A group of 28 medical experts has in an opinion piece urged public health officials to only vaccinate at-risk groups against COVID-19, but not the young and healthy.
In their open letter in the newspaper Göteborgs-Posten, the 28 doctors and researchers, including psychiatrist and debater Sven Román and Nils Littorin of Lund University, who also heads the local party the Malmö List, maintained that a large part of the world's population has now had COVID-19 and that even more have one form of immunity or another.
“Therefore, we should only vaccinate those who are aged 65 years of age and over or are at risk. Otherwise, we risk repeating the fatal mistakes of the swine flu vaccination,” the experts wrote.
In March 2009, the world saw an outbreak of a new flu virus, possibly stemming from pigs, notably infecting even young people. Alarm bells rang globally, as the virus in many ways resembled the 1917 Spanish flu outbreak. A vaccine was shortly developed against the swine flu and 60-90 million doses were administered globally. In Europe, and particularly in the Nordic countries, numerous cases of narcolepsy appeared after these vaccinations. The confounding factor is that the swine flu virus itself causes narcolepsy, which makes it hard to discern the cause. Still, the patients who developed narcolepsy were compensated by the state.
The signatories cite the risk of developing fatal blood clotting and haemorrhaging, which has been a noted as a side effect of several vaccines, including AstraZeneca, and urge not to repeat the “narcolepsy mistake” and not to inoculate the young and healthy, as well as those who have already had COVID-19 and have developed some form of immunity.
The proposal runs counter to the general vaccination strategy implemented by the Swedish Public Health Agency, the state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell and the government's vaccine coordinator Richard Bergström. According to the official take, Sweden will leave the pandemic phase and enter the endemic phase when over 60 percent of the population have been vaccinated. So far, Sweden has managed to fully inoculate about 9.5 percent of the target groups.
Doctor Sven Román is particularly sceptical of the authorities' apparent links to the pharmaceutical industry, such as the aforementioned Richard Bergström, who was previously CEO of the Pharmaceutical Industry Association.
“I lack confidence in this man. I have never trusted him, he comes directly from the pharmaceutical industry. The Swedes must realise that these people have vested interests, and are not impartial,” Román tweeted about Bergström lauding Swedish regions for allowing younger population groups being inoculated with the controversial AstraZeneca vaccine.
“Experts who are rather useful idiots for the pharmaceutical industry. I know what I'm talking about, because I was myself until about ten years ago,” Sven Román tweeted, citing an article about experts' assumptions on mass vaccination.
Sweden has consistently shunned major lockdowns throughout the pandemic and introduced only a fraction of the restrictions seen elsewhere in Europe, and is edging towards a million COVID-19 cases, with over 14,000 deaths.