Letter from Sweden (Deborah) Oct.22, 2021

RSV graph, years from 2017 to 2021

Numbers have continued their steady downward trajectory although it seems we’ve reached a plateau of sorts, albeit at a low level. The big news this week is the huge spike in RSV hospitalizations (graph attached). There are approximately 500 RSV hospitalizations right now, with the most vulnerable being young children and the elderly. This is more than double the current C19 hospitalizations (around 225). Anecdotally, I know so many people who have a bad cold right now - including my husband and daughter.

The other interesting news is that last week the Public Health Agency announced that from November 1, covid tests would NOT be offered to fully vaccinated people who were exhibiting C19 symptoms, unless they were working in healthcare. And if you were vaxxed, once you were fever-free for 24 hours you could go back to work or school. However, if you were unvaccinated and symptomatic, or if you had recently been abroad (outside the Nordic countries), you were still advised to get tested.

So the obvious question is how the Public Health Agency will be able to map the spread of the virus, especially given that the majority of people are vaxxed? “The vaxxed don’t risk serious disease or death. The unvaxxed do, that is why they must still be tested. We are only interested in outcomes now.” Hmmmm. I wonder what is driving this policy behind the scenes. Is it really true that a fully-vaxxed 70 year old who catches covid will have a better outcome than an unvaxxed 20 year old? Or is it just the continued “othering” of the unvaccinated? The messaging of the Public Health Agency is all over the place - trying to maintain a heightened sense of alarm, as the numbers decline, society is open, no one much cares, and as noted above, RSV is presenting a greater strain on healthcare resources. A journalist asked what they would do if C19 numbers crept up again and they said that “vaccine passports could be a tool in our tool box.” Good lord - governments are just itching to use them, aren’t they?

There was also a Swedish study that showed that people with a BMI greater than 30 were over-represented in the ICU (4 out of 10 patients) during the first wave. Again, anecdotally, the only person I know who was treated in the ICU for covid was obese.

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