ole has worked at NRK before and continued this line of work (?) as a freelance journalist well after he began his medical training. Bottom line here: he’s certainly a trained physician but he has done no training in the relevant fields that he would put on his LinkedIn profile. But he knows the people over at NRK (which makes me hesitant to take medical advice from him).

You may, however, consult with the good Dr. Preben Aavitsland of the IPH, who is cited as follows in the NRK ‘come in once, get two jabs’ piece (my emphasis):

Preben Aavitsland is Chief Epidemiologist and a professor at the Institute of Public Health. [apologies for being picky here, but note that this is a partially misleading statement, for Dr. Preben is an adjunct professor at ‘my’ university…]

He says that they simply do not know how the coronavirus and influenza will develop in Norway beyond the autumn.

‘We don’t know. We believe there will be a wave, but we don’t know when or how big it will be’, says Aavitsland.

If that’s good enough for you, well, congrats. I’ll rather be sitting this one out a bit longer.

Back to Dr. Stoltenberg, then, I suppose.

Fear! The! Flu!

The current advice from the Institute of Public Health on this ‘Nordic combination’ of mixing injections and matching them can in turn be found here. As if that were not enough, the IPH also points out that one could, without problems, combine the flu shot with the pneumococcal vaccination, by the way. It is only the combination the Covid jab and the pneumococcal vaccine that should be taken one week apart (why, one might ask, but alas! that isn’t explained in the cited piece. You may, however, find detailed guidance by the IPH over here.

But what are the reasons given by Ms Stoltenberg? On the IPH’s homepage we read (my emphasis):

Last year’s season was extraordinary, and the flu season had moved to spring [2022]. Then we noticed that the influenza viruses had changed. This year [presumably season] we can see that the viruses [note the plural] have changed even further.

‘We expect that viruses that have not been in circulation for several years will return. This is a virus [why the singular all of a sudden?] against which we have little protection, and this particularly applies to young children’, says director of the Institute of Public Health, Camilla Stoltenberg.

Influenza vaccination is the most important measure to avoid serious illness, but both the Institute of Public Health and the Health Directorate [Helsedirektoratet] are concerned about vaccine uptake.

One group with particularly low vaccination coverage are children in risk-groups. As of today, vaccination coverage among these children is around 8%.

‘Influenza has been largely absent during the pandemic due to strict infection control measures, thus the population’s protection against influenza is low. Some children have never had the flu, and thus have little or no immunity. That is why it is very important that the risk groups remember to get the flu vaccine this year’, says Stoltenberg.

Please note the following: none of Dr. Stoltenberg’s statements are backed up with any kind of data or the like.

These data may be found on the previously linked page—but let me briefly point out that it is highly problematic, to say the least, that the Director of the Institute of Public Health simply throws ‘children’ into the category of ‘risk groups’ that ‘need’ to be vaccinated.

Apart from the morality of doing so, this stands also in stark contrast to the IPH’s own definitions of who does—and doesn’t—belong into such risk groups. These definitions specifically state that children and adolescents (as well as adults) ‘only’ belong to a risk group if they have one or more of the following conditions or pre-existing conditions:

Chronic lung problems (including asthma); cardiovascular problems; type 1/2 diabetes; kidney or liver problems; chronic neurological damage; immunodeficiency (e.g., post-transplant, cancer, HIV, or suffering from arthritis); are severely overweight (BMI 40+); or have other chronic conditions that require an individual history.

I could go on a veritable rant here but let me just point out one tid-bit here that reeks of misinformation: type 1 vs. type 2 diabetes are very different conditions brought about by quite different mechanisms of action. ‘Even’ the CDC notes that there’s a qualitative difference between these two conditions (apologies for the seemingly blood-less lingo here to those suffering from either type).

In other words: apart from peddling questionable information, we can see the renewal of efforts by public health officialdom to stay relevant. Let’s also briefly note that some of this year’s flu shots do contain mercury (as per the CDC’s overview), which is something that one should avoid. Period.

Bottom Lines

The next wave of scaremongering has already started, and just like with Covid, the Institute of Public Health’s handling of its own definitions and recommendations continues to be questionable, to say the least.

Furthermore, legacy media is working overtime to make people take medical interventions that have a very problematic risk profile—in particular if one considers ‘vaccine efficacy’:

Nothing new in the North (or elsewhere), then.

I’d close out by offering a suggestion: don't let yourself be driven crazy, in particular if—like the author of these lines—also has parental responsibilities.