Sweden is to lift almost all its Covid restrictions, the Government has announced.
The country, famed for refusing to impose a lockdown, ban gatherings or close schools and businesses in spring 2020, has become one of the stricter countries for Covid restrictions in recent months. But now the Government has announced that almost all its current restrictions will be removed on Wednesday, February 9th.
Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said:
The pandemic is not over, but is entering a completely new phase. We are nearing the point for Sweden to open up again…
There are multiple international studies of a milder illness, and the data we have from Sweden paints the same picture. The rate of vaccination in Sweden has been high in recent weeks, this means we can open up society, at least for all who have been vaccinated.
The comment “at least for all who have been vaccinated” is ominous, but I am told by contacts in the country that there are “no checks anywhere, so nobody knows if you’re actually vaccinated or not in public settings”.
The announcement comes as the Public Health Agency said COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an illness presenting a danger to society. The agency has sent a request to the Government to reclassify the illness, and Health Minister Lena Hallengren said this could be approved by the end of March.
Ministers do not appear to be fully signed up to this idea yet, however, as Hallengren said that “in order to prevent a new wave, the return to work and school [university] should occur successively”. If the disease is no longer a danger to society, why worry about a new wave?
Here is a list of the restrictions currently in force that will be removed next week – the most depressing aspect of which is how numerous and petty they are. Poor Sweden, how far you have fallen from being our sceptical hero! Notably absent from the press conference was State Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, who had doggedly stuck to pre-Covid evidence-based protocols rather than join in the panic. Despite what the Prime Minister said, the list appears to include the lifting of most of the vaccine passport requirements. The restrictions to be lifted are:
- Indoor events of 20-50 people must be seated, with max eight per group and one metre between groups.
- Vaccination pass needed for indoor events with more than 50 attendees.
- Trade shows and markets indoors must require a vaccine pass if they have more than 50 guests, and number of guests is capped at 500, with 10 square metres per person.
- Restaurants must close at 11pm, with alcohol serving ending at 10:30pm.
- Groups at restaurants may consist of a maximum of eight people, with a minimum of one metre between groups.
- Restaurants with concerts or other entertainment may only have seated guests.
- Maximum of 20 people at private parties in hired venues.
- Shops must have a maximum number of guests permitted, calculated on area with 10 square metres per person – this also applies to gyms, museums, art galleries, theme parks and swimming pools.
- Long-distance public transport: all travellers must have a seat, if possible.
The Local notes that some “special recommendations for those who have not yet been vaccinated will remain”, though what these are and how binding they are is unclear.
The move follows Denmark lifting its restriction and declaring COVID-19 no longer a danger to society as of this week, and Finland announcing that it will do similar during February. Israel has also announced the end of its Green Pass vaccine passport in most contexts (though, oddly, not for parties and weddings). To what extent countries other than Denmark are removing their emergency Covid laws is not yet clear, but if the disease is downgraded to no longer being a threat to society it’s hard to see how any exceptional measures would survive legal challenge.
Perhaps most surprising is that all four countries are easing or ending restrictions despite being in the middle of a wave of Covid deaths – in Israel and Finland’s case, hitting new daily records this week. That these records have occurred despite the high vaccination and booster rates in the countries warrants closer investigation. Excess deaths data is not yet available to show the extent to which the Covid deaths are in addition to rather than part of ordinary mortality. Even so, it makes the lifting of restrictions the more notable, and gives hope that panic may be subsiding.
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Why would it blow up in the Government’s face? If opposition exists at all, it is in disarray.
That’s a really good question because when Tories simply adopt everything Labour would want to implement as well, voting becomes an obvious farce. “Don’t want to be buried alive? Sorry, that’s not on the ballot paper. But you may chose your own undertaker!”
Is there something except mask mandates, covaxx coercion and Christmas lockdowns Rishi hasn’t yet back-pedalled on? If not, when can we expect these last three crowning achievements of his career as Mr Open Hands, “Want to see policies implemented? Remember to include the cheque in the envelope, otherwise, they won’t be considered!”
Kid:
Mum, Dad ‘Surrogate Parents – I want to talk to you, I don’t know if I’m a boy or a girl’SP – Sorry, person, it would be illegal for us to advise you. Just note that currently, caucasian boys are accused of inherent white privilege and all boys are emblematic of patriarchal control, while the whole concept of girls is being systematically erased from the English language. Unless they’re 4th gen Disney-esque girlbosses who don’t need love, children or a sense of community to get them through the day, that is. In the meantime, the concept of transgender is based on biologyphobic ideology and primary colour hair dye, combined with sterilising drugs and mutiliating surgery. Take your pick.’
“the whole concept of girls is being systematically erased from the English language”
Also very confusing. Isn’t that misgendering 99.9% of girls?
Is that going to be a crime too?
Or not?
Likewise, isn’t affirmative genitital mutilation an attempt to change someone’s sex and gender? And what about Stonewall adepts proselytizing in schools?
I saw this on a BTL somewhere a while ago –
i find the logic confusing. if gender is a social construct, how is transgender in and of itself not also a social construct? what I mean is, would I have to be trans to be trans? how can trans be any more legitimate than either the male and female that they’re grown from? can you claim to have a gender when gender isn’t real? if woman has no definition how can you even know you’re trans? aren’t you really just a topographically redesigned person?
Topographically redesigned. Love it.
Topography
Definition 1 of three for this word.
“daddy, I know I’m your eldest son and I know you insisted I’m not supposed to, but I *really* like my friend”
“You bigot! She’s female and you’re male. I guess you didn’t ask “insert-ideological-term-of-compliance-here” (her/him/they/fk-off-not-your-business) for consent before you enjoyed your lurid dreams and your thought-crimes.
Yes, I’m told she has a bonus hole and perhaps a few other interesting contours, but I reject your obsession, but now I have to spew.
Igor, heat-up the irons to red-hot, this supposed (soon-to-be-ex) son of mine needs an object lesson in humility and agony.
No – it doesn’t count because the DEI score says so…
I have no idea what that means.
All I do know is that denying childrens’ gender identity is misgendering and Great Ormond Street Hospital has in effect banned the use of words like ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ and issued guidance threatening staff with disciplinary action.
But that is still misgendering 99.9% of the patients.
So it is OK to misgender children who are boys and girls but it is not OK to misgender children who are boys and girls who don’t want to be boys and girls.
I am really very confused by all of this.
Just what the public want and need – more laws telling them new things they can’t do.
My life still feels too free, there are still areas of my day to day existence that I get to decide for myself. Can parliament please step it up a bit and hurry up making some more laws. I want every little nook and cranny of my life to be legislated and regulated. So I don’t have to think at all.
Or, actually, better still, just shoot me in the back of the head now and get the same result quicker.
Why do they always look like they stink of fish and old meat?
This is unbelievably confusing and precisely because all of the woke trans ideology has turned our world upsides down.
What exactly is the controversy about?
Is it to be criminal to help a child decide to transition or not to transition? Which is it? Or is it both or none of the above.
The answer is this is another crap feelgood law with no intelligible meaning which lawyers and judges can interpret in whichever way they want to interpret it.
So, you’re liable for up to a 7 year prison sentence for counselling in support of FGM under the 2003 FGM Act.
But, you’ll be liable for a prison sentence if you counsel someone to not move towards genital mutilation if it’s for trans reasons?
Mmmm, someone smarter than me needs to explain that one to me.
(not aimed at NickR, healthy sarcasm involved)
Comrade, you nailed the double-think, you must either have MANY extra vodka rations (as your only salary) or be punished for your precocity because, while your your vote-for-me is absolutely mandatory, your positive-opinion of me is also mandatory, whether expressed in public or private..
Did I just hear a peep of dissent from you? I’m told Siberia is lovely in June, but I couldn’t care less as my Dacha is in Odessa. It’s only my winter-house. Saying that, there’s a wonderful job opportunity coming-up but it’s far, far, far to the east of us.
Comrade Orwell tried to warn us before, but it was only in a novel and so very easily disregarded (what a-wheezy-‘karen’ non-entity he turned out to be, lol)
I get that you’re just holding-up the hypocrisy for scrutiny, I’d truly wonder if you really believed this stuff. Mr Orwell would be proud of you.
The ambiguity will get me caught soon – just one unguarded opinion and I’ll be on the trains…
</sarc>
We are being taken into Hell.
Dark untold truth of transgenderism
Once again our enemies have hijacked the language and sadly even the headline here sort of falls for it. “Conversion therapy” is actually the opposite of what it appears to mean. The people who are attempting to “convert” the confused are the “trans” activists. You are either conceived as a man or a woman, and that’s it. You cannot be “converted” to what you already are – that is nonsense.
Perhaps one-day gassing will be referred to as a ‘zyklon-b-hug’
They are utterly insane and EVIL.
Guy Fawkes had a very good point me thinks.
But sadly he was betrayed by the conscience of a still unidentified supporter who wrote an anonymous letter in late October 1605 to Lord Monteagle, a Catholic.
Monteagle intended to attend the opening of Parliament a few days later, on November 5.
The unsigned letter stated: “My lord, out of the love I bear to some of your friends, I have a care of your preservation, therefore I would advise you as you tender your life to devise some excuse to shift of your attendance at this parliament . . . for though there be no appearance of any stir, yet I say they shall receive a terrible blow.”
Monteagle he forwarded the letter to Robert Cecil, chief minister of King James I and the rest, as they say, is history.
I write ‘sadly’ but do not condone the purpose of the plotters who would have succeeded in an act of terrorism with terrible consequences had it not been for the conscience of the writer of that anonymous letter.
It was a remarkable plan which anticipated and predates modern terrorism by four centuries.
Notice these words from that letter “out of the love I bear to some of your friends“.
So the writer was known not to Monteagle but to ‘some of his friends’. And of course must have been known to Fawkes or someone close to him or his plotters.
That means potentially Cecil could have identified the writer but presumably Cecil got the information he wanted of the identities of Fawkes’ co-conspirators from torture inflicted on Fawkes.
Of course, Monteagle was given little choice but to pass on the letter.
Had he not done so and excused himself from attending Parliament on 5th November that would cast suspicion upon him.
And so we can also see how this 400 year old precursor to modern counter-terrorism worked then but based on luck and intelligence from an unwitting informant instead of by design.
Sadly, those who love freedom in the UK these days are very few. And virtually non-existent in Parliament.