After a fortnight of freedom, how’s it going in the Land of the newly Free?

As a half-Dane, the news that Denmark was planning, from the beginning of this month, to scrap all its ‘NPIs’ (Non-Pharmaceutic Interventions – do keep up!) and to declare Covid 19 to be no longer a ‘socially critical disease’ was enough to warm this rather flinty heart.

Denmark’s one of those little countries that Brits, and to some extent, Aussies, generally approve of, and to which they accordingly refer as ‘plucky’. It commended itself to the bien pensants early in the Covid panic by its adherence to lock-down orthodoxy, in contradistinction to naughty Sweden, which had the temerity not to panic, and whose ‘Covid performance’ the Covid priesthood, who emerged with depressing rapidity in early 2020, were therefore compelled to condemn. A Danish study casting doubt on the efficacy of mask-wearing represented a small black mark, but it was quickly swept under the carpet, and in general, Denmark offered itself as a convenient stick with which to beat the Swedes, and has for most of the panic been seen to be on the side of the Angels.

Somewhere along the way, though, Sweden seem to have lost its mojo, reintroducing many of the restrictions it had been quick to discard at the outset of the panic. Denmark, on the other hand, has done itself proud. It has recovered its sang-froid, refusing to be spooked by the Omigod scourge, noting coolly that, while hospital admissions may have increased this year, the mildness of the now-prevalent Omigod strain has meant that they are briefer, less likely to require ICU treatment, and far less likely to end in the morgue. The Danes have also been demonstrating that competent epidemiological modellers, unlike Ferguson et al, and our own dear Doherty Institute, can indeed produce useful predictions, without the need to hide behind a prim insistence that they were only forecasts, you know. This flirtation with Covid heresy has matured into full-blown apostasy, with the February 1^st demarche.

A key factor propelling Denmark’s return to freedom is that Danish law forbids the imposition of ANY of the strictures beloved of the Covid priesthood, except when there’s a ‘socially critical disease’ about. Given that infections have soared, while hospital admissions have not, it is no longer justifiable to deem Covid a ‘socially critical disease’, meaning that the government may not legally retain any NPIs. This all-or-nothing regime prevents the bed-wetters from stringing out the process of rescinding Covid restrictions, with the ever-present danger that some may remain indefinitely.

It’s now a fortnight since Denmark scrapped its NPIs, and, given the rapidity with which Omigod spreads, it should by now be experiencing the plague promised by the Covid priesthood whenever anyone suggests that it’s time to treat Covid-19 like the nasty cold into which it has so obligingly evolved. So it’s not too early to take a look at what’s actually been recorded.

Below you can see a chart I’ve created at Our World in Data, covering the fortnight before and the (nearly) fortnight after the February 1^st watershed. For comparison, I’ve chosen stats from Australia, the UK and Sweden. As you can see, Denmark’s case rate remains markedly higher than the others, but there’s been no vertiginous rise of the kind predicted by the priesthood, either in cases, hospital admissions or mortality.

Perhaps counter-intuitively (certainly so, if you are a fully paid-up member of the Covid cult) the high incidence of Omigod infections has reinforced, rather than diminished the argument in favour of liberating Denmark, since it has provided a very large denominator against which the ‘socially-critical’ numerators of hospital admissions, ICU occupancy and mortality can be judged.

Much has been made, by journalists trying to reconcile Denmark’s recent policy with their own demented Covid orthodoxy, of Denmark’s high vaccination rate. But it tends to be made by the same people who point to the waning efficacy of the MRNA ‘vaccines’ they are so fond of, and hector their fellow citizens about getting a ‘booster’. Another way of looking at the Danish daily case incidence is that Denmark’s population is rapidly becoming inoculated to Covid by nature’s vaccine, meaning that future variants of the virus, should they emerge, will face of a wall of robust, persistent immunity.

It will be interesting to see the epidemiological progress of Denmark. I’ll be keeping my eye on the stats. Right now, though, I’m feeling rather proud of my Danish blood.