9 Comments

"...where there’s no doctor, there cannot be a diagnosis..."

R U sure?

In Queensland, Australia, you are allowed to doctor yourself:

"If you're a healthy young adult, particularly if you've been vaccinated and you have something that looks like a common cold or flu, assume it's COVID, stay at home," he said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-05/covid-symptoms-stay-home-testing-queues/100738206

Expand full comment
author

It's the same here in Norway.

There's zero mention of treatment, it's just 'stay home' and 'call your GP if necessary'.

Also, it begs the question: where are my taxes going to, if not early treatment and prevention? (In other words, this sounds more like this: do I want to pay for--in European contexts--'socialised' medicine if I won't get treated?)

Note that this isn't a 'socialised' vs. 'private' healthcare argument; it's a principled question about the decay, if not wanton destruction, of medicine.

Expand full comment

"Also, it begs the question: where are my taxes going to, if not early treatment and prevention?"

To pharma; to the military industrial complex; to big biz; to the public sector; to wars.

Expand full comment

Well, yes and no.

The numbers seem reduced for total hospitalizations, but ICUs numbers are terrible. Please remember that last 30 years of health policy has been to increase efficiency of the health system. That means that all hospital units should run close to maximum capacity, including ICUs. So if in a normal winter you are running around max capacity, 647 according to Guldvog today in VG, and you throw a couple of hundreds on top of it, people are going to start dying in droves. Whose failure is that one is left for debate. And that 647 is pulling all available resources at it, so I doubt it is even reasonable.

For a couple of anecdotes:

A friend of mine gets heart operated around April 2009 in riksen, placed in pediatric ICU because there was no room in adults ICU.

That ICU doctor in vg complaining about the heavy toll on young vulnerable person's, many dead by overdose like her son, telling that the ICU she has worked in for almost two decades is collapsed every winter.

In those conditions running fully open is a disaster.

Expand full comment

And since I am ranting, i will add that after two years of COVID-19, there is not a meaningful increase in ICU capacity. Now they start to react, since it is obvious for everyone with eyes in the face that the vaccines are not a solution to this problem. They closed in December because the delta wave was already using 50% of ICU capacity in a population 90% of adults vaccinated.

Expand full comment
author

Ha, you bring up so many important points--where to start?

First, I'm terribly sorry for anyone who suffers from these "side-effects".

Secondly, I'm further in agreement with the assessment that switching to "all-cause hospitalisations" at a time of overflowing ICUs is a supremely bad decision (here's looking at Austria on that one).

As to overflowing ICUs in December, well, yes, but the problem is this: 90+% of adults are vaccinated, but this doesn't relieve the pressure. It's a gigantic public policy blunder, for by now the jabs are sold as "at least they prevent hospitalisation, severe disease, and/or death in individuals"--and if this isn't true (wait for tomorrow's post, by the way), what's next?

My guess is--exploding anger.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
January 19, 2022Edited
Comment deleted
Expand full comment
author

Well, what can I say?

I think that the mass vaccination campaign, however ill-conceived in the first place, shows that people react to illnessess and biologicals (such as the gene therepeutics masquerading as 'vaccines') individually.

Hence, any blanket statement about what may or may not follow is probably erroneous to begin with. I do agree with you that anger and resentment will quite likely rise dramatically as the expected and unexpected long-term impacts of the jabs are developing. If even a fraction of what certain people are warning about is true, then we're looking at a large fraction of the population with more or less serious immunocompromised health status, which will place tremendous strains on literally everything (let's just hope that countries that run nuclear power stations didn't jab all their atomic workforce at once…)

As to the trusting (naive) nature of Norwegians, well, what is there to say? My guess is that Norwegians will continue to do so until there are no more (self-) 'excuses' left. In other words: the majority will quite likely swallow the next bunch of lies and absurdities rather than face the realities about the body politic and, perhaps more importantly, individual responsibilities.

Mind you, I'm not saying Norwegians are unique in this regard, it's just that it takes a lot of intentionally-directed energy to take that first step and become a conscious citizen (which, for many, if not most, will be the first time 'active citizenship' might actually mean anything). It's the same elsewhere in the 'West', so, in this regard, it's perhaps a socio-cultural affliction that pertains to the wider 'Euro-Atlanticist Civilisation'.

Expand full comment

"After ostentatiously getting Covid. ..."

ostentatiously or ostensibly?

Expand full comment
author

Well, the link goes to my Footnote on 'testing' positive, which is a public announcement of an otherwise irrelevant personal item.

Expand full comment