August 19 2021,from Deborah

You wrote: "All municipal employees have to get vaccinated by October 30, with mandatory attendance at education sessions before, if they don't want the vaccine."

“education sessions”!!!

The Health Authority had its weekly press conference yesterday....The numbers here are creeping up, but are still relatively low (The smart epidemiologists on Twitter are saying Delta peaks after 5 weeks, I think Sweden is 2 weeks away). No region is reporting a strain on health care. There is an extremely high level of vaccine uptake among the over 50’s (90%) which drops off in the younger age groups - I find this graph perfectly acceptable, but still - the Health Authority is hammering home the message “get vaccinated, get vaccinated, get vaccinated”. To aid their case, they presented a bit of a nonsensical graph that showed 70% of ICU patients were “unvaccinated”, with no further breakdown of who these people were (10% of elderly are unvaccinated, often for health issues). 20% of ICU patients have been vaccinated. They weren’t sure of the vaccination status of the remaining 10%. But as anyone following this space knows, vaccine efficacy is falling, so I would expect to see this ratio changing.

Of note - they have now removed the slide about “flattening the curve”, because of course there is no significant curve and now the rhetoric is vaccines, vaccines, vaccines.

The journalists, many of whom have been assigned to this beat through the entire pandemic and have either learned nothing or are burned out, asked again and again about: vaccines for 12-15 year olds - the Health Authority says no, rates of side effects are too high; vaccine passports - also a firm no; boosters - “we haven’t seen a need”...

On a political level the sitting government has asked to extend the authorization to implement emergency pandemic measures for an additional 4 months past September 30th - and could not get support in parliament! Are the winds changing direction? Finally??? Until end of September people are encouraged to work from home if possible. My husband is struggling with staff who fail to answer their phones or seem demotivated - perhaps many employers feel this way?