Corona pandemic in Norway.

[Captain Maltese]

Friday the 13th seems like a suitable time to start this thread. It is just a newsy report on what is happening here.

Background: at first just a few cases were reported; returning travelers from holidays in Austria and Italy. They were asked to go in self quarantine. As these travelers were mostly young healthy people who had been on skiing, they could care less about having to stay at home. And so it started to spread, until the government could no longer tell who had been infected where. Right now we have 692 registered infected, a handful actually quite sick and one elderly person dead. Doesn't sound like too much until you consider that our entire population is just 5 million. But there is no longer control over the spreading. One week ago the government estimated a hundre infection cases or so. This week the estimate is a mindbogging 2.2 million infected. And so...

We are on lockdown. The entire country. Is. On. Lockdown. Yesterday was when the Norwegian government finally took firm action against the incoming Corona virus and they really weren't mincing about it. All kindergartens and schools are closed. All gatherings above 50 people are closed. All sport, all cinemas, all concerts and all other public entertainment are forbidden. Restaurants and cafes are ordered to only allow guests if they sit at least three feet from each other. People are urged not to visit people in homes for the elderly or sick, or prisons, or any similar place. Massage parlors. tattoo shops and every other kind of personal close up attention are ordered closed. Today additional orders have been issued, forbidding all foreigners from entering the country and immediately return those who arrive none the less. All returning Norwegians are to go into two week self quarantine and as of now, those who defy it could get imprisoned. There has not been such a state of things in Norway since ww2, and these new rules go beyone the ww2 ones.

Those are the orders. The effect is devastating. Our city streets are empty. The subway is empty. The airports are empty. All public traveling is to be curtailed as much as possible. There's increasing hoarding in the shops, which the authorities say are completely pointless as there's plenty food, but the authorities don't seem to understand that going shopping is now infection place number one. We really don't want to go shopping again for a while. TV don't have any sport to show. There's literally just one newsstory on all of our TV channels.

With this new desolation comes an immediate economic disaster. Many thousands of people who thought they had secure jobs are being put on temporary suspension as of this weekend, for time unknown - on 2/3 paycheck. It takes a lot to be fired in Norway but now a LOT of small time employment places like hair salons and pubs are facing a very real risk of going backrupt. Doesn't take long for small service providers.

With a presumably ample food supply, or so the authorities promise, there's only one thing actually rationed: paracetamol, or Tylenol to you Americans. It's one of the two most used receipt free painkillers available to us.

It's almost embarassing to talk about myself in this. I live in a small town where there's no registered infections yet, although two of the neighboring areas have been hit. I'm fine, but very concerned and for good reason. While my health is not perfect I don't have any ailments that Corona could make worse. If I get infected, I shouldn't get hit worse than a solid flue does. I live alone but for the cats and cutting down on my weekly shopping is probably all it will take for me to not get particularly exposed. If I have to be in quarantine it won't be much of a problem. However. In this little town where I live, I also have two parents approaching their 80s, and two fairly young relatives of whom one has a weak immune system. If either of these catch the big bug, there could be grave consequences. And the only way I can help them by going errands or buy food or otherwise help out, is by staying uninfected.

Today I went grocery shopping. Early in the day, so there would be few people around. Normally I shop groceries twice weekly, just to get out of the house. Today I bought enough food to last me two whole weeks, not counting the food already in house. If necessary I can go three or four weeks without buying a thing. Going to be some boring meals, but hey. I've been a prepper for years and have built up stores accordingly - a pandemic was the top of my list of doomsday scenarios well before the world learned the name of Corona. My garb for this shopping was a hooded jacket, gloves and a huge scarf. The two times I had to take off my gloves to push buttons I immediately put on antibac before putting the glove back on. I bought nothing that wasn't packaged in plastic. As soon as I got home I got a hot shower.

There has been surprises. Watching Norway empty overnight has been well beyond my expectations. Also, we have been told to please please don't go to our cabins because the small rural counties where mosts of these hundreds of thousands of cabins are, can't supply medical services beyond the needs of the permanent residents. Some of these counties have a couple of thousand permanent residents and twenty thousand holiday cabin dwellers. The airborne medical services have already warned flat out that they have no resource in manpower, skills, equipment or choppers to deal with infection cases. Which means that my plan to retire to my own cabin now comes with the knowledge that I won't be rescued if I shouild want to. Airports: the main international airport do not have the manpower to guard against foreigners showing up, so apparently from 6am tomorrow the military will be enforcing it. That's a new one. The police? The police have closed down all service functions; passports, driving licenses, all that stuff is now unavailable for the time being.

With today's announcements also came a number of economic crutches for the companies that will feel this. The air transport companies are hit very hard, 'Norwegian' alone suspended 5000 jobs today. No passengers, no income. There are however a lot of crutches missing as yet; we have so many one man companies that don't fit into the initial framework. Concert coordinators. Artists. House cleaners. On and on.

About the only really good news is that just maybe we acted fast enough to nip this in the bud. And we are a small country with a lot of space dividing a small population. And we are a very wealthy country. It's not going to be a question about being able to afford what needs to be done, but about not doing more harm than good in the process. I am hopeful that this whole thing can pass. And that for all the people who are going to face hardship as a result for this, things will get back to normal and copable again. In the meantime, we are all going into hibernation. The government say they expect the top of the pandemic will be between May - and October. That's a long time to be in hibernation.

[Captain Maltese]

12 hours later, the number of infected have gone from 692 to 907. Numbers will keep rising sharply as test results keep coming in. As expected, police and military forces along with health staff are now at our airports roping in all arrivals. All foreigners are returned immediately unless they are infected, in which case they are put into forced quarantine at the airport hotels. Arriving Norwegians are also quarantined. Basically the borders are now closed to all foreigners. Meanwhile, Norwegians out of the country are urged to return home.

The biannual national wage negotiations have been put off until autumn. The unions' leader is just one of many who is now quarantined. The health minister is also quarantined.

Yesterday paracetamol was put on rationing. Today insulin has been added. Norway have no medicine manufacture or capacity of its now and the foolishness of that is becoming obvious. I am on a few non-life-vital medicines myself and it will be interesting to see if supplies of them can be maintained. Many others would face far grimmer consequences if there is a real break in supplies.

I expect to update this post throughout the day. Things are developing from hour to hour now.

Update: 1033 infected now.

For the last two days, all former medical personnel in Norway is on standby. Leaving the country is illegal for them. Both those who have left for other lines of work or stay at home, medical students, and pensioned ones, are alerted that they may be called in to help out. Already hospitals are using Instagram and other social networks to call for extra staff to fill positions.

The entire health department leadership is now in quarantine after one of them tested as infected.

Update: 1074 infected now. 3 are dead.

Yet another press conference with the prime minister. It's getting pretty eerie. Usually this involves a thronge of journalists asking lots of questions. Now there is just a handful of journalists and they are placed on chairs three feet away from each other. Half the chairs are empty. And there is a hand sign interpreter for the deaf, given as much screen space as the prime ministers. The new actions from govt level is that airports and ship ports will formally close down from Monday, allowing only cargo traffic and returning Norwegians through the border. Also they really really mean it now about people leaving their cabins and going to their homesteads; in an utterly unprecedented move there will be be Civil Defense personnel going from cabin to cabin to politely urge people to leave. I doubt this will happen other than in the most intensely cabin-populated areas, as Civil Defense is not particularly well staffed. We really get our disaster readiness tested these days, and the cracks in the construction are starting to show.

One oddity is from the capitol Oslo, where the local authorities say they will help foreign beggars home. This means back to Romania in many cases. Foreign beggars are an unfortunate staple of Oslo's main streets as well as in the other bigger Norwegian cities and they have no respect whatsoever for laws and rules, meaning they also have have had a considerable effect on local small crime statistics; pickpocketing, drug sales, sale of dubious gold, robbery of the elderly and infirm, cons, prostitution. These people would never follow quarantine rules as they have no official home here, avoid all kinds of testing as it would mean registering - and now that the streets are emptying of Norwegians and tourists, they also have no legal income whatsoever (begging isn't illegal by law). Whether the authorities will be able to locate these individuals is an entirely different question - people who travel unseen through Europe on a regular basis will not stand still and wait to be moved away from the best available source for their income. My initial guess is that they will vanish abruptly, then show up in other Norwegian towns. But it is going to be hard to not get noticed by local police under these new conditions.

Coming up on the horizon now is the issue with Sweden, which so far seem to have a different approach to the virus. They are not closing down schools, because it is going to cost too much, and are only curtailing activities with more than 500 people. Official information pages acknowledges that there are 'several' infection cases. Since Sweden share one of Europe's longest borders with Norway and we have a massive number of Swedes working and living in Norway, there is a huge risk of infection having a chance to slip over through unofficial border traffic. There is no way to control this border beyond the usual traffic crossovers. For instance, thousands of Norwegians went across to Sweden today to do shopping at the huge malls catering mostly to Norwegian customers who loves Swedish prices, and at these thronged malls there were no virus detention tools in use whatsoever. The Swedes are happy to see their sales skyrocket. But will these shoppers bring more than cheap bacon back? We are going to find out pretty soon.

Update: 1090 infected now. 3 are dead. The authorities are warning that there are now large black numbers of infected as tests are now reserved only for the seriously ill and those in vital jobs like health workers.

One of the many areas now affected are news media. News media that were doing updates every five minutes with snippets from the whole world are near silent. Things are still happened but it looks like most of the journalists have gone home. Eerie, and another thing I honestly didn't expect in a pandemic.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 1254 infected now, of which 42 are in hospital. 3 are dead.

This evening our king made a brief speech on TV. He didn't say anything unexpected, but he is 80 years old and is himself in quarantine. The cabin issue remains a big thing, and now some of those counties with lots of cabins are actually chasing people out. Normally this would be cause for revolution but since the government already told them all to go home it's mainly leading to people be embarrassed about being caught not going home. Weird times. Among the good news - sounds like all the people on temporary layoffs are going to get 100% pay, not just 2/3. That's going to come as a big relief to people who were working hard to pay mortgages even before this brouhaha. As for the Swedish issue, the clampdown on border traffic comes on Tuesday next week. From then on, everyone going for a little cross border shopping returns home and straight into compulsory 14 day quarantine. Exceptions will only be made for work commuters. We have a lot of Swedish medical staff working in Norway and they would be more than sorely missed. Being a part of the Schengen border treaty we have had a lot of paperless traffic. From Monday next week, you can no longer expect to pass in or out without a passport.

Compensation to business remains a major issue. SAS, the Scandinavian air service company, today announced they are temp laying off 10 000 people. That's 90% of their staff. While the Norwegian government now owns just a couple of percent of the shares, it is still the biggest deliverer of air transport in Norway. Also Wideroe, a small company that serves the smallest routes in northern Norway, is laying off another 1000. Between SAS, Norwegian and Wideroe they do almost all the air traffic inside Norway. Most of the small airports have already closed down.

I'm not entirely well. Nothing big. Feeling a bit hot, got a bit of rasp in my throat, breathing a little heavy, coughing a little. Normally I wouldn't put much worry into it but under the circumstances, I am noticing it. Not a single case have as yet been reported in my town and I damned if I am going to be the first one. If this is the big one, I am getting off light and after all the latest goverment estimate is that maybe 60% of the population could get it - and then we'll be more or less immune once we shake it off. Right now I am glad I bought two weeks' worth of food. Trouble is, I'm running out of one of my meds in 9 days and it's one of those high octane types I can only have a 30 pill box of every 30 days. I can do without, but then I will also have to do without sleep. I guess I'll be heading to the apothecary when I have to, and then I will be wearing a mask no matter how cringy it looks. I guess with the deeply hooded jacket and a scarf I can look like a Stalker. If anyone looks funny at me I can just take off the mask and cough on them. Nah..... Better not. A guy did that yesterday and he got promptly arrested. This is no time for physical humor.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 1282 infected now, of which 49 are in hospital. 3 are dead.

Real weird to watch the main border crossing to Sweden get physically closed. Those bars have not been lowered since the day they were installed. The National Guard unit now active at our main airport, which can't be completely closed down, has been given limited police authority. On the flip side there is talk about letting a few prisoners out early, who only have a few days left of their sentences. It's difficult to see how things can get better from this step. School kids starting on internet based remote schooling have a not particularly surprising problem; the teaching platform systems are bogging down due to the massive numbers of pupils and students logging on at the same time. These system have been less that perfect for a long time and throwing lots of money at patching them up will not bring the quick fix that is needed now. Beyond that the day is still young. More welcome economic news from the government; independent one-man business people whose income is suddenly zero because their line of business is closed down, will get a payout of 80% of the average income from the last three years. That is one hell of a lot better than no income at all.

Update: 18k+ are tested, which is about 0.3% of the population. 1313 infected now, of which 53 are in hospital. 3 are dead.

More press conferences and press statements. Police will hire temporary staff increases from police students, retired police and so on. That's good because I'll rather have more cops around than a bunch of military guys whose training is on combat rather than civil unrest. On the other hand people who break imposed quaranine will now face a standard fine of 2000 dollars. That WILL hurt. Also the Emergency Rescue service have issued a warning that people planning a mountain trip for Easter (extremely common in Norway) should stay at home as this year there are no dependable resources for rescuing anyone. That's a lot of skiing, hiking, snowmobiling and mountaineering taking on an entirely new level of risk.

Update: 1348 infected now, of which 55 are in hospital. Of those 55, 11 are in intensive care. 3 are dead.

A few days ago the authorities estimated that Norway have 1400 Intensive Care Units (ICU) equipped with respirators, including the 600 already in daily use. This number has been corrected to 800. Turns out a lot of those not in daily use, were out of daily use for a reason. A lesson hopefully learned in time. But are there respirators on the market to be bought now?

There is more info about the infected cases now. About two thirds are men, in their mid 40s. Two thirds of the total, not necessarily the same guys, got infected during skiing trips to Austria and Italy. The last third was infected at home. But these are just the numbers we know. People who have started to feel flu-like symptoms are told to NOT go and get tested (against WHO advice to the countries) but stay home in self quarantine and not bother the strained medical system unless they feel seriously sick. There isn't even an estimate for this group now.

Some smaller hospitals and medical centers prove to be utterly unprepared, lacking even the most basic protective gear like masks and gloves. One doctor at a four-doctor medical center was on TV showing the entire emergency kit - one five bucks tyvek suit, a couple of two dollar goggles and a bottle of alcohol. If even one of those four doctors get infected they have to close the doors on all their 6000 regular patients. Calls are going out in some of these place for donations of masks, suits, whatever. Business and even private individuals have been making donations of gear. I guess this is part of the price we pay for consisting of a country of mostly small isolated communities rather than big cities. On the other hand it helps keeping the infection rate down so I shouldn't complain.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 1421 infected now, of which 68 are in hospital. 3 are dead. 18k+ tested. Norway is now one of the countries with most tests and most registered infected; two numbers that make sense when together.

The unemployment numbers are shooting up. Partly because some people get laid off permanently and partly because the requirements for unemployment payments have been cut in half, so people who didn't see a point in registering before have a reason now.

The numbers for medical staff in quarantine is also going through the roof. In the southwestern sector (which includes the capital) more than 6000 nurses, doctors and so on have been sent home because there is a risk that they may have been infected. Fortunately the call for more students, pensioners and other former medically qualified people are bolstering the hospital ranks. In the capital alone more than 1800 have volunteered to service medically. Some of these are pensioners and in risk groups themselves. These will be placed in more protected tasks, replacing young healthy medical staff that can be freed to move to more risky work.

Update: 1443 infected now, of which 68 are in hospital - 13 in ICU. 3 are dead. 18k+ tested.

Good news on the medic worker side. A whopping 68.000 have volunteered for temporary medical work, according to one list. That's more than 1.2% of the entire Norwegian population. The list includes dental workers, lab staff and so on. If the system can even absorb that much manpower we'll be able to handle a lot more illness than we've had among hospital staff so far.

Apothecaries are experiencing a drain on non-prescription medicines and customers can now only buy one item of each type. Nothing stops the customers from going to the next place and buy more there, but it will probably help.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 1524 infected now, of which 77 are in hospital - 13 in ICU. 4 are dead. 18k+ tested.

My local county has its first infection case. It was just a matter of time. On the flip side, there's apparently coming up a temporary medical center just three minutes away, which will focus on checking out people with flu and colds to see if they could have the virus. Heard that one on the radion so I don't have more specifics yet. If it is as described I might go there myself.

The capital has started busing and flying 200 Romanians without papers, legal jobs or places to stay back to their homelands. These have all asked to be helped back. There are probably several thousand more just in the capital who are trying to ride this out, but the number could quadruple in another week or two.

The prime minister is having a press conference again tonight. It's a daily thing now to have someone from the top of the government make new statements. Mostly ministers. Half of the speakers have to do it from their homes as they are infected or in quarantine.

Norway is a country with a lot of guns, cabins - and leisure boats. A five million population has 900 000 non-commercial boats ranging from little rowboats to sailboats and ocean cruisers. If that's the official number then the unofficial is probably one and a half million. Hell, I even have a small one myself. My dad has five. It's a thing. And especially in the southern part of Norway there is a culture of boat people going on convoys and holiday meetup together in the same way caravan people do. Now the government wants this social culture curtailed like they did with the cabins. Partly because this is about people meeting and being social and spreading virus. Partly because just like our airborne medical emergency rescue system isn't equipped to deal with infected cases, our naval rescue services are likewise not ready to deal with them. If one even suspected infection case comes aboard the crew and the entire rescue boat will have to be scrubbed, taking it out of service for an estimated 24 hours. If there's still unquarantined crew to man it afterwards. Probably most boaters will listen and some will ignore it. But if they get in trouble there's no longer any promise of rescue being even attempted. Another pandemic consequence I hadn't foreseen. Have anyone?

Update: 1564 infected , of which 87 are in hospital - 18 in ICU. 6 are dead. 18k+ tested.

Those dead so far are all elderly with or without additional complications. The main update of the evening from the government is new emergency laws, allowing for more rapid procedures in putting new decisions into effect. There is no political opposition to this, as a mere 1/3 of the parliament's votes will be needed to revoke decisions done under this particular law. Another minor newsstory is that the border with Sweden is now guarded by 300 Army and Home Guard soldiers to deal with anyone trying to force their way in. As the soldiers are unarmed it's hardly a big measure in itself, but we haven't had this many soldiers on the Norwegian-Swedish border since we seceded from them in 1905. Of the evening's good news is that two Norwegian factories have started making tyvek suits and antibacterial alcohol, meaning our national production of antiviral products of any kind is no longer zero. Hopefully someone will get started on masks, goggles and such as well soon too.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 1632 infected , of which 96 are in hospital - 18 in ICU. 6 are dead; the average age of the first five were 89 years. 18k+ tested.

Yet another press conference. They are getting hard to follow for non-economists as the measures get more detailed and are attending to more narrow issues. The big topics coming up are of the macro-economic type. The Norwegian valuta, the krone, is taking a considerable hit since international oil prices are hurting big time. This means that US Dollars, Euros and British Pounds are at a record high. Our state bank, which usually is comfortable with a low Krone because it helps our exports, may actually choose to intercept this time. Lower lending rates, or buying Krones on the market - they won't be telling until they have actually done it.

Update: 1746 infected , of which 103 are in hospital - 18(?) in ICU. 7 are dead. 18k+ tested.

The cabin issue is now law. Staying in a cabin outside own county/municipality is now illegal and punishable with a 1500 dollar fine or up to six months in prison. Ouch. This one is going to cost the govt a lot of goodwill and be used against the ruling parties once the whole pandemic is over. There will be hell to pay for any govt politician who turns out to have spent any time at their own cabin in this period.

Update: 1778 infected , of which 104 are in hospital - 18(?) in ICU. 7 are dead. 34k+ tested. That's almost twice the number of tests since the previous update but I haven't had updated numbers in that area for days. Several hospitals say they no longer have the materials to conduct further tests until replenished. None the less we are now number four on the list of countries that have made the most tests per capita.

So far the number of people getting hospitalized follows a barely climbing linear line. That is good. The infection rate seem to follow a similar although steeper line, and if that was the reality it would be great. But all authorities acknowledge that testing is only done on that small group of people ill enough to be admitted to a hospital in the first place. Actual reality is probably an exponential rate. That is horrifying, especially because people apparently don't get immunized from being infected. So those who recover are as likely to be infected again, and could be even harder hit subsequently. This crap isn't going to fade away. We need that antivirus, and soon.

There is a change in the group of people in hospital for the virus. Whereas it was mostly very old and/or already sick people in the beginning, a rising percentage are now people younger than 50. This could indicate that also fairly young and healthy individuals can get quite sick from this.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 1794 infected , of which 105 are in hospital - 19 in ICU sith respirator. 7 are dead. 34k+ tested.

A last minute update in the cabin law; just a little adjustment to sugar the bitter pill. We aren't allowed to sleep over at cabins but now we can go on day trips. It isn't much but it makes a mile of difference for everyone with a cabin shaped hole in their hearts. It means we can go get food stores and tools and skis and other stuff we have there and always expected to have within reach, and it means we can go check that there has been no burglaries - a very real issue in parts of the country. I'll be planning a trip myself very soon. This is good news.

Update: 1922 infected , of which 135(!) are in hospital - 19 in ICU sith respirator. 7 are dead. 34k+ tested.

A big hike up in hospital cases just from this morning. Why, I don't know as yet.

There's some political brouhaha over the emergency laws the government want. The opposition parties, who are in the majority when they cooperate, do not want to hand over quite as much power as is asked for. Negotiations are ongoing and it is expected that a slightly more shaved down version will pass eventually. There are nine parties from far left to far right represented in our version of a parliament, three of which are our current minority ruling coalition, and overall they have cooperated reasonably well to handle this virus emergency. None the less; with everyone becoming less shocked by the presence of the pandemic, the population is becoming more aware of what rights they feel are being infringed upon in the process. Your average Norwegian is, to put it mildly, not meek in their opinions about what the political parties and the government do and don't do, and the distance from your average small town to the capital can some times be measured in light years. We will cooperate for now, but nothing will be forgotten and precious little will be forgiven. Once this is all done with, there will be a reckoning. And not just in the voting booth. I predict that some places who leaned harder than necessary on the people living and/or visiting them during this event, are going to find it difficult to resume to the same level of commerce and productivity where it was before. It will not matter if new local politicians are voted in; the reputation will have taken a blow that it might take many years to repair.

One Norwegian company has managed to get started making protective suits. They have an initial government order for 400.000 suits.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 2128 infected , of which 155 are in hospital - 28(?) in ICU sith respirator. 7 are dead. 49k+ tested.

The proposed 'Corona Law' was ripped to shreds as expected, and a rather more limited version was eventually voted in. The ruling parties didn't get as much power and they wanted, and the law is given only a one month lifespan before it either ends or gets a renewal vote. There is a general understanding that the law proposal was tarred more by shoddy haste work than by any evil plan to create an old school sword and sorcery monarchy like we used to be. I guess that's what happens when half the government officials are in home quarantine trying to combine national governance paperwork with childcare and Netflix.

Our capital Oslo is seemingly built exclusively out of places to drink, party or buy plastic viking hats with horns. With the drastic reduction in partygoers and souvenirshoppers a lot of places have closed for the duration, but the pubs and restaurants have had enough traffic to stay open and they have been allowed to stay open on the condition that the 3 foot personal distance rule has been obeyed. Many of these establishments, it turns out, have not bothered with this rule. As a result, as of tonight, all sale of served alcohol is now forbidden. That's going to put a dent in the careless partying, as well as in sales.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 2263 infected , of which 173 are in hospital - 33 in ICU with respirator. 7 are dead. 54k+ tested.

Probably the most quiet day yet since this started. Then again, it is Sunday.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 2532 infected , of which 195 are in hospital - 41 in ICU with respirator. 9 are dead. 61k+ tested.

Two more dead since yesterday. While another 8 were well enough to be moved out of the ICU. Which means 18 new patients have been connected to respirators.

The most recent news from the authorities are yet more economic crutches and incentives for business. Lower loan rates and so on. It is needed. During the two last weeks, 8 percent of the entire Norwegian worker population have applied for unemployment. It is unlikely that the general population gets much in the way of further financial extra support. The exception are the students, who can't normally apply for other fundings without losing their student grants and so on.

The cabin issue, weird as it is, has not gone away. The People Health Institute, which is the leading authority on the battle against covid19, has officially pointed out today that barring the private cabins of Norway from was not one of their suggestions. It's fully an initiative of certain local counties.

Someone who does mean it is the police and their new anti-infection laws. Several people have won 2000 dollar fines for intentionally coughing on someone else, whether they are infected or not. Spitting will be met with the same fine. Seriously I don't even know any other law in Norway where you can get a fine of that size; you can be sentenced to pay much bigger reparations of course under other circumstances but usually a fine is rarely more than a couple of hundred dollars at most. I kinda like that there is now a law against being a total asshole.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 2753 infected , of which 211 are in hospital - 44 in ICU with respirator. 12 are dead. 70k+ tested.

I finally left the house to do some shopping after 11 days of staying indoors. Went early in the day to minimize contact but there were some people out and about anyway. Mostly senior citizens for some reason. I was the only one attempting to protect my face. There were posters in most stores about the virus but only one place asked for only five people to be in the store at a time. Those who were in the shops made no attempt to keep their distance and some were coughing. The cashiers had gloves but nothing else. This is absolutely not promising. If it is like this everywhere in Norway even now, then the pandemic is barely beginning. Today there's a lot of rain but newsmedia have been reporting for days about many people still behaving like there is nothing special happening; walking on crowded streets, going jogging in groups on city walking paths, breaking into close off sports arenas to play football, even going swimming together. Yep, I am definitely going to stay away from people best as I can for weeks to come.

The other day the authorities announced they had managed to secure a shipment of masks and gloves, which was immediately distributed to the hospitals. In the same breath they announced that, oh, another shipment had 'gone missing' a week earlier so this time the were doing the distribution in secrecy. That's interesting. I wonder who bought all that.

Registered unemployment, which includes those on temporary layoff, is now at a whopping 10.4% of the work force. That's the biggest in Norway since WW2.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 3033 infected , of which 237 are in hospital - 57 in ICU with respirator. 14 are dead. 73k+ tested.

One day seems to be just following another now. More people get ill, more economic incentives for various group who are hurting, more social loopholes getting close down forcibly when rules are not enough. The time horizon for this event is now set as 'until Easter is over'. Exams in middle schools and high schools are officially canceled, with a possible exception for vocal exams. Instead gradings will be set on performance up until the pandemic started.

One good bit of news: crime is down. Not only is daily crime levels down, but our small army of justice dept clerks and police clerks working from home now have time to whittle down the stacks of waiting cases. I will take whatever graces this pandemic has.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 3254 infected , of which 268 are in hospital - 70 in ICU with respirator. 14 are dead. 73k+ tested. The big change since yesterday is an almost 50% increase in respirator cases.

We have also been informed today that Norway has a grand total of 682 respirators available, not including the small ones used in patient transport. But many, probably most, of these respirators are probably already in use with patients ailing other things than Corona.  A few more hundred are ordered but with the world situation as it is, they might not even get delivered this year.

Sweden, which has gone on a very different approach to the virus and kept schools open and so on, today reports 66 dead from the virus. They have twice our population but it's a big number none the less. Our border with Sweden is sewed up good and tight now.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 3443 infected , of which 307 are in hospital - 76 in ICU with respirator. 16 are dead. 73k+ tested.

Another day, another press conference. Two today already. Today's government update releases the third major economic aid package in two weeks. The billions being used to battle this pandemic go by so fast now that I can hear the numbers but the perspective is lost on me. Today's package includes money to keep an even wider scope of companies and employers above water, but also to keep state activities running at an increased level where possible. Among other things this mean paying private companies for theirs services to state units as soon as they send bills instead of on the last payable date. Sounds small but it means billions of more dollars in company accounts.

While the political opposition applauds and support almost everything the leading government do to deal with the pandemic, there are calls for further action. Of course every political opposition want more money used, but they do have a point in some areas. Taxes on both business and citizens have largely not been touched yet, nor have fresh state contracts been issued on areas like road building. In good times, of which we have had a long period, there has always been an issue to keep public spending on infrastructure down in order not to overheat the related industries. So it would be logical to increase them now of all times. This means spending more money, of course, but do we rather want to give people unemployment money or paychecks? But it's been 'only' 14 days. What will be discussed three months from now? All bets are off.

One good bit of news: The number of health personnel in quarantine is down to about 5700 now. At one time that was almost up to 9000. But they are going right back to working with infected people so I wonder how that will work out.

Update: 3689 infected (that's a 10% increase since yesterday) , of which 307 are in hospital - 76 in ICU with respirator. 17 are dead. 73k+ tested.

I had to leave the house briefly. I'm running out of my medications and needed a refueling. The apothecary is in the center of town so I saw some people. At first glance it's hard to see anything has changed. Lots of people milling about. Kids bicycling, mothers with baby carriages, adults and very old people. I was the only covered up gloves, hood and scarf covering most of me. You'd think the world haven't changed. The closest thing I could see of change was that people standing talking or passing each other were to some degree keeping a ten foot distance. In the little mall where the apothecary is there was more change. Most stores were closed. In the apothecary, only four people were allowed in at a time and there was a 1 meter line on the floor to keep people away from the cashier as much as possible.

Sweden reports new Corona death numbers. 92. That's 30 up from yesterday.

My local county stood with zero infection for two weeks. I'm checking the local numbers now and today the infected are 10. It doesn't shock me. I see how people are still behaving and I know how much contact we have with the neighboring counties and towns. It was inevitable. But it still makes an impact. If there are 10 today, there'll be 100 in a week.

I am on meds that can tranquilize a buffalo. One of the sleep pills I use every night qualify as a narcotic. I need it, too. But accordingly it is prescribed me so strictly that I am only allowed the next box when the last pill of the previous is spent. Today I was allowed the next box with one pill still left in the previous. In the more than a decade I have been on this stuff, that has never happened before. I also didn't have to sign for receiving it, which also has never happened before.

Update: 3689 infected, of which 307 are in hospital - 76 in ICU with respirator. 19 are dead. 78k+ tested.

There are promising news. Norway is the first country to start testing covid91-antiserums under WHO guidance. 22 of our hospitals tomorrow starts large scale testing of the following remedies: hydroksyklorokin (an old medicine against malaria) and remdesivir (an ebola antivirus). Other countries are to follow soon.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 3973 infected, of which 292 are in hospital - 82 in ICU with respirator. 22 are dead. 82k+ tested. Among further data the number of quarantined health personnel is now down to less than 5000, although the infected ones are almost doubled to 400. There's a lot of nurses and doctors who is back at work now. I'm not saying Norway has this pandemic in check but the total and increases of numbers per capita compared to any other country are mercifully low. Of the 22 dead, all but one were around 90 years old and had additional ailments. The government has been hoping and praying for at least a slow spread of the virus so our hospital resources could deal with them, and the indications are that they got it. They have not been alone in hoping and praying. If we can hang in a few weeks more and if there is a vaccine soon then we might get through this without a need for mass graves.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 4235 infected, of which 316 are in hospital - 91 in ICU with respirator. 25 are dead. 85k+ tested. I guess yesterday's little slack in hospital cases went back to the estimate prognosis line.

There was supposed to be a press conference today where the government lined up the local county authorities and gave them a unified set of quarantine rules. Since the pandemic started there has been a lot of local rules and laws, like the forbidding of cabin stayovers or mandatary quarantine for anyone coming to visit from outside the county, and they are increasingly clashing not just with each other but also with the needs of farmers and factories who rely on people coming to work for them. This press conference today was canceled just before it was going to start, apparently because one of the tiniest parties in the ruling faction (we are talking parties with 3% of the voters) snuck in a sentence at the last minute making the new common rules not mandatory, making the whole exercise pointless because it is the most rebellious counties that have the strictest local laws and they'll literally only toe the line if they face a firing squad.

A personal issue yesterday. My family has a couple of cabins in the woods and hills. For much of the year its a biblical paradise but in winter the road there is not for the faint of heart or the weak of engine. Yesterday my dad wanted to come with him there to fix a ladder for the fireplace controller from the county, which would have been a two hour trip back and forth. No problem in itself; personally I plan for trouble and my car is full of emergency gear specifically for those roads because I have needed it and not had it before. My dad is more optimistic and occasionally forget he is closing in on 80. So I am happy to tag along when my dad ask; it's a nice little trip and I can be useful. But yesterday when my dad arrived on my door to pick me up I was forced to reveal my little health secret - I'm possibly infected. I've been keeping this a secret to my parents, because they worry and worry about things that aren't their problems and then they start trying to fix them. There is a whole lot of things in my life that I have never told them because I didn't consider it to be their business. I assume I am normal in this? Anyway I was obliged to tell my dad this one. He is old, but he is also in bad health and is in the prime risk group for the virus. I offered to come anyway because I knew I'd probably be needed, but we agreed that there was a considerable risk of infecting him if I was infected like I think I am. So he went off alone. In a heavy snowfall. Along country roads that probably doesn't get tended much in the middle of the pandemic. The roads were as bad as I feared, he slid off the road and got stuck, and it took 3 hours and a farmer buddy with a tractor to pull him out of there. I feel like shit about the whole thing. Could I have made a difference? I mean I am capable of walking the last couple of miles in uphill snow, and I am capable of getting the small hand winch from the cabin and get a car out of a ditch. But am I capable of not infecting someone while steaming from sweat and damp snow? I only know what did happen. But for the corona thing I would have been there to help.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 4313 infected, of which 319 are in hospital - 97 in ICU with respirator. 31 are dead. 87k+ tested. There's a 20% raise in death numbers just since yesterday, while the total of infected and tested appears to stand more or less still. Odd. Apparently this is because some hospitals have not sent in reports to central authorities until Monday morning. There's still a lot of coverage on every death and I suspect some of the hospitals and nursing homes are getting worried their names are getting mentioned in a negative connection too often. But I equally suspect that it being Monday morning, the nurses are finding people dead who were alive when they last checked on them before the weekend. Norway doesn't really have nursing homes other than for the very elderly so a lot of people well above their 80s just gets a visit from a nurse a few days per week. Another chilling number I found yesterday: 200 of the infected are children or at most 18 years old. This has gotten absolutely no coverage until today. Thankfully none of them are on respirators, but it is still 5% of the total.

Norway has a triple layer of administration. The government with its departments is on top. On the next level are the counties. I use the word with some caution because there is just a handful of them and they cover fairly large areas but can still have relatively few people living there. They have only a limited amount of functions now in the computer age. The local authority is the municipality. I mention this because the county next to my county has now blocked all traffic between the two of them. Which essentially mean that anyone going from here to there is put in two week quarantine. I have no errands there so it won't affect me, but it is pretty drastic for anyone who lives on one side of the line and do all their work and shopping on the other line.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 4593 infected, of which 321 are in hospital - 97 in ICU with respirator. 35 are dead. 90k+ tested.

The government parties have had a solid ruckus overnight with the opposition parties over the revisioned third emergency help package. One of the items was an extra loan to the students, which has gone from being all loan to partly a stipend, meaning they won't all have it back. Studying in Norway is different from most other countries in that the parents don't fund it but the state, so anyone bright enough to go to college can afford it. This funding is three part. One, the school themselves are free (which makes us extremely popular with foreign students). Two, the students apply for loans supposedly big enough to pay for the cost of living and pay back after they start working. Three, there are stipends on top of this that helps to balance for the cost of living in cities and away from parents. Also some students get their loans partially changed to stipends under certain conditions. A doctor choosing to work in the sparsely populated north will get a lot of their loan changed to stipend.

Note on Norwegian politics. Our parliament, which roughly equals the US congress, consists of nine parties. Three now make the ruling but minority faction. The opposition is in total in solid majority but spread from far left to far right so the minority ruling faction will be holding until the next election. We have had a right wing ruling faction for soon 7 years now after breaking many years of socialist rule. Right now there's no political commentator who can guess what will happen after the next election because the pandemic blows all estimates out of the water. The situation now is that the ruling faction cooks up plans for what to do and then negotiates with the unusually unified opposition on what to do. The two biggest socialist parties and the farmer's party have been a ruling faction in the past. The far right party is almost as big as the main right wing party and recently left the ruling faction. That they now can cooperate with the old socialist wing is really weird to watch for us who remember what the world was like two months ago. As far as I can see this situation in total means that some strict laws get watered down and more money is used on a wider group of needy. The two last parties are small and live in a different world. One is best described as neo-communist and the other is hard core environmentalists. They don't want to give the industries help at all because large scale permanent closedowns would be good for the environment and workers don't vote for them anyway - they have about 6% of the voters combined. A kind of thinking the rest of the parties don't want to play along with. So it is about 50/50 them refusing to discuss giving money to the industries and 50/50 the other parties don't want to waste time letting the fanatics prance and obfuscate. I am happy with this development. It is pretty clear that we would have different policies if the ruling faction had been in the majority. And also all the negotiations are moved from inside the ruling faction to the main parliament. Whenever this miserable period ends, almost all the parties will have supported the specific choices made. That's how a government should handle a real crisis.

Necessity is the mother of all invention, it's said. A few factories here have started to make masks and coats and so on. Somewhat surprisingly, the hospitals are joining in. One hospital fired up a 3D printer and a design program, and made a face visor like the industrial type from a few bottles of plastic goo and an ubiqutous A4 clear plastic sheet. The printer is going day and night now to cover local need and I hope they'll distribute the design. Another hospital here was down to the last handful of virus test and a guy went down to the lab and made a new test. If I understand correctly it uses magnets to part the virus from its host. They have tested this new test on a hundred cases with 100% score and it's being manufactured and distributed to local needs as we speak. I hope this one too gets distributed elsewhere fast. Normally there's a 10 YEAR test period before stuff like this is sent out on the market. We don't have that luxury now.

Update: 4623 infected, of which 319 are in hospital - 97 in ICU with respirator. 39 are dead. 90k+ tested. Also the numbers of infected hospital staff remains on a linear rise, but the number of hospital staff in quarantine sinks on an opposite linear line. The latter number is now less than half of what it was a week ago.

Two weeks ago, an oil engineer phoned a defense subdepartment with an idea. He'd heard about the shortage of respirators and had an idea. Two weeks later, today, the result was presented to us. The idea is tantalizingly simple. All hospitals already have a manual breathing device, basically a rubber bladder with a mouthpiece, which lets a doctor or nurse pump air to the patient by hand. Obviously just a tool for a few minute's work. The device unveiled today looks like something a redneck would put together in the garage - a mechanic hand connected to such a bladder, with just a can of electric controllers and wires keeping the system going and going and going. And it works marvellously. Between the engineer, the defense guys and an oil equipment company the whole thing went from idea to fully functioning in shorter time than it normally takesjust to arrange a meeting. Design. Development. Prototype testing. Production starts tomorrow morning. The initial order is for 1000 emergency respirators. Compare this with the fact that Norway's total inventory of respirators are just 600, many of which are already in use. I predict that further orders will be placed before even the first crate of finished respirators are out the door.

I have spent more than two hours watching press conferences today. It's getting a bit much.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 4828 infected, of which 323 are in hospital - 105 in ICU with respirator. 43 are dead. 94k+ tested. Also my own little municipality is one up, to 11 infected. Of course only the tested as infected are counted.

The emergency respirators mentioned yesterday were met with some critic, primarily from the nurses' union who feels this is a wrong priority from the government when they should be upping nurse wages instead and pay for more nurse students. The union leader just so happens to be a firebrand who took power in a coup inside the union a little while back and since then gets published in the one communist newspaper we have on a regular basis. Her criticism has been answered with this being an emergency machine for an emergency situation. A makeshift respirator should be great in a situation where you can quickly end up with the Italian situation where the oldest and most infirm don't get a respirator at all, and die. Meanwhile 400 more regular respirators are on order to the normal foreign factories but when delivery will happen is highly uncertain. I'll be following the further outrages from this activist union leader with considerable interest.

We still follow Swedish numbers, and with rising worry. Apparently 59 MORE dead since just yesterday, and the Swedish authorities are indicating the numbers could be a week old since they don't really have a reporting system for the pandemic. With a current total of 239 dead they have about 6 times as many dead as Norway. Yet about the same in hospital?

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 5131 infected, of which 316 are in hospital - 98 in ICU with respirator. 50 are dead. 98k+ tested. That's a 10% jump of dead since yesterday. All but one or two of all who have died are very old, bringing the average corona deceased age to 84. About 5% of all who were tested, and only those with suspicious symptoms are test, had positive tests. In all about 1% of those known to be infected have died.

I'm getting pretty sick of government press conferences. The gist of today was a promise to business that regular costs like rent etc would be refunded from 70% to 90%. That's a 2 billion dollar promise and will make a difference between make and break for a lot of companies, and the jobs they have to offer.

12% of the Norwegian work force including those temporarily laid off have now registered as unemployed. Before the outbreak it was 4%.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 5519 infected, of which 322 are in hospital - 96 in ICU with respirator. 60 are dead, which is a 20% increase from two days ago. 102k+ tested. There's just a third as many hospital staff in quarantine as two weeks ago. Overall the curves of infected people in hospital with and without respirators are practically flat.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 5648 infected, of which 307 are in hospital - 89 in ICU with respirator. 66 are dead, which is a 10% increase from yesterday. 108k+ tested. Most curves are now tangenting on flat, not just linear. This is very good.

Political polls have been ticking in the last week. It is not surprising that the ruling faction gets better numbers now than in a long time. They have handled the pandemic well and have had to seek support from the other parties for decisions, but also Norwegians traditionally support their leadership in times of crisis.

There is some discussion of opening some of the many restrictions that have been imposed on us. Like reopening some schools and kindergartens in areas where no infection have been registered yet. However there's massive resistance to the idea in the relevant local leaderships to do this soon. A few outdoor sports arenas are reopened for some activity though and I guess we'll find out how wise that is, soon enough.

In a normal year, the Easter tourism would be massive right now. Full hotels and winter sports areas, full cabins, lots of people going to souther Europe, full trains, full buses, full planes. Instead we all sit at home. Even the hotly debated cabin issue is sort of out debated now, and we are resigned that this whole spring is a bust. Even the churches are going to be empty. Religion in Norway is an odd thing; the generations for whom going to church every Sunday was natural are long gone and outside family events and Christmas and Easter, the churches are virtually empty but for a few white haired visitors the rest of the year. Many are no longer open at all. Now however there will be video transfers online from the sermons. Considering how infirm the remaining loyals are, it might be an actual improvement for them.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 5760 infected, of which 314 are in hospital - 83 in ICU with respirator. That's 20% down from the 103 we had on respirator a little while ago. 76 are dead, which is a 10% increase from yesterday. 111k+ tested. Also the number of hospital staff in quarantine is now down to 2000 - from almost 8000 at the top. While we still get more deaths added to the total, almost everyone who has died until now were approaching 90 and had additional severe illnesses as well.

Keeping these numbers in mind, it was none the less a shock today to hear the health minister declare that the pandemic is now under control here. The rate of infected people infecting more people is now lower than 1:1, which means the total of infected should start to decline unless something big happens. Lots of ifs but it is very encouraging.

On the other hand. I went shopping again today. Normally I shop groceries twice per week just to get out of the house, but now it is once per two weeks. I buy the same as before, only more of it, and the only point in shopping less is minimizing exposure to the guys who pretend pandemia can have no consequences to them or their loved ones. Shops are full of food, no empty shelves to see. I practically haven't touched my prepped stuff yet. All of that is good. What is weird is that the shops I went to were full of people. Families with children, some of them very small. Very old and very infirm people. And there I was - the only one covered up to the brow in clothes, gloves, scarf, everything. People weren't even trying to keep distance. Some people were washing their hands but that was the sole concession. I feel like I am either developing paranoia, or I am watching other news than everyone else.

[Captain Maltese]

Update: 5865 infected, of which 281 are in hospital (10% down from yesterday)- 78 in ICU with respirator (the lowest number in weeks).  88 are dead, which is a 10% increase from yesterday. 113k+ tested. The reinfectation rate, the number of people each infected will pass it on to, is now down to 0.7.

Today's press conference underlined how things are overall changing for the better. Starting from the 20th April, two weeks from now, the kindergartens are reopening. Chiropractors, hairdressers and other physical personal services will cautiously reopen. A week after that, on the 27th, a lot of other things will be reinstated: school reopens for the four lowest age classes in elementary school, and for the oldest groups in technical high school who need access to machinery to study. Also colleges and universities will get started for at least some of the students. There are also other loosenings of the screws for minor relevant groups. And for me personally it's joyous that going to the cabin and sleep over will be legal again from that date. I have so much farmwork waiting for me.

All of the above hinges on the key curves continuing to fall, and that legions of teachers and kindergarten staff get the necessary pandemic training and equipment up to those dates. But everyone are supermotivated to get back to ordinary life and I doubt any sniffling kid will be allowed to be at kindergarten or school for more than half an hour before getting sent back home. We will be on war footing for months ahead, maybe years, if 'normality' ever does return. But... now perhaps we can start planning for afterwards.