Editorial|Editorial
It was believed that the corona issues were behind us, but then Krista Kiuru (sd) returned to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health.
Krista Kiuru’s (sd) return from maternity leave as Minister of Family and Basic Services has re-started corona disputes that were thought to have been buried. The minister, who started a vigorous media campaign, demands the expansion of vaccinations, even the return of the mask requirement. He has received side support from, among others, Markku Broas, an infectious disease doctor at the Lapland hospital district, and Eeva Ruotsalainen, assistant chief physician at the Helsinki and Uusimaa hospital district (Hus).
The purpose of the campaign launched by the minister seems to be to pressure the Institute of Health and Welfare (THL) to change its vaccine recommendations. Now THL recommends a booster dose for those over 65 and in certain risk groups.
Kiuru’s deeper motives can only be guessed at. He may believe that he can assess the pandemic better than the best experts in the country – or the world. THL’s chief physician Hanna Nohynek was just elected as the chairperson of SAGE, the strategic vaccination expert group of the World Health Organization. On the other hand, the minister’s motives may be political. Infection rates will inevitably rise during the winter, and then the minister can accuse THL of being a jerk. Concerned citizens do not always remember that vaccinations do not have much effect on infections, even though they effectively prevent a serious form of the disease.
Minister Kiuru and THL’s experts have been available throughout the pandemic. The minister has pressured experts to follow his own line and forbade them to make their positions public, and has made public experts who have supported the minister’s strict line. The action has left a permanent lack of trust between the minister and THL.
Even in the early stages of the pandemic, the minister’s actions could be understood, because the decision-makers had to respond to the citizens’ distress in the midst of great uncertainty. When even the experts disagreed at times, the ministry could highlight the most serious threat scenarios in the name of the precautionary principle.
There is no such situation anymore, because we have learned to know the virus. The pandemic view represented by THL’s experts from the beginning has proven to be broadly correct.
The responsible minister is naturally entitled to his opinions and more: the government has the power to extend vaccinations to the entire nation even tomorrow. But then it has to be done with a political decision, and not trying to get experts acting on their official responsibility to change their assessment based on medicine.
The same phenomenon is being discussed in the United States, where a Congress-ordered report on the pandemic policy of President Donald Trump’s era was published on Monday. According to the report, the Trump administration pressured and threatened the country’s medical authorities to get them to bend to their views. “Today’s report shows that President Trump and his aides repeatedly attacked [Yhdysvaltain tartuntatautikeskus] Against CDC researchers, questioned the authorities’ health advice and blacked out research reports to downplay the seriousness of the coronavirus,” the report states.
In the United States, the line of political power was looser than the experts’ position, and in Finland it was stricter, but both are about political pressure.
To the phenomenon there is an even more important principled side to the corona pandemic. Politicians usually claim to base their decisions on factual information. For example, the current government’s program commits to “data-based policy-making”.
But what does “data-based” mean in practice? Does it mean that we listen to potentially unpleasant positions from an expert organization specialized in the task, such as the CDC in the United States or THL in Finland, or can the decision-maker justify his decision with facts and experts he has picked up himself?
In such a world, politics is not based on facts, but facts are based on politics – that is, what the politician decides to be true is true.
The editorials are HS’s positions on a current topic. The articles are prepared by HS’s editorial department, and they reflect the magazine principle line.
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