MEDICAL BAG
A new mass psychogenic illness in Sweden, plus vaccination fakers and super-fans
RESIGNATION SYNDROME For 20 years, Sweden has been dealing with a mysterious illness, mostly affecting children, and exclusively found in families of asylum seekers. Sufferers start by withdrawing from society, becoming more and more apathetic until they cease to interact with the world at all and decline into a coma, totally unresponsive to any external stimuli and only kept alive by feeding tubes. All tests, though, indicate that sufferers’ brains are awake and that they are suffering from no physical disorders, but nonetheless they remain comatose. This is extremely unusual – comas as deep as those experienced by people with resignation syndrome are usually the result of brain damage or other abnormality.
Those most vulnerable appear to be children whose families have suffered the greatest trauma before escaping to seek asylum, and the majority are from the former USSR, the Balkans, Roma children, and most recently the Yazidi. Few cases have been recorded among Asian refugees, and none involve Africans, and it does not appear to relate to how well the children have adapted to life in Sweden, nor is it clear why it only occurs in
The symptoms spread through a close-knit group of people
Sweden and nowhere else. “To our knowledge, no cases have been established outside of Sweden,” said Dr Karl Sallin, a pædiatrician at the Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital. There is anecdotal evidence of similar behaviour among concentration camp inmates, and a similar condition, Pervasive Refusal Syndrome, was documented in the UK in the 1990s, but not among asylum seekers, and there have been reports of something potentially similar among children seeking asylum in Australia.
While it is clear that sufferers are not faking illness, and no medical treatment seems able to rouse the comatose children, the one cure that seems to work is granting permanent asylum to the children and their families. Doctors believe that recovery depends on them feeling secure and that it is a permanent residence permit that kickstarts that process, although a controversial treatment has been developed that separates the children from their parents and subjects them to intensive physical therapy until they recover.
Resignation syndrome seems to be a form of mass psychogenic illness, contagious symptoms that spread through a close-knit group of people, propagated by fear and anxiety, with conditions in Sweden being conducive to it spreading through asylum seeker communities. Until recently, Sweden automatically granted asylum to families of sufferers, but with asylum applications increasing, the country is now only offering fixed term visas pending future review. BBC News, 26 Oct 2017; theguardian.com, 21 Apr 2021.
COVID FAKERY
Guido Russo, 57, an Italian dentist, ended up being reported to the police after he tried a novel ruse to get a Covid vaccination certificate without actually getting vaccinated. The man turned up at a vaccination centre in Biella, in northern Italy, wearing a lifelike silicone mould over his real arm, hoping that nurses would not notice. When it came to his turn for a jab though, the nurse found that the man’s skin felt “rubbery and cold” and that the pigment was “too light” compared to the rest of his body.
Having been discovered, Russo tried to make light of his scam and get the nurse to turn a blind eye, but she was having none of it and called police who charged him with fraud. “The case borders on the ridiculous, if it were not for the fact we are talking about a gesture of enormous gravity,” said Albert Cirio, the head of the Piedmont regional government. Russo has reportedly been suspended from practising.
The newspaper La Repubblica found a Twitter post that may have been written by the man; it showed a silicone male chest half-body suit, complete with fake arms and neck, that was for sale on Amazon for 488 euros (£416) and read: “If I go with this, will they notice? Maybe beneath the silicone I’ll even put on some extra clothes to avoid the needle reaching my real arm.” BBC News, 3 Dec; ladbible.com, 6 Dec 2021.
SUPER-VACCINATED
At the other end of the scale, a man in Bihar, India, has used a variety of different identity cards to get vaccinated 12 times, saying every jab made him “feel better”. Retired postman, Brahmadeo Mandal,
84 (or 65 in some reports), said that “every single dose has helped relieve my chronic back pain. I have never caught cold since I took the first shot 11 months ago,” although he apparently does not have an official vaccine certificate for any of them. Not everyone is impressed with Mandal’s enthusiasm for vaccination though. “It needs to be found out whether the man is bloviating or his claims have a modicum of truth,” said district civil surgeon Amarendra Narayan Shahi, pointing out that no one was supposed to get vaccinated more than twice, adding “he may end up facing the music for getting jabbed so many times knowingly and willingly.” In New Zealand, an unnamed man was vaccinated 10 times in one day after being paid to be jabbed by nine other people who wanted to dodge the vaccine and whose identities he used at multiple vaccination hubs. He was described as “unbelievably selfish” by vaccinologist Helen Petousis-Harris, who also condemned those who had taken advantage of the man’s financial situation to avoid the jab. Astrid Koornneef, a group manager for the Covid vaccine programme in New Zealand, said his actions were “dangerous” as it would result in inaccurate medical records for everyone involved, but said he is unlikely to come to any harm from having multiple vaccinations, apart from having an increased risk of fever, pains and
headaches the next
day from the immune response. tribuneindia.com, 6 Jan; independent.co.uk, 13 Dec 2021.
NOT AT ALL SINISTER
Swedish tech start-up Epicenter has launched what they say is a new way of conveniently storing your Covid vaccine passport, on a rice grain-sized microchip implanted under your skin that can be read with the technology used for contactless payments. “Implants are very versatile technology that can be used for many different things, and right now it is very convenient to have Covid passport always accessible on your implant,” said Hannes Sjöblad, Epicenter’s Chief Distribution Officer, demonstrating how the device works by waving a phone over his own implant.
Epicenter plan to place the implant either in users’ arms, or between the thumb and forefinger for ease of access and say the procedure is “completely reversible” and does not require a special phone app. dailymail. co.uk, 20 Dec 2021.
TOOTHY TUMOUR
Nitish Kumar, 17, lived with a swelling on his lower jaw for five years before having it removed by surgeons at the Indira Ghandi Institute of Medical Sciences in Patna, India. On removal the tumour was found to contain 82 additional teeth and was thought to have been caused by a genetic abnormality or an old injury. D.Star, 12 July 2021.