The Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health has revised its guidelines and recommended that households in the Nordic country purchase a single dose of iodine tablets for everyone aged between 3 and 40 in case of a radiation hazard emergency, prompting an unexpected shopping spree and a sudden run on webstores.
The ministry stressed that the guidelines, which hadn't been updated since 2002, were based on up-to-date recommendations from the World Health Organization. It said the recommendation was limited to people 3-40 years of age because of the potential risk radiation exposure poses to that particular age group, being most harmful to children.
The statement from the ministry also indicated that sheltering indoors was the main way for people to protect themselves from nuclear radiation.
The very same day, in the aftermath of the statement, Finland's largest chain of pharmacy outlets, Yliopiston Apteekki, reported stocks of iodine tablets being nearly sold out nationwide. Chief pharmaceutical officer Kati Vuorikallas said that the surge in demand has been mirrored by a spike in traffic on the chain's website, causing a significant slowdown and even crashes for some users.
According to Yliopiston Apteekki, efforts are being made to replenish the iodine stocks. However, no precise schedule has been presented.
The Association of Finnish Pharmacies has slammed the practice and advised the public against hoarding iodine tablets, stressing that expired tablets should be returned to pharmacies as medical waste. The association emphasized that only a single package should be purchased for each member of a household within the given age bracket.
In recent weeks, Nordic outlets, in line with Western media in general, have been rife with dismal warnings about the risk of the Ukraine conflict spiraling into a nuclear catastrophe, itemized lists of nuclear arsenals, and survival instructions. This process has been drastically sped up by President Vladimir Putin’s warning last month that Russia would protect its territory by all means necessary, and his US counterpart Joe Biden’s subsequent comment that the prospects of a nuclear “Armageddon” were today at their highest since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Earlier in October, Kiev made headlines by dishing out anti-radiation pills, ostensibly in preparation for a “nuclear attack” on the Ukrainian capital.
However, according to Russia’s nuclear doctrine, which is no secret and has been published for the sake of transparency, Moscow will never resort to this options unless nukes or other weapons of mass destruction are used against it or its allies first, or it faced a conventional attack so severe that the country’s very existence would be threatened. By contrast, the US has not only never committed to a “no first use” strategy, but remains the only country to have actually used nuclear arms, killing over 200,000 people in the bombing of Japan in the late stage of World War II.
Nevertheless, unscrupulous fearmongering across the Western world has sparked similar situations before, with Danes and Norwegians hoarding iodine pills at the start of the Ukrainian conflict, ostensibly in fear of the hostilities turning nuclear.