Thread:

A month ago I met the junior docs I work with to discuss end of life decisions we’d have to make when the hospitals were full. The hospitals never approached capacity. Today 59 people are on ventilators, half the number than April 1

Why have things gone well here in ?

Norway has had some natural advantages, and some less tangible ones.

Covid is a health crisis but a societal challenge.

The low density of population in Norway has helped. Viruses love crowded cities.

The first real incidence of covid here was 1000 cases that arrived at once from northern Italy after the mid term break, mostly youngish fit skiers.

These had the best chance of survival, but more importantly were rapidly identified, contact traced and isolated.

Schools and workplaces were shut, gatherings banned, and social distancing encouraged early in the outbreak.

Norway had learnt the sad lessons of countries like Spain and Italy that had been caught unaware.

But there are less identifiable factors at play.

Margaret Thatcher said there was no such thing as society.

In Norway society is everything & everywhere.

‘Dugnad’ in Norwegian means a collective voluntary effort.

It’s a word used all the time here.

For covid a National dugnad was declared.

In countries that have strong social cohesion and a sense of citizenship, where people see the institutions of the state not as some kind of foe, but as an expression of themselves, the fight against covid has gone better.

In the mission statement of the Norwegian education system it states that their aim is to produce not improved individuals, but citizens.

The government and health institutions have been transparent and open on the hows and whys of what they were doing.

The merits of all the interventions were debated in the public sphere.

The public received their info through the same, reliable channels.

9 out of 10 Norwegians listen to or watch the national broadcaster #nrk each day.

The economic measures taken have been all encompassing.

A patient told me today that non-national sex workers in Norway had a special government fund so they could be paid while business was bad.

THAT is enlightened policy.

In the town hall in Oslo, in the great hall where the Nobel peace prize is awarded, is a vast mural.

It depicts episodes of Norwegian history and its culture.

One section shows a man by the burning Bastille in 1789 Paris taking a lit torch and a book with the words ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ on it and bringing it to Norway.

Enlightenment ideals are under threat around the world.

But here in Norway, where they are loudly expressed, they have been shown to be a mighty weapon in the fight against covid.