Amy Mek
“Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.”
– Billy Graham
Swedish Doctor Jon Tallinger has been dubbed “Dr. Whistleblower” for exposing a government directive (translated here) sent to physicians instructing them not to refer elderly patients with the coronavirus to the hospital for intensive care or potential life-saving oxygen. Since his exclusive interview with RAIR Foundation USA, another brave medical worker has stepped forward to share her personal account of how Sweden’s coronavirus directives for “elderly” patients is effectively killing them.
In the following RAIR interviews, Doctor Tallinger speaks with Latifa Löfvenberg, a registered nurse working in a government-funded nursing home in Gävleborg, Sweden. Nurse Löfvenberg reveals that coronavirus patients over 65 years-old struggling with breathing difficulties are in fact being denied life-saving oxygen. Instead, Löfvenberg explains, she has been instructed to administer Morphine and a muscle relaxer, Midazolam, which helps relieve anxiety while the patients slowly suffocate, sometimes taking days to die.
Löfvenberg reveals that professional personnel are being instructed to give permission to untrained nurses assistants (undersköterska) to administer Morphine and Midazolam to elderly coronavirus patients. Untrained staff, according to Löfvenberg, are being encouraged to administer drugs that will end patients lives.
Watch Doctor Tallinger interview nurse Latifa Löfvenberg in the first RAIR interview:
In Dr. Tallinger’s second interview with nurse Löfvenberg, she recounts a specific incident where she is called to administer life-ending Morphine and Midazolam. She describes the look of panic on the patient’s face as he suffocates from the lack of oxygen. Löfvenberg’s only recourse is to attempt to calm the patient with the drugs as the patient gasps his last breaths. Löfvenberg’s superiors, she reveals, also frowned upon her remaining with the dying patient to offer comfort. Löfvenberg, however, remained with this dying gentleman for six hours so he did not have to die alone.
Löfvenberg explains the emotional toll nurses and medical care workers are experiencing:
It is heartbreaking, I feel like I am going to give up sometimes….I am support for the staff, they call me day and night and want answers and I don’t know, want some leadership, because the leadership is out, it’s not there….I try to talk to them and what can I say, I can’t say much, I listen to them most of the time, they are going to call in sick and not come back sometimes because of this issue.”
Löfvenberg explains it would take only an hour to teach employees how to administer life-saving oxygen. Instead medical workers at her company are being given an e-learning education class that teaches staff how to “put [coronavirus] patients in an unconscious state” and furthermore, “put them to sleep forever”.
Löfvenberg can’t understand how the state won’t allow employees to “handle” life-saving oxygen but allows untrained staff to “handle” giving elderly patience injections of Morphine and Midazolam that will “basically kill the patients.”
The Silence Culture
Dr. Tallinger and Löfvenberg refer to the “silence culture, where everything goes as long as you keep silent”. Doctors fear retribution and getting blacklisted if they openly advocate for their patients’ need for life-sustaining oxygen.
Dr. Tallinger gave the example of an Intensive Care Doctor that recently contacted and encouraged him to keep fighting for life-saving oxygen for coronavirus patients as it was the correct treatment needed. However, according to Dr. Tallinger:
the doctor is now refusing to go public saying that oxygen is the correct treatment for COVID-19 because he is afraid to never work again in Sweden if he says oxygen is good when you have no oxygen in the blood.”
Watch Doctor Tallinger interview nurse Latifa Löfvenberg in the second RAIR interview:
Despite the fear of retribution or irreparable damage to his medical career, Dr. Tallinger continues to fight for the “basic human right of getting elderly coronavirus patients life-saving oxygen instead of morphine when they are suffocating to death” as he explains.
As previously reported at RAIR, Dr. Tallinger is appealing to the world for help:
“We need professionals in other countries to question the decisions being made in Sweden because it’s extremely immoral towards our elderly patients that have built up the country and I would welcome…if there was officials…outside of Sweden that raised the issue that ‘what you’re doing is not okay’ at the state level. That’s what I would like this [interview with RAIR Foundation USA] to lead to, actually…”
Under the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, Article 35 it is a human right to receive medical treatment:
Everyone has the right of access to preventive health care and the right to benefit from medical treatment under the conditions established by national laws and practices. A high level of human health protection shall be ensured in the definition and implementation of all Union policies and activities.
Call to Action: Help Save the Elderly!
If you believe the elderly in Sweden deserve oxygen, send a courteous but concerned note to:
- Lena Hallengren, Minister for Health and Social Affairs at socialdepartementet.registrator@gov.se AND socialdepartementet.registrator@regeringskansliet.se
- Elin Aarflot, Press Secretary to the Minister for Health and Social Affairs at elin.aarflot@gov.se
- Jasmina Sofic, Press Secretary to the Minister for Health and Social Affairs at jasmina.sofic@gov.se
RAIR Foundation
Hi,
being in an agegroup that would be affected by this directive it would be good to see a copy of the original directive. It would weight in heavier if we had access to it in black and white.
Regards Martin Kaup
As the Founder and Director of the Prince Albert Seniors Advocacy Centre in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada, obviously I am very concerned with the content of this article. With more than 70% of COVID-19 deaths attributed to deaths in long-term care homes in Canada, one starts to wonder…. I believe we need some serious talks and research post COVID-19 to study what actually happened.