Let's talk about Denmark
Getting to the next stage of living with covid, the conversation everyone is avoiding. Plus, Johnson in Kyiv, Orban in Moscow, Ukrainian history, food inflation in Chukotka.
Despite the horrible weather, I am in a fantastic mood this morning. I had to do one of my least favourite things bright and early: visit a consulate. I went in mentally prepared for confrontation, and emerged fifteen minutes later after the smoothest experience I have ever had with state bureaucracy. It left me, frankly speaking, starting to believe in miracles. It’s not over yet, but definitely a little victory lap on a long road.
This morning I’d like to address the elephant in the room. How do we get back to normal (however we define that — it’s up for debate) and move from pandemic to endemic, now that vaccines are widely available and we see real world evidence that Omicron is mild for those who are vaccinated when they catch it. I say when rather than if because around December I accepted that Omicron changed the equation. I realized covid is unavoidable. All we can do is get vaccinated to be prepared for the eventuality.
I have covid in my house right now. Almost a week ago, my daughter tested positive by PCR with no symptoms. She never really developed any symptoms, aside from the occasional headache. No fever, no sore throat, no drippy nose — nothing. She has been home now for a week and is driving me bonkers. There is no online option. School is open and functioning for those kids not in covid isolation. For those feeling fine but at home because they had a positive PCR test, there is no educational solution. One teacher is kind and turns on the video camera when he is teaching, but that’s it. The Austrian education ministry clearly doesn’t think the covid kids need to keep up with their schoolwork.
My other two kids are boosted and have returned to school after two negative tests. My husband and I, also boosted, continue to test negative. We never masked indoors and did not isolate our covid kid from the rest of us. We decided that would be close to impossible in our normal sized flat. My girls share a bedroom. Isolation wasn’t realistic.
Back in November 2020, my other daughter had covid, also picked up at school, interestingly while wearing a mask. I'm not saying masks don’t work, they most certainly do, but they aren’t 100% foolproof. Back then, before vaccines, we all masked up inside for ten days and tried to keep her in her bedroom, and we were once again lucky, no one else got sick.
The big difference between now and then is of course vaccines. I no longer live in fear. I couldn’t wait to get vaccinated; I even flew to America to get my shots earlier. I pushed to vaccinate my kids as early as possible. I am about the most pro-vaccine person you will find. But now that we’ve done all that, and we see that Omicron is by all measures not that scary, I think it’s time to have a societal conversation about how we give people their lives back. As much normality as possible. These are steps some Scandinavian countries are already trying.
There has been a HUGE societal price for the past two years, something many people on the “zero covid” side of things (an argument, for the record, I never bought into) do not want to acknowledge.
There are two partisan extremes in covid discussions, particularly online, and although only one side is to my knowledge marching side by side with neo-Nazis (totally inexcusable), the other side seems quite happily entrenched in isolation and doesn’t want to unclench its metaphorical fists. You spend two years fearing something to the point of obsession in some cases, the fear can take over.
As a parent and a person with huge sympathies for young people, I know how much they have lost over the past two years. All the school trips, exchanges, birthday parties, sporting events, concerts, theater trips that never happened. They will not get to be 8 or 13 or 11 again. It’s so easy for childless adults happily working away in their home offices to say they still fear covid, which is fine, your feelings are your feelings, but society has to take into consideration everyone’s chances at this point.
You get yelled at a lot online when you dare say let’s stop with some of the covid prevention theater because yes so much is theater. Today I was reminded that Austria has a lot of unvaccinated people over the age of 60. To that, I say simply, they had plenty of opportunities to get vaccinated. They chose not to. Why should the kids have to stop going on ski trips because some pensioners decided not to take the vaccine?
But the hospitals, they say. At the moment, our hospitals are doing just fine, despite soaring Omicron numbers. ICU admissions are manageable. Yes, a lot of things are being cancelled now because a lot of people are home in isolation after a positive Omicron test, because we are treating Omicron differently than normal cold or flu, after which you would return to work or school as soon as you felt better. We are still asking covid positive people who feel fine to stay home. Maybe at some point when we realise asymptomatic people are not transmitting the virus much, that will change, like in South Africa.
With all this in mind, I am very curious how Denmark’s experiment will go this month. It sounds like a dream. No more masks, no more vaccine checks, no mandatory tests, an attempt at a return to a new normal. Not without risks, but using the argument that society has to understand measures and make a collective choice.
Denmark has vaccinated 80% of its entire population, and has boosted 61%. Austria is behind that; we have vaccinated 83% of adults and roughly half of them are boosted. Overall, it looks like only around 70% of the population in Austria is vaccinated. So, as Drosten said, Germany (and Austria) are still behind Denmark. Maybe we can use February to watch Denmark and then talk about what might be possible here as of March. Of course once the Omicron wave is finished with us, there will be some level of natural immunity in the population, but no one knows how long it will last.
With our vaccine mandate here in Austria, which I didn’t have a problem with in theory — more with the botched execution (I have no problem with fining people via ELGA but I do have a huge problem with random police checks and shop checks and everyone becoming an inspector), we continue to talk down to people, tell them how things have to be, rather than trying to make public health decision that reflect the views of a majority of voters, which after all, as Denmark reminds us, is part of the democratic process. We have also managed to radicalize a not insignificant minority of passionately antivaxx voters, a problem, it would appear, Denmark does not have to the extent it is prevalent in German-speaking countries.
This thread on Denmark is a must-read to understand how they reached the decision to open up and what factors were taken into consideration. It’s really worth going through all 19 Tweets:
I listened this week to an interesting interview with a Democratic governor of a purple state (Colorado) who is essentially walking a covid tight rope and letting each municipality decide the best approach. Yes, he is up for re-election soon. But still, I love how he says a conservative Christian farmer and a vegan communist have to be able to co-exist in the same society because that’s it.
We really have to build bridges and find some common ground. Right now what I see online (and less so in real life) are two camps, and that is very, very worrying. I think we all love our kids and we all want to give future generations the same if not better chances than we had. At the moment, we, the adults, are failing massively. I am not willing to ask my kids to sacrifice anything anymore for an older generation that refused to get vaccinated. That is on them. But the non-stop testing, checks, rules, covid measures that no one understands anymore and half the people cheat their way around — they are leading to the far right marching in the streets of our cities every weekend. They are starting to drive even “normal” reasonable people crazy.
Are there vulnerable people, babies, those with pre-existing conditions who are immunocompromised? Of course. Do we have a good solution for them? No. Do we have a good solution for Long Covid other than it being statistically unlikely? Also no. But if you ask my mother with terminal cancer if she thinks her grandchildren should have to give up their normal childhood activities so that she doesn’t catch Omicron, you know what her answer would be. Public health solutions are always going to be imperfect. There will always be trade-offs. There will always be some people left behind.
I, and many other parents, am willing to play the odds at this point. We have vaccinated our kids, we have done our part, we have accepted huge interruptions over the past two years, and now it’s enough. The original goal was to prevent hospitals from overflowing and we have done that. I think it’s time to talk about what the new normal could or should be. You don’t have to do it all overnight, of course not. I don’t mind wearing a mask in shops, although I do question if it’s really necessary now that I know I have spent a week in a covid household and remained covid-free. We can be extra-careful in healthcare settings and care homes, just as Denmark will do.
But at some point we have to stop testing asymptomatic people (even Drosten himself said it yesterday) and start treating covid like another one of those viruses that goes around. We have to stop checking QR codes every time you step in a public space. We have to give kids their schools, trips, sports, and other activities back and make online options available for those kids asked to stay home in isolation even though they feel fine.
It is no longer March 2020. It is almost March 2022. The picture looks fundamentally different thanks to Omicron overtaking Delta (which was nasty and horrible and almost killed a friend of mine 2x vaccinated in her 70s) and widely available vaccines and boosters for all, with the vaccine for under 5s coming in the next few weeks.
I’m not going to spend hours debating this back and forth on Twitter because the topic has turned toxic and there are armies of people on both sides ready to yell at you virtually until they are blue in the face. I just felt it important to put on paper (lol) what a lot of people are thinking and feeling right now if you talk to parents of school-aged children who have sacrificed so much and we see what the whole mess is doing to our kids. Teachers are on edge. Everyone is on edge. This is not sustainable.
At the end of the day, even democracy is at stake.
Very briefly on other topics…
Putin hosted Orban yesterday in Moscow across a socially distanced enormous table. Orban was promised favourable gas prices if he wins reelection this spring.
Johnson went to Kyiv yesterday to try and escape party-gate. The UK, Poland and Ukraine have announced an alliance some are now dubbing PUB.
To listen:
On Ukrainian history, this New Yorker Politics interview with Prof. Timothy Snyder of Yale.
To read:
New York Times on the ground with soldiers in Ukraine:
On Ukrainian history, Professor Serhii Plokhy:
Finally, if you read Russian, this staggering report on food prices and inflation from Anadyr, Chukotka, always among the list of the top five most expensive places to live in Russia in terms of cost of living.
Last night I made, with a little help from the covid child, Mongolian buuz Lunar New Year dumplings and they turned out great. Not pretty, but the flavours were wonderful. Do not fear! Not as scary as it looks.
Thanks for reading. Wishing you all a peaceful and productive Wednesday.
Let’s talk about Norway while we’re at it. https://metatron.substack.com/p/deaths-in-norway?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo2MTY5OTEwNywicG9zdF9pZCI6NDgwMzk5ODAsIl8iOiJnN1lFaiIsImlhdCI6MTY0Mzg4MjA5MywiZXhwIjoxNjQzODg1NjkzLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItNTc5MDg1Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.IMkefoEmooR6yw7KA2UwCld9YpScMbtIFW0QC0YEN8Q
Not sure where you’re getting your news, but you couldn’t be more wrong about the Canadian truck convoy. You might enjoy this post and many other writings from this stack: https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/canada-the-talking-points-vs-the/comments