Why did we switch to mitigation?

Sad to see Norway in the "mitigation" group in this publication - had we continued the "elimination" strategy that we followed for 2.5 mo last spring (23. March-7. May) we would instead have been in company with Australia, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea. Especially sad as "There is also increasing consensus that elimination is preferable to mitigation in relation to a country's economic performance." and "Among OECD countries, liberties were most severely impacted in those that chose mitigation whereas swift lockdown measures—in line with elimination—were less strict and of shorter duration". https://www.thelancet.com/.../PIIS0140-6736(21.../fulltext

We were performing so well in Norway, up until - for some crazy, inexplicable reason - the government chose to change to mitigation last summer, without telling the public.

Here's Norway's graph, showing how for some time after change of strategy, cases grew very slowly, as predicted from the exponential nature of the graphs, then increased more steeply and much stricter measures were needed for many months to maintain control. Graph taken from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/norway/