Finland like many other countries is already seeing a wave of the Corona virus with a rapid increase in infections has been noted for the last 6 weeks and what did the Minister in charge of healthcare say?
“It has come early and we were not expecting such an early rise in infections particularly among the elderly who are most at risk…” Vaccinations are late with the elderly expected to stand in long queues, à la Soviet Union, in the cold wind and snow…
This is the same Conservative Party person who was a Minister of Education, Ms. Grahn-Laasonen, between 2017 and 2019. As minister she was responsible for cutting the education budget, while claiming afterwards that there was not “real cut” in funding for education – they were just “reforms” to increase education productivity, or words to that effect!
These cuts in the education budget arrived just before Covid in 2019, when funding should have been maintained or actually increased to help young students manage the educational disasters caused by Covid! The minister has managed to create a reputation that she is just the messenger for the hard right in the party.
Now she is the Minister of Social Security and has expressed surprise that the vaccination program has been delayed. She was even more surprised that the elderly are having to queue for hours outside vaccination centers. It appears that many of the new Healthcare Regions (there are some 20 of them covering the whole country) have decided to offer vaccination times on the Internet only. They have stopped offering a telephone service. This digital system is fine for those under the age of retirement, but many pensioners are unable to fathom out how to use these IT systems that involve multiple web addresses. Since many do not have the eyesight or skills to manage working on the Web then the only way to get a jab is to queue in the cold Finnish winter – it is now cold here with snow already covering most of the country!
She does not have to queue because she has a warm ministerial Audi ready to whisk her off to the nearest private healthcare company…
As stated above, she is great at cutting budgets when ordered to – we call these tupes of politicians Cheese Slicers…
Photo: Photographer Lauri Heikkinen, valtioneuvoston kanslia, CC-BY-4.0
