Norway Scraps Covid Vaccine Program

Quietly, even the diehard pro-jab public health (sic) bureaucrats are returning to reality while a reckoning for what has transpired is not in the cards

This one is quite big, dear readers—Norway’s Institute of Public Health (IPH) has abandoned the Covid mass vaccination program after two and a half years.

Buried deep in the burrows of their recently revamped website, a short ‘information brief’ addressed ‘to all the country’s municipalities, healthcare providers, and state administrators’, dated 12 July 2023—when there was zero media coverage about its contents—reads (my translation and emphases):

This letter contains information about:

1. Target groups for the new booster jab before fall/winter 2023/24

2. Changes in the recommendation for basic immunisation [grunnvaksinasjon]

3. Updated Covid vaccine this autumn

4. Use of private-service providers for Coronavirus vaccination

1. Target groups for a new booster dose before fall/winter 2023/24

The Government has decided to follow the advice of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and recommends the following target groups for another booster dose of the Covid vaccine in autumn 2023:

• Those aged 65 years and older, as well as nursing home residents

• Those aged 18-64 years who belong to a risk group

• Those aged 12-17 years with severe underlying disease

• Those aged 5-11 years with serious underlying disease after individual assessment

• Pregnant women

The purpose of corona vaccination is to reduce the risk of a serious course of disease of the individual vaccinee. Based on the expected further development of infection and updated knowledge, the Norwegian Institute of Public Health has assessed the need for additional doses of corona vaccine in the autumn, and has thus recommended the same target groups as in autumn 2022.

Health personnel

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health’s assessment is that there is no basis for issuing a separate recommendation for a new booster dose for healthcare personnel. Healthcare personnel who belong to a risk group are recommended to be immunised. Assessment of vaccination of healthcare personnel is based on the need for individual protection, the need to protect patients against transmission of infection, and the need to ensure the capacity of the health service [this is, in light of the foregoing blabber about ‘individual vaccinees’ that are to be ‘protected’, of course BS—don’t fall for it, for they are still weaponising healthcare workers’ empathy]. Decisive for the assessment is the extent to which a new booster dose for healthcare personnel can produce these effects, and how long such effects will last, and that the individual benefits must surely exceed any disadvantages.

Support for previously recommended doses of Coronavirus vaccine is high among healthcare personnel. In addition, many have have also undergone infection and thus acquired hybrid immunity, which appears to provide better protection than vaccination alone [lol here—what an admission of lunacy, ignorance, and misinformation—why this might be is quite logically explained by Kiszel et al. in Nature]. The need for increased individual protection is therefore low for most people.

The benefit of vaccinating healthcare personnel to protect patients is currently uncertain [see, told you]. It is considered more effective to protect the target groups with the highest risk of serious disease progression than to rely on indirect protection protection which will decline faster. A new booster dose for healthcare workers may provide increased protection against coronavirus infection, but this effect is likely to be short-lived [and, as the same letter held a bit before, ‘there is no basis…for a new booster dose for healthcare personnel].

When the assumed individual benefit of a new dose is low, the safety requirements for vaccination will be weighted even higher in the benefit-risk assessment. Healthcare professionals are largely people under 65 years of age with an immune system that responds well to vaccination. This also means a somewhat higher frequency of common vaccine side effects compared to the elderly and sick, and a risk of rare but serious side effects such as myocarditis and heavy menstrual bleeding [let that sink in].

Others in Need of a Booster Dose [their words, not mine]

Some people who are outside the above risk groups will need or want a or want a booster dose for other reasons, incl. travelling, study stays, family situations, or other circumstances. The municipalities are encouraged to make it possible for these people to receive a booster dose.

2. Change in Recommendation for Basic Immunisation

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health considers that there is no longer a basis for recommending basic immunisation for people in the age group 18-64 years who do not have any underlying risk factors that may increase the risk of serious course of disease.

Throughout the pandemic, there has been a high level of support for the coronavirus vaccination programme and in addition many people have experienced COVID-19 once or several times. This means that the vast majority of people have some form of basic immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and the need for basic immunisation is less now than it was earlier in the pandemic when more people were immunologically naive.

However, the following groups are still recommended basic immunisation if this has not already been completed, regardless of previous infection:

• 65 years and older

• Persons aged 18-64 years who are part of a risk group

• Children and adolescents (5-17 years) with severe underlying disease

• Children 6 months-4 years with severe underlying disease, after individual assessment

• Pregnant women

In addition to the basic vaccination, these groups are recommended to follow the current advice on booster doses.

3. Updated Corona Vaccine this Autumn

WHO, EMA, and FDA have recommended that the corona vaccines be updated before the autumn vaccination campaign to cover only new sub-variants of Omicron. However, it has not yet been finalised when such an updated vaccine can be delivered to Norway. The IPH will return with more detailed information about ordering and distribution when this has been further clarified after the summer.

4. Use of Private Healthcare Providers for Covid Shots

The direct settlement scheme for private service providers that have an agreement with the municipalities ceased on 30 June 2023.

The municipalities are free to establish co-operation agreements with private actors, but must then pay the service provider directly. [this is hugely important as Norway’s almost total gov’t control over the healthcare sector means, in effect, that those who don’t fall into the above ‘risk groups’, now must pay themselves (which is easy here) but the way the health insurance system is set up here, patients merely pay for ‘stuff’, say bandages and drugs (up to 2000 NOK in co-pays per year), but not for the doctor’s time—which they will, likely, now also have to do…]

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Brief Comments on the Above

This is as huge as it is hidden away in the netherworld of bureaucratic websites. I would argue that it is still very important to let it sink in what it means and what it doesn’t.

The most obvious issue is that it the letter is contradictory, to say the least, for it is also borderline disingenuous, and a piece of cowardice too often seen in these past years:

Benefits of ‘vaccination’ are short-lived and only available to the individual vaccinee.

The most reprehensible part, to my mind, is the continued insistence on ‘pregnant women’ belonging to ‘risk groups’. History will not be kind to the public health bureaucrats that insist on this insanity.

For healthcare workers (HCW), therefore, more injections are useless, esp. as this group has been suffering disproportionately from a ’somewhat higher frequency of common vaccine side effects compared to the elderly and sick, and a risk of rare but serious side effects such as myocarditis and heavy menstrual bleeding’. Note that a lot of HCW received the jabs very early on—i.e., many got AstraZeneca, whose use was discontinued in March 2021 due to, well, precisely these reports—and it is therefore a bit unclear of this admission (of sorts) is another plank in the ‘modRNA worked super-dooper but AstraZeneca baaaaad’ play (which it very well might be)

Still, Norway is bucking the pro-jab trend (more on this below) elsewhere, but recognises that beyond their ‘expert assessment’, one should consider ‘updating’ one’s jab log ‘for other reasons, incl. travelling, study stays, family situations’—which is as silly as it is disingenuous and corwardly: why, dear experts at the IPH, don’t you convene a big press conference with all gov’t officials you’d need and tell every country or institution that still ‘recommends’ this crap?

At the very least, no booster jab campaign will come to Norway, but I will state the following about a (yet another) egregious lie told by the IPH (here’s another one from late 2021 which explicitly holds that it’s ‘risk assessment’ is ‘for the group level’, as opposed to the individual). For a fascinating back-and-forth with the senior heads of the IPH back in autumn 2022—which was exactly when these gentlemen, in the above letter, the same recommendations were in place as they are made in the above letter—claimed a lot of BS, evaded providing answers about high levels of mortality in 2022 (2/3 of Norway’s ‘Covid-associated deaths—itself a phony category as it conflates dying of and with Covid—and admitted in writing that their models were, well, quite off, please see here:

Covid in Norway: Public Health Officials Answer my Questions (sort of)

Yet, there is more to the above letter than these notions.

For on Friday, 25 Aug. 2023, at 11 p.m., state broadcaster NRK finally determined it would be a wonderful thing to run a plush piece about the coming autumn with Covid. Of course, that piece has since disappeared in the netherworld of articles published and it is quite hard to find if you’re not actively looking for it. Almost as if this is done on purpose (/sarcasm).

I shall provide said piece in my translation and with my emphases, followed by a few more bottom lines.

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New Corona Vaccines to be Offered in Norway

The new versions of the corona vaccine will be extra protective against the omicron variant.

By Marthe Knutsen, NRK, 25 Aug. 2023, 11 p.m. [source]

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health (IPH) expects municipalities to start offering the updated vaccines from October, according to NRK.

‘The plan is that this will be with a vaccine that specifically targets the XBB variant of Omicron, which is currently dominant’, says Preben Aavitsland, Section Chief of Epidemiology at the IPH.

Known Manufacturers

These are updated versions of the vaccines we already know about in Norway, according to the IPH. These include the vaccine manufacturer Moderna, as well as Novavax, and BioNTech/Pfizer.

All of these have created versions targeting XBB, the sub-variant of Omicron, says Aavitsland:

As soon as they are approved by the pharmaceutical authorities in the EU and EEA countries, we can use them.

Risk Groups Only

The Covid booster dose is recommended for people who belong to the risk groups, either due to illness or age.

How the booster dose is offered will vary from municipality to municipality, according to the IPH. In most places, people must contact healthcare services themselves once the offer is announced.

The IPH says that most people have good immunity to the coronavirus, as many have been infected or vaccinated. Again Aavitsland explains:

The risk of serious illness is therefore lower, and for most people the coronavirus manifests itself as a cold. Risk groups may need a little extra protection against serious illness, so they are offered a booster dose.

More information about the target groups can be found in IPH’s information letter [that’s the above document] about the coronavirus vaccination programme.

No Need to Get Tested

Preben Aavitsland of the IPH recommends that those who get a bad cold should stay at home until the worst is over:

Do not visit grandma and do not cough on others. This advice applies regardless of whether you are tested for coronavirus, and regardless of what the test shows. In other words, testing is unnecessary.

USA Recommends Everyone to Get Up-to-date with Boosters

This week, it became clear that the US will recommend booster doses of the coronavirus vaccine. The Biden administration has recommended the population to take a booster dose to mitigate a new wave of infection.

‘We encourage everyone to take these boosters in addition to the flu vaccine’, the White House writes.

Sweden also expects to receive the updated versions in October, and to start immunisations [sic] from the beginning of November.

The vaccines are currently in production and the approval process is ongoing, according to SVT.

More Contagious

Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre had only been in office for a few months when the Coronavirus variant omicron arrived in the country towards the end of 2021. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre (Labour Party) told NTB:

The first prediction we received in early December was that we now had a variant that was far more contagious. The vaccines might not work. And the mortality rate could be higher. The sum total was very serious. And the Institute of Public Health and the Norwegian Directorate of Health were very concerned about what we could be facing.

In a weekly report, the WHO writes that as of 20 Aug. 2023, there are currently around 7m confirmed corona deaths globally.

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Bottom Lines

More BS, for sure, but the NRK piece is interesting as it clearly goes against the ‘Western’ mainstream as expressed by the US gov’t.

Note, further, that there won’t be a return to testing or the like—but a return to common sense: if you’ve got a cold, don’t cough onto others.

The IPH’s current weekly update on the Covid charade may be found here. There is no explicit mention of XBB or anything else there, hence you just need to trust ‘the Experts™’ and ‘da Science™’ on this one, I suppose.

The second-most egregious part of the above media piece, though, is the ploy used to ‘sell’ the people on the new, updated jabs: ‘known manufacturers’ are selling their snake oil. It is well known that Big Pharma is even more disgusting than Big Oil and, arguably, virtually tied with weapons manufacturers. Oh, lest I forget, Big Pharma is also a repeat, serial offender in terms of fraudulent marketing (next to them, even ‘the Experts™’ and ‘da Science™’ look like amateurs), evading responsibility, and anti-social conduct.

‘Trust, but verify’ is the very least one should do.

Why isn’t this international headline news, though? Please do your bid and help spread the above information.