When the seriousness of the corona situation hit us in March 2020, the newspapers counted deaths on the front page. Once in the autumn, they went over to statistics on how many people were hospitalized. In 2021, we have counted the number of infections, and gradually it is the number of people in quarantine that has created the biggest headlines.
All this is good news. It documents a pandemic course that is becoming less and less serious. But it also shows a society that is put on constant alert. As the vaccines are set and society opens up, the alarm must also be turned off and we must move into a new mental corona mode.
It is not the course of the disease as it is for the vast majority of infections that has made the covid-19 virus a global disaster. Unlike, for example, Ebola, the corona is relatively harmless to most people. But for the elderly, some with underlying diseases and some others, it is life-threatening. It leads to an extremely large number of hospital admissions and quickly paralyzes the health service completely if no measures are taken.
[ Det er alvor nå! ]
Television footage from Wuhan and Italy showed how quickly an uncontrolled infection situation could create catastrophic conditions. The mass graves in New York a few weeks later confirmed that closure and comprehensive infection control measures were the only viable way to avoid major suffering.
But, and that is a big and important “but”. We are no longer in March 2020, on the contrary, we are in a situation where large parts of the population have been vaccinated against the covid-19 virus, and where the vulnerable groups have long since received two doses of effective vaccine and will be ready for a possible third dose quickly if new virus variants require this.
There is currently no pressure on the health service as a result of coronary heart disease, probably the extraordinary coronary measures place a greater burden on the country’s hospitals than the sick do. And almost no one dies from the disease anymore.
[ Norske høgskoler og universiteter bruker millioner på meningsløst pjatt ]
That is, the two factors that caused us to collectively press the big alarm button in March 2020 and have largely kept it in place since, are no longer present.
Counting the number of corona infections and introducing quarantines for all their close contacts is becoming doubly impossible. Because while during the closure you were in a situation where people had few close contacts, with a more open society you will get correspondingly many more contacts.
Thank God.
Thus you get hundreds of quarantines where you get a few months ago had a dozen, and thousands where you used to have a few hundred. This is not sustainable, we saw it in the last weeks of the school year, where the infection tracking teams were days behind the infection because there were so many contacts that had to be called, and where school, sports and privacy for everyone connected to children and young people was completely unpredictable because there were constantly new waves of quarantines and ever new interpretations of near and far contacts.
Maybe we need to help each other remember what is normal everyday life
Fortunately, both the government and the health authorities are signaling that quarantines and the current infection-tracking regime will gradually be replaced by frequent testing. It is an important step towards a normal society. But we need more, and perhaps most of all, that we jointly lower our shoulders.
At Wednesday’s press conference, most of the questions from the press were related to whether nothing more should be done, about how worried one was and why no more was done. So more alarm, not less.
The logic of the media is relentless. The more disaster, the more serious – the better. Then there is “breaking news” and big headlines. As long as someone is worried, critical or ill, the media will find them and make cases. The cases are not necessarily proportional to the problems. But they act as fuel for the fire of concern.
[ Vi må våge å ta fra de rike ]
Those who are already anxious are frightened, those who were not worried are. And Espen Nakstad is apparently always worried. We needed this collective concern at the beginning of 2020, but I’m not sure if we need it now. On the contrary, we may need to help each other remember what is normal everyday life.
I am not an infection control expert, there is a lot I have no prerequisite for saying or thinking anything about the corona. But some things we know after living under quite extreme restrictions for a year and a half:
Constant changes in rules and framework conditions are logical for the authorities that follow the infection with millimeter measurements, but are frustrating, harmful and demotivating for both people and institutions. New fourteen days with restrictions and limitations are not the same as the first fourteen days, they come up to eighteen months, and do far greater damage.
[ Kva skal vi eigentleg meine om USA? ]
The negative effects of the restrictions accumulate. We can not continue to quarantine each other because we have been close to someone who is infected with a disease that after all sun marks is no longer so serious in this country.
The Norwegian community has proven strong and sustainable through the corona. Confidence in the authorities has been and is high, mostly for good reason. But there is a danger that the authorities and the administration will get used to controlling and regulating people’s everyday lives in detail. The time has come to turn it around. And there is a danger that we will let our worries trump reason.
It’s time to stop worrying about coughs and colds. We needed help, a charity, to convert society to the state of alarm when the corona struck. We will need a charity event to get out of the emergency preparedness as well.
– .
