Panic Over? Finland to Lift All Covid Restrictions Despite Being in Deadliest Phase of Pandemic
Finland is to remove all Covid restrictions in February, Prime Minister Sanna Marin announced on Monday. Yle News has more.
Following decisions reached last week, some Covid-related restrictions are to be eased this week.
Starting on Tuesday, February 1st, establishments that primarily serve food will be allowed to stay open until 9pm. But, establishments that mainly serve alcoholic beverages will still be required to stop alcohol sales at 5pm and shut down for the day at 6pm.
Restaurants will be able to retain the right to require Covid passes from customers as a condition of admission. On the other hand, use of the passes will not exempt restaurants from restrictions on alcohol sales and opening hours, at least until mid-February.
Public gyms and swimming pools in the Uusimaa region will also be permitted to operate starting on Tuesday.
Starting on Tuesday, regulations at Finland’s borders for passengers arriving from Schengen Area countries as well as non-Schengen EU member states will be lifted.
It follows Denmark’s move to repeal all pandemic laws as of February 1st and return to “life as we knew it“, having determined COVID-19 is no longer “a threatening disease for society”. The question is, why is Finland going slowly, if it, too, has determined the pandemic is over? The extent to which Finland follows through with full repeal will become clear in the coming weeks.
Perhaps the slower place is because Finland is currently experiencing some of its highest levels of infections, hospitalisations and deaths to date. Test positivity is at its highest, though appears to have stopped rising.
Covid hospital occupancy is more than twice as high as at any other point in the pandemic – though how many are incidental admissions being treated primarily for other conditions?
Covid ICU occupancy is also high, though again, how many are incidental?
The winter and Omicron wave is also Finland’s deadliest, despite widespread vaccination and the mildness of Omicron.
Excess mortality has also been running high since the summer – interestingly, far higher than Covid deaths.
However, Finland is one of the European countries with the lowest death toll in the pandemic so far.
The fact that Finland is lifting restrictions despite being in the middle of its biggest and deadliest coronavirus outbreak, and with excess deaths running high, is an encouraging sign that fear and panic may be subsiding and level-headed decision-making returning. Let’s hope it’s catching.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Our beautiful Nordic neighbours.
Last year I was seriously considering purchasing a house in Sweden and semi permanently moving there.
However Sweden then announced they were introducing Vaxx Passports for gatherings of 100 or more, and part of me died and I gave up on the idea.
Really hard to read what’s going on.
Yup, from what I’m seeing, the Nordic realms have actually decided that vaxpässen macht frei.
Ensuring despotism is a small price to pay for freedom, it’s so convenient, and so on.
Bureaucratic convenience is never a good reason to implement anything.
It’s normally a sign whatever they’re doing is not nescessary.
Yes Sweden is visually beautiful and I understand the temptation to live there. But it suffers from social conformity and groupthink
High suicide rate in Sweden (and Finland) – two of the most boring countries on Earth. OK if you like pine trees.
Please come home. You know you want to.
Change of Prime Minister since Sweden didn’t lock down as everyone else did.
Sorry am I reading this wrong? THAT is their return to normal?
Well, yeh. It’s the new normal of course!
Indeed. Shows what some are now willing to accept as ‘normal’.
“you’ll be able to do f-all and you’ll be happy”
Freedom, WEF style.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/authors/sanna-marin
For those of a conspiratorial nature, this piece from the fountain of all truth, knowledge and wisdom is a re-assuring and enlightening read. Nothing to fear from these guys.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/01/covid-misinformation-omicron-and-how-to-combat-it/
I leave to you lovely people to decide where on the ironyometer my comments register.
Finland had some stringent restrictions on alcohol purchase when I went there decades ago, a State monopoly of booze shops, called ‘Alko’ and alcohol rationing, and duty-free bought on the ferry over was held back until disembarkation, so state interference is a well-established aspect of life there, hence the weird rules on serving alcohol?
Still the same – ALKO – the state run shop, the only place you can buy alcohol over around 5.6% strength (apart from pubs, restaurants, etc.).
ALKO does not want to pay wine producers a decent price, they just want the cheapest they can get, and sell it at an inflated figure. ALKO offers a limited selection – The State decides what’s best for you.
Finns have traditionally had a problem with alcohol, drunks and hardened alcoholics all over the place. Finns also have the attitude that drinking is ‘a sin’, thanks to the influence of religious nutters.
ALKO is the only shop where they ask if you want the receipt, as men don’t want their wives to look in their pockets and find they’ve bought ‘forbidden fruits’. It’s all rather pathetic.
Sweden and Norway have the same kind of system.
Yes……I had a friend who worked for Kone.
When he was living in Finland he had never had so many women all over him.
He liked a beer, but was a moderate drinker, and stayed sober all night. His potential adversaries were all absolutely mullered by 10.00p.m.!
I had occasions to visit Tallinn a few times and at the weekends, ferries would disgorge Finns galore who would drink themselves silly on the extremely cheap (cf here and Finland) alcohol in Estonia’s rather splendid capital.
Chatting to a few of them whilst they were capable, I was staggered by the price of alcohol in Helsinki and the like. I cannot remember the exact figure but I do remember it being eye watering. From memory something like 5 times the price of London prices back then (early 2000s).
They were mainly very decent drunks, going from affable to comatose without much in between.
Kone got done for corruption a few years back, bribes for contracts.
My god I would be fruly trucked. Does this apply to online too?
Same with Sweden. Booze can only be bought from a government shop called a systemet, only one exists for each area. You had to queue at a counter provide ID choose from a niggardly list of alcohol products and pay high prices. After joining the EU the booze got a bit cheaper and the grim systemets were modernised and now look like a small supermarket, no ID needed, more products. But there is still an element of public shame just being in there
When I lived in Stockholm (20 years ago) there was only one supermarket style Systemet near the central station which was packed on Friday afternoon, along with the queues at the flower shops at the train stations.
It’s Systembolaget in Sweden, and Vinmonoploet in Norway:
https://www.systembolaget.se/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinmonopolet
Beer in shops in Norway, Sweden & Finland is about the same cost as in the UK.
Strong alcohol (whisky, vodka, over 40%) is about the same in Finland and Sweden but TWICE the price in Norway, compared to the UK.
Don’t believe stories about being 5 to 7 times more expensive – it will be more in restaurants, of course, but if you buy it yourself what I have said above applies.
Yes, it wasn’t really a free country to begin with so, perhaps for that reason, lockdown ideology was more readily adopted there.
Finns are the most self-destructive drinkers I have ever come across in a long liftime devoted primarily to finding companions to share my alcohol habit.
I supect this says something relevant about the official attitude to alcohol in their own homeland.
Covid passes still in use I see. Nothing normal about that
First observation…that picture… that’s the Finish PM?
Bolloxed Britannia is obviously electing the WRONG ugly b@stards to the fetid midden that is the House of c#nts…sorry, commons!
Finish indeed.
She’s a narcissist and a very rude ill-behaving lefty.
They all are these days, bar RDS.
Also got caught fiddling her expenses – getting the taxpayer to fork out for her family’s food bills. Another ‘Honest Nadhim’ who “made a mistake”.
Young Global Leader graduate then?
Sanna Marin – Finnish PM. Eyes like one of those dolls where when you tip it up/down the eyelids open and shut, and a row of little teeth.
Scary, now you point it out.
Never put your tick in crazy.
Electorally speaking.
She’s Anna Paquin, it seems.
Esther McVey for PM. She’s fit.
(hmmm… annoying when you can’t remove a photo and replace it with another on here…)
As Robert Palmer said, “A pretty face don’t make no pretty heart”
Here’s another Finnish politician for you – Annika Saarikko. Put a yoke round it for ploughing your fields?
No good if she’s vaxxed though….
I’m sure we must all congratulate Emerald Fox on his brave and untiring efforts to help bring about this happy conclusion. 😜
Lol, I was just thinking along those lines.
Can’t stand her. I’m thinking ‘frying pan’.
Perhaps the international groupthink is beginning to change, albeit very slowly. But don’t expect many (any?) countries to fully abandon all the hysterical restrictions.
Next stage in lockstep. Something isn’t sitting right with me about all this sudden change of heart. Again, it’s too coincidental and I can’t see the orchestrators of all this giving up when they’ve already got so far. I hope I’m wrong.
My thoughts exactly and as per my comments yesterday on Jabbit’s backdown against the NHS.
What are they up to?
Something is incoming.
Something that I found puzzling/odd in early 2020 was how some advisor apparently had a quick word with Trump at a press conference about covid along the lines of “this is just an exercise” and Trump apparently replied “I wish someone had told me” ( no link for it any longer, but a few alt-news sites reported it ) . … ie Is the whole covid thing indeed just an exercise, a dress rehearsal for “the real thing”/something far more/actually serious?
Yep. Middle of what is normally the flu season we give up on all we’ve done for two years to stop a virus, just like that? It’s so hard not to be suspicious these days…
Of course they’re not going to give up. But neither are we. War of attrition – and our army is getting bigger.
Give Us A Land Of Hope!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqLX_24h0s4
Godfrey Bloom Official
We need far more people at all our events here
if we want the tyranny to end for good
Tuesday 1st February 2pm to 3pm
Yellow Boards By the Road
Between Henley Bridge & Little Angel Pub
White Hill A4130
Henley-on-Thames RG9 2LY
Stand in the Park Sundays 10am make friends, ignore the madness & keep sane
Wokingham Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Henley Mills Meadows (at the bandstand) Henley-on-Thames RG9 1DS
Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
I tried to go to one of these locally, in a large city, at the location listed on the SitP website, twice, but there was nobody there.
What time did you go? I am usually the only one at 10am, but I am always there in case we have a new one. Most people do not arrive until 10.30 or later. Maybe try later.
The first time just at 10, as advertised; the second time a little after 10 and again at about 10.45. I wore a bright yellow rain jacket to signal my interest/purpose in case there was only one “unmarked” person there etc.
“Finland should try to remove all Covid-related restrictions during the month of February, the country’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin (SDP) said on Monday.”
Try? They can do it if they really want to. But they don’t.
“some Covid-related restrictions are to be eased this week.
Starting on Tuesday, February 1, establishments that primarily serve food will be allowed to stay open until 9pm. But, establishments that mainly serve alcoholic beverages will still be required to stop alcohol sales at 5pm and shut down for the day at 6pm.
Restaurants will be able to retain the right to require Covid passes from customers as a condition of admission. On the other hand, use of the passes will not exempt restaurants from restrictions on alcohol sales and opening hours, at least until mid-February.”
“passengers arriving into Finland from outside the Schengen and EU areas will still be required to show proof of vaccination and a negative test taken within the previous 48 hours. This measure is expected to remain in place until Monday 14 February.”
I think we can see that the title of this article is inaccurate, and that all Covid restrictions are not being lifted.
And here’s your Digital Vaxx Pass – they are never going to get rid of this one – no jab, no travel. Forever:
Director General at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) Markku Tervahauta has recommended that Finland begin using a new digital vaccination certificate in place of the current Covid pass.
The EU digital Covid pass contains three different certificates: one that indicates the holder has been vaccinated against Covid-19, a certificate of a negative test result and a certificate that confirms if the person has recovered from the disease.
In an interview with Yle’s A-studio on Wednesday, Tervahauta suggested that in addition to the Covid-19 vaccine, the new certificate should include a record of vaccines that the holder has received against other diseases.
It would also omit information about whether the holder has contracted or recovered from Covid-19. – why that? Oh, yes, I think we know why. It’s the ‘vaccines’ or nothing.
https://yle.fi/news/3-12289185
“Thousands protest Covid restrictions in Helsinki, Jyväskylä
Some 4,000 people gathered in Helsinki on Saturday afternoon to protest against coronavirus restrictions”
https://yle.fi/news/3-12282427
The EU has been set on introducing a multi vaccine record for some time. Mission accomplished or near as.
https://ec.europa.eu/health/system/files/2019-09/2019-2022_roadmap_en_0.pdf
>t would also omit information about whether the holder has contracted or recovered from Covid-19.
The only real vaccination! Is the only one not recorded.
No one should delude themselves that this is about health, it’s about herding.
It was always about the vax pass, the re branding of pneumonia and influenza was their excuse to bring it about.
Absolutely….they’re just shuffling them around a bit.
They’re only lifted when they have gone altogether. And we know that will never happen, don’t we?
Yes, all of Scandinavia seems to have doubled down on the permanence of the vaxpass, but without any rationale as to why. So I think we can probably assume we are prisoners in our present countries, forever, unless we accept the jabs.
I still think this phased removal of covid restrictions in different countries is another stage of the tyrants charter, especially when they are still focusing on the ‘high’ number of ‘infections’ etc. It’s almost like letting the silly public loose with enough rope in order to demonstrate that alas, life cannot ever return to the old normal and the government knows best. Several countries brought in a similar time limited coronavirus act at the same time which will be due to expire soon. What better way to reinforce to the public that some / most / all of the freedom restrictions in the various Acts should be retained for another defined period (eventually for ever more) on a ‘need to use’ basis that TPTB will decide on at the drop of a hat, when the inevitable more infectious than the last more infectious variant occurs as a result of returning freedoms.The more infectious variant – or if TPTB get very adventurous and identify a completely different virus that will devastate mankind if unchecked – will necessitate swift and brutal corrective action to save lives. The government(s) save the day once more as the public cannot be trusted to act sensibly…indeed,… Read more »
Yes, this is exactly it. And yet people are celebrating because Javid and pals have graciously given the nurses a few more months to submit to the ‘vaccinations’. It should be clear to all by now, that the ‘restrictions’ aren’t going to be lifted entirely – anyone can be now ‘picked up by the authorities’ if suspected of ‘being contagious’.
Of course people are pleased that 100+K are not going to lose their jobs and be able to feed their family, but that doesn’t mean that everyone thinks it’s all over. Your response is equivalent to being annoyed with people in WW2 for being happy that some Jews were saved, when others were not. Not every single thing in life has to be negative.
Quite possibly.
Sanna Marin – looks about age 25. What a surprise …. she’s another WEF “Young Global Leader.”
Remember …. “you will own nothing” and they really don’t care if you’re happy or not.
Yep: should read “You will own nothing and WE will be very happy”!
Pubs have to close at 6:00p.m. – doesn’t sound very normal, wonder what’s going on.
Quite a few of Finland’s public leadership are ‘alumni’ of WEF’s ‘Young Global Leader’ programme.
Sanna Marin (2020) – PM
Annika Saarikko (2019) – Deputy PM
Alexander Stubb (2009) – former PM and Foreign Minister
Jyrki Katainen (2005) – former PM
“Finland is currently experiencing some of its highest levels of infections, hospitalisations and deaths to date.”
That’s what they have been saying every day on the TV in Finland. Unless you really know the truth – and they’re not going to let the public into hospitals to have a look for themselves, are they? – who knows what the situation is. We still don’t know of anyone who has ‘got Covid’ so you wouldn’t know there’s a pandemic unless you were told there is.
Supermarkets still open in Finland…. in a pandemic!!
This is obviously about controlling people by use of the ‘Vaxx Pass’, and making money out of an invented ‘pandemic’. As it always has been.
errrm, did I miss something or is Finland NOT lifting all restrictions in February. Asking for a friend?
“Finland is to remove all Covid restrictions in February, Prime Minister Sanna Marin announced on Monday. Yle News has more.
“
All restrictions? I ask because I’ve been told that about Denmark as well, but it turns out that they’re actually intensifying their Coronapas system rather than scrapping it.
https://www.thelocal.dk/20220106/what-are-denmarks-current-coronapas-rules/
That misuse of despite when you mean because again…
Countries are slowly backpedalling but too many people has been jabbed with poison. We will see new sicknesses emerge in the upcoming months/years.
Oh look, yet another member of the WEF Young Global Leaders appears in a prominent political position of leadership.
She looks barely old enough to own a house or raise a family and yet here she is….
Doesn’t matter a jot – I’m sure she has a hot line to Klaus and on a half hourly basis he tells her what he wants her to do.
“Finland is lifting restrictions despite being in the middle of its biggest and deadliest coronavirus outbreak”
Even in this ATL item, real world proportionality goes out of the window! LOOK at the y-axes of the significant graphs (Particularly deaths). DEADLY????????
I was triggered by that headline also. 17,131 deaths in the UK in nearly 2 years, average age over 80. Even Dr Campbell has noticed:
“Who The Hell Is Dr John Campbell? Part 2”
http://participator.online/articles/2022/01/who_the_hell_is_dr_john_campbell_part_2_20220125.php
Who’s definition of lifting all restrictions and restoring supposedly inalienable freedoms is that?
The mere fact that these mediocre, self-serving, plutocrats felt they could do this in the first place is something that will threaten us all at every turn until these Legoland tyrants are permanently erased from history.
Such a misleading headline. But, like it is supposed to do, it made me read the whole article. Still, disappointed.
Off subject I know. But Sanna Marin must be the most attractive leader on the planet.
Kristi Noem takes some beating.
She’s yours.
Wow, Anna Paquin is Finnish Prime Minister.
“The question is, why is Finland going slowly, if it, too, has determined the pandemic is over? “
I’d suggest the dominant ideology in Finland is behind it, just as it is everywhere else.
As we all know by now, I’ve never been one for ‘conspiracy theories’ but I am convinced that there is some kind of ‘Global control’ over governments – they’re all doing the same thing, aren’t they? With some minor variations. Full steam ahead with the Vaxx Passes and the requirement to have jabs to get ’em.
This is the result of ideas, not a conspiracy.
It is the result of causality, the same ideas are being taught the world over and the results of those ideas being put into practice is the same.
I do recommend the ‘Ominous Parallels’ by Leonard Peikoff. Published in 1982, it examines the ideas taught in Germany and the ideas taught in America and noting that, a few decades apart, the same ideas are having the same results when they’re put into practice.
Forty-eight COVID-attributed deaths in Finland yesterday out of population of 5.5 million. Not exactly something to panic about, particularly knowing the conveniently flexible parameters used determine “COVID” fatalities.
One wonders how many of these deaths were actually caused by other more mundane body snatchers – such as seasonal influenza, which at this time of year is usually taking a sizeable toll in the Northern Hemisphere.
Conveniently, for the architests of the pandemic scare story, the “gold standard” PCR test is incapable of telling one from the other!Equally conveniently,we are asked to beleive that seasonal flu has mysteriously and inexplicably vanished from the face of the earth.
How much longer are we going to permit Great Covid Con and its script writers to dictate every aspect of our woebegotten lives?
I don’t know of anyone who’s had ‘Covid’ here in Finland. You wouldn’t know there was a ‘pandemic’ if the Government and their lapdog THL (health authority) wasn’t telling everyone. It’s a pandemic of propaganda!
Blocking basically all of the working population from going to pubs is a very strange way of lifting restrictions. It’s more like replacing the current set of random Verboten!-diktats with a different one.
There is an ivermectin panic on the big tech and MSM right now. Massive articles from MSM on Ivermectin trying to push a danger narrative and also negative press on Americans Frontline Dr’s, again, to keep the Covid narrative alive. Just go to the Goog and type ivermectin then look at all the panic news articles. We are over the target. Big-Pharma is panicking. This medicine has been widely used by humans without any problems for 40 years. It’s inventor won a Nobel Prize after 20 years of successful use and after 100 million people were cured of a broad spectrum of problems without any side effects. Get your Ivermectin while you still can! https://ivmpharmacy.com
Sweden et al up there are a bigger technocracy than we realise. Finland is very advanced. Advanced in the way of tyranny of chipping populace.
What a stunningly beautiful woman…..full of common sense and confidence.
Unfortunately there is still mandatory vaccinations for health care workers. They are being challenged and I hope they’re removed.
”….in the deadliest stage of the pandemic…..” Deadly?