Tomorrow, on February 1. 2022, Denmark will cease all covid regulations and restrictions. In Norway, it’s expected that most restrictions aside from quarantine rules for people who test positively will also be removed.
Perhaps more significantly, the public health institute of Norway has also issued a suggestion to declassify covid as a “dangerous infectious disease”, which would remove the legal basis for the government to impose regulations by law altogether.
Photo: Terje Pedersen / NTB scanpix
Today, on January the 31st, the bars in Denmark were supposed to close at 22:00 pm as part of its current covid restrictions intended to reduce infection rates. However, with all restrictions ceasing to exist starting Feb. 1st just 2 hours later, an exception was made today and the restrictions lifted starting today.
Denmark is thus the first European country, to my knowledge, to fully reopen since the Omicron-FUD started back in December. Reason? Omicron is simply not considered dangerous. And the vaccines are, according to the Danish health department, showing enough protection against severe disease and taken by a large enough portion of the old population to make it an insignificant threat.
Norwegian public health institute recommending fewer restrictions
And while Norway does not seem willing to go quite as far as Denmark just yet, the input from the public health institute is that Omicron is so far showing every sign of not being sufficiently dangerous to justify severe interferences.
It has even gone further to state that the current restrictions themselves likely have had a greater negative impact on health than the infections they may have helped reduce. Its conclusion is also based on the observation that Omicron does not cause significant illness in the vast majority of people who are infected.
But most significant here is the statement by the health institute's assistant director and main public figure Espen Nakstad suggesting that Covid should no longer fall in under the category of a "dangerous infectious disease".
This is significant because it’s the classification of covid as such that gives the government the authority to impose restrictions and regulations to combat its spread. Should the health institute decide that Covid at this stage does not fit the category, as is now proposed, then it would remove the legal basis for the government to introduce new restrictions for further outbreaks.
It's important to note though, that Norway's vaccine rates are higher than the big majority of western countries with well over 99.5% of people above 75 being fully vaccinated.
Large contrasts between western countries
The contrast is then almost unbelievable to the scenes recently seen in other western counties from Canada to Austria and Australia. While Norway never had vaccine passports, let alone vaccine mandates of any kind, as well as the most known epidemiologists stating that "the pandemic was practically over for most people" back in December, it is crazy to look at what's still going on elsewhere.
And while I know the subject of the pandemic, and its related policies has been topic toxic enough to make discussing politics and religion during family dinner feel like a break, it’s certainly provided interesting observations to the neutral observer.
- How many freedoms are people willing to sacrifice at the altar of safety?
- How far are governments willing to go to keep control?
- How are these differences between countries, demographics, etc?
Leaving behind one’s own opinions for a while, the past 2 years have provided plenty of material for studies on a human choice regardless of what angle one is coming from.
The good news, judging by the data we now have in Norway and Denmark, is that everything is now looking just as one would expect it to be if we were approaching the end. With a variant that is more infectious but far less dangerous than its predecessors. Soon enough, our strong opinions on the matter won't matter as much. But still, we'll have a lot of experiences from these past 2 years to digest.
Did we pass the stress test?