International COVID-19 Megathread

[parochial boy]

It’s probably less of a problem in the big countries with powerful leagues with lots of TV money, but the professional football and hockey teams are starting to howl with rage that they need to start letting normal-ish crowds back at matches. Their income consists virtually entirely of gate money, so the risk of another 6-12 months of maximum crowds of 1’000 could (so they say) very possibly kill off professional sport entirely in Switzerland

[parochial boy]

It’s probably less of a problem in the big countries with powerful leagues with lots of TV money, but the professional football and hockey teams are starting to howl with rage that they need to start letting normal-ish crowds back at matches. Their income consists virtually entirely of gate money, so the risk of another 6-12 months of maximum crowds of 1’000 could (so they say) very possibly kill off professional sport entirely in Switzerland

Belgian clubs are facing a similar problem. They are also heavily reliant on transfer fees to cover costs and the market is for sure going to dry up.

I'm  not expecting to be inside a stadium until 2021. Extremely sad but popping the modern football bubble is probably better than more debt.

The worst offenders are probably the best placed to come out of this though unfortunately. At least with the Super League, once you've dodged the flying bricks and the tear gas, you do get some semblance of authenticity.

The bubble's probably already popping anyway, the clubs are killing the goose that laid the golden egg by chasing the money and selling TV rights to obscure pay TV channels like Teleclub or BeIN sports or whoever - as if you can keep things going when you deliberately sabotage your own TV audience.

[parochial boy]

On the positive side, researchers in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Ankh-Morpork have released an encouraging study into the preventative use of Hydroxychloroquine

Well worth reading

[parochial boy]

No info from Switzerland - really?

The Swiss hole in maps of Europe has already become a timeless classic.

Interesting though that data are displayed for Norway, Iceland and the UK.

That's because Norway, Iceland and the UK (and Liechenstein which is also not in the EU) are all participants in the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, while Switzerland is not.

Specifically, because this happened. 😏

Get used to it Brits, this is your future.

[parochial boy]

No info from Switzerland - really?

The Swiss hole in maps of Europe has already become a timeless classic.

Interesting though that data are displayed for Norway, Iceland and the UK.

That's because Norway, Iceland and the UK (and Liechenstein which is also not in the EU) are all participants in the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, while Switzerland is not.

Specifically, because this happened. 😏

Get used to it Brits, this is your future.

Ticino voting like the Germans grrr

Still, it was in 1992. No new one in sight? The United Kingdom had had a referendum on the CEE in 1975 (supportive).

The Eurozone crisis basically killed off any mainstream desire to join, so basically zero chance in the near future. At the moment there's this big thing about the framework agreement that's supposed to roll all the bilaterals into one... But the SVP don't like it (duh) and the Socialists don't like it, and really no-one apart from the Liberals likes it, but the EU are basically saying they won't accept to change anything in the agreement and that the Swiss need to ratify it asap. So that'll be fun.

[parochial boy]

I shouldn't be laughing at this, but, well, Schwytz has turned into one of worst hotspots in Europe... thanks to a yodel concert.

I just... can't...

[parochial boy]

In all honestly, I'm having a hard time seeing a second lockdown even having anything like the desired effects. Back in March we had the moods of national solidarity combined with a very real fear of a virus that seemed to be deadly in 2-3% of the cases. Now, there is a public mood that is... noticeably tetchier; a fairly natural level of fatigue when it comes to hearing about the virus; and a level of fear that, now that many (most?) people will actually personally know someone who has been infected and basically been ok, that has moved on from the virus to the economic fall out.

Combine that with basically no European government having a credible promise as to how they just don't simply go back into another wave once the next set of restrictions gets released; I'm not really seeing people being so happy to follows the rules this time. Some of the more tense social situations (eg French Banlieues) could even be heading for a pretty explosive deconfinement as well, judging by how frisky things got the first time round.

[parochial boy]

In all honestly, I'm having a hard time seeing a second lockdown even having anything like the desired effects. Back in March we had the moods of national solidarity combined with a very real fear of a virus that seemed to be deadly in 2-3% of the cases. Now, there is a public mood that is... noticeably tetchier; a fairly natural level of fatigue when it comes to hearing about the virus; and a level of fear that, now that many (most?) people will actually personally know someone who has been infected and basically been ok, that has moved on from the virus to the economic fall out.

Combine that with basically no European government having a credible promise as to how they just don't simply go back into another wave once the next set of restrictions gets released; I'm not really seeing people being so happy to follows the rules this time. Some of the more tense social situations (eg French Banlieues) could even be heading for a pretty explosive deconfinement as well, judging by how frisky things got the first time round.

Because first lock-down was way too harsh and too long and second one will be economically impossible'ish?


Still, there is a lot of countries that will reach their hospital capacity in 2-3 weeks (and deaths are lagging by about same period which makes policy implementations so urgent). In that case it will get very ugly very fast... Then what?


FT: Switzerland risks running out of intensive care beds in 11 days

We're in a really bad situation here, but our planning horizon has to cover the next few months. Measures that can't be sustained over a few months and only have short term effects, don't make a lot of sense.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's easy to criticise especially as I don't have any better solutions - although its not my job to have any. But it does seem that pretty much every government is just displaying a lack of creative thinking and foresight and is just sort of picking measures like throwing darts at a dartboard and seeing what sticks. So we have measures that don't make sense and don't really have any impact other than making it look like they're doing something, like obligatory masks outdoors or curfews, and seemingly a failure of planning in terms of working on the things like contract tracing, or capacity planning or really anything that would keep the numbers steady over a long period of time. For instance, even after all the contract tracing efforts over the summer, we still don't even have a particularly good idea how where people are getting infected and when - which surely should be the basis for making policy about what restrictions you want now.

[parochial boy]

10 person limit for private groups; 15 for things like sports clubs/public spaces; restaurants and bars are seated only and close at 11pm; clubs are shut and the outdoor masks are basically in crowded spaces where you can't otherwise keep your distances. They seemed to be going with the logic that similarish rules in May still held the R at under zero - and even the first lockdown was much less harsh than it was elsewhere. The weirdest new rule is that they figured, seeing as Switzerland basically has the highest number of infections as anywhere, that there was no point in having "risk countries" and so it is now possible to come to Switzerland without having to quarantine at all from basically anywhere in the world. Apart from some really bad ones like Armenia or the Hauts-de-France.

Going somewhat off topic though, an funny cultural comparison is between the Swiss Federal council announcing the measures at a low-key press conference; with about 10 civil servants and scientists joining in; Alain Berset pulling out his dry one liners and everyone getting barked at by journalists - versus Macron's ego-trip pomp and circumstance discours from the Élysée like he is the king or something.

[parochial boy]

One thing I don't really get is announcing these arbitrary end dates. Like, one thing we can take away from last time is that they never actually wound up being relaxed when originally planned. At least the authorities here are honest enough to admit that they don't know how long it will take, and that the measures will stay open ended for as long as necessary.

Ahaha, wonderful that they even went out of their way to include Liechtenstein, whose numbers are reported by Switzerland - but carefully make sure to keep Switzerland itself greyed out

[parochial boy]

One thing I don't really get is announcing these arbitrary end dates. Like, one thing we can take away from last time is that they never actually wound up being relaxed when originally planned. At least the authorities here are honest enough to admit that they don't know how long it will take, and that the measures will stay open ended for as long as necessary.

I do think that there is some utility to announcing an end date; it means people are less likely to break the rules if they have an end goal, reducing ‘Covid fatigue’.

Dunno, personally I'd rather have the authorities treat me as if I was an adult with the ability to understand that things are complicated, rather than promising a clearly fictional end date.

We had no end date set the first time round and people followed the rules because they trusted the government. I think that is probably a more important factor, and announcing an end date that winds up meaningless seems a pretty good way to break that trust.

[parochial boy]

One thing I don't really get is announcing these arbitrary end dates. Like, one thing we can take away from last time is that they never actually wound up being relaxed when originally planned. At least the authorities here are honest enough to admit that they don't know how long it will take, and that the measures will stay open ended for as long as necessary.

I do think that there is some utility to announcing an end date; it means people are less likely to break the rules if they have an end goal, reducing ‘Covid fatigue’.

Dunno, personally I'd rather have the authorities treat me as if I was an adult with the ability to understand that things are complicated, rather than promising a clearly fictional end date.

We had no end date set the first time round and people followed the rules because they trusted the government. I think that is probably a more important factor, and announcing an end date that winds up meaningless seems a pretty good way to break that trust.

Wether you are an adult or not, having a potentially unlimited restriction on many enjoyable things is pretty depressing. The point is, we could lockdown for as long as we want to if the goal was simply in and of itself suppressing the virus until other means are available, but in the UK’s case, it is to stop the current surge and have a semblance of a normal festive season. People ought not to trust their government on an indefinite lockdown, but can when the aim is clear.

Except that it's basically make believe isn't it? We know how long it took for the lockdowns to work the first time round, starting from a similar starting point, and it wasn't 2-4 weeks. So what do you do in the UK and in France when you get to late Novermber and the case numbers and hospitalisations are plateauing, or only just starting to decline? Relax the restrictions knowing full well you are setting yourselves up for a disaster by New Year? Or keep them in place having failed to fulfil the promise you made?

This is one of the sides of neoliberalism that I am glad has not made it over the channel to be honest. Needing to set arbitrary targets for everything, because everything must be definable and measurable in order to assess whether it has been a success or not. "Competition" at every level of society, and obviously its become such a norm that its impregnated how people think about everything - and they apparently even need some target to be pulled out of thin air to even ensure that they behave properly.

Perhaps, I'm putting this out there, the problem is not that the people don't trust the government, it's that the government doesn't trust the British people? It's not surprising then, that people won't act trustworthily, if you treat them from the outset as if they can't.

[parochial boy]

The point is you can have a lockdown as long as you want depending on just how low you want to get cases. Indeed, the lag effect means that if a lockdown has had an effect, this may not show up in the stats for another couple of weeks. Suppressing the virus is a means to an end (reducing deaths and enabling more normal life), not an end in itself, and indefinite lockdowns risk doing greater harm to those two ends, even if they suppress the virus further. And yes, as horrible as it sounds, there is no reason for governments to trust people to follow unpleasant rules without an incentive to do so.

But the incentive is save lives surely? People have an amazing ability to be, you know, good, when you let them be. Just think how effective the "save the NHS" message was the first time round.

And indefinite doesn't mean "forever" it means "until it is the right time", ie if we work together we'll get there faster - not, here's a random date plucked out of thin air that will ultimately prove to be irrelevant

[parochial boy]

Case numbers here actually going down over the last 10 days; which seemed too good to be true, but the numbers of hospitalised people have also started going down over the latter half of this week - and this is despite restaurants and bars being open, no restrictions on going outside, non-contact sports trainings still going ahead etc, etc... All the kind of stuff that had the rest of Europe accusing Switzerland of being "the new Sweden" or "choosing austerity over life".

Does kind of make me think of Alain Berset's earlier line about staying low key and trying to take the measures that are the most effective, rather that "the politics of the specatcular". The original target was Macron, but seems to apply to Kurz as well a little bit.

[parochial boy]

Founded by a Turkish immigrant too.

You know, just sayin....

[parochial boy]

Big Europe-wide fights about the Ski resorts today. That is, Austria vs everywhere else and Switzerland is just going to do whatever the hell we want.

[parochial boy]

Big Europe-wide fights about the Ski resorts today. That is, Austria vs everywhere else and Switzerland is just going to do whatever the hell we want.

Austria, Switzerland, France vs. everyone else.

The skiing itself is not a problem. It's the silly apres-ski and partying.

People and tourists only need to be required to buy their food at the supermarkets instead.

The French genius master plan appears to be "the slopes can open but the lifts can't", which, er...

But yeah, it's an activity where you are outside and fairly socially distanced most of the time - issues could come up with téléphérique type cable cars and queues... but they've been running them in some of the resorts here all month and seem to have got away with some capacity limits and masks.

I don't think anyone is pushing for the bars and clubs to be allowed to open

[parochial boy]

Skiing itself is not the problem. The issues with lifts and gondolas might be solveable, too.

Mass tourism at the height of a pandemic is the problem. Day tourists can sleep at home, drive there by car and bring their own sausage sandwich and their own thermos jug of tea. That's completely unrealistic for all the German (north of Munich) and Dutch tourists. And when mass tourism breaks away keeping the lifts open may prove deficitary altogether in the bigger destinations inside the Alps.

Which raises an interesting question itself. Even in a normal year, the actual ski lifts have a difficult time managing to break even by themselves, and tend to be heavily subsidised. A lot of the profit is always made off of the ancilliary accomodation/restaurants/bars that drive those local economies. The big star resorts like Zermatt or the Trois-Vallées can get away with it; but your average small alpine village with 12 lifts and 50kms of slope is basically on life support already. Many of them are already on the verge of being killed off by climate change.

In that respect, the resorts in the latter category tend to be much less dependent on the international tourism and more on the family day trip. But in these cases, it's the mountain top lunch that is the dealbreaker that keeps these places alive. I don't see those restaurants as being a problem by themselves, a lot of them are outside in any case, and restaurants don't seem to have been the be all and end all in transmissions as it turns out.

But the point is, for a lot of the small family resorts - another year with only very limited opportunity to open could wind up being the factor that convinces them to give up completely and shut down permanently.

Although it's a bit moot - at the moment we don't seem to be anywhere near seeing the snow line drop below about 2500m, so it's only the high alps where there's even the question to be asked.

[parochial boy]

Although the fact that Covid has managed to do this despite, you know, lock downs, improved healthcare, better science and so on is indicative of... something... (but actually, one of those things is the increase in the number of people surviving into their 80s/90s compared to what used to be the case).

The worry is still what it is though - given how the modern economy works, given human settlement patterns and expansion into previously uninhabited areas and the ever increasing opportunities for these sorts of zoonotic events; how do we stop this happening again, and not just have to accept it becoming a once every 10 years or so type thing?

[parochial boy]

So back in November there was a huge language divide in Switzerland where Romandie had much higher numbers than German Switzerland - the worst in Europe even; which all led to much discussion about the "Coronagraben" and sneering comments in the Swiss German media (although, mostly SVP politicians in fact) about "latin" culture and the like.

By taking stricter measures, all the Romand cantons have brought down the numbers massively; while the German cantons saw their numbers decline a bit before starting to rise again in the last week or so. Noting the urgency, the Federal Council issued an ultimatum to several German cantons that they needed to smarten up a bit or the Council would be bringing in stricter measures. Most of them did, to be fair, give semi-bothered responses about limiting opening times or groups meetings. Except for Aargau, which quite happily told the Federal Council to shove their ultimatum up their arse because they weren't going to do anything. Consequence, new national measures - all shops, restaurants, everything must close at 7pm and a limit on meetings of 5 people. The French cantons, just in the process of opening up after decent results, are understandably furious.

The most ironic thing of all is that people in Aargau always complain about how no-one in the rest of the country likes them.

[parochial boy]

In Switzerland, a recently Biontec vaccinated person has died.

https://www.20min.ch/story/geimpfte-person-stirbt-zusammenhang-mit-vakzin-unklar-867760173148

A 91 year old with several very serious underlying conditions, it's not surprising that if you are prioritising these sorts of people, some will die shortly after the injection. The official word now is that it was not related to the vaccine. or

The full available information indicates a natural cause of death. This was also listed as such on the death certificate

Of course, probably too late for the bad publicity and fuel for vaccine sceptics

[parochial boy]

Liechtenstein has been experiencing one of the worst outbreaks in Europe, with cases just starting to decline from a peak over 1000 per 100k over 14 days. By all accounts, it should have been put on Switzerland's quarantine list, except that the country relies on Switzerland for its border and customs controls, parts of its justice system, over half of its workforce, and perhaps most importantly, it relies on Swiss hospitals as an integral part of its own healthcare system. All of which clearly makes closing the border completely impossible as doing so would essentially cause the country to completely cease to function.

Begs the question as to why exactly we don't just stop pretending and revoke it's pseudo-"independent" status once and for all.

[parochial boy]

Liechtenstein has been experiencing one of the worst outbreaks in Europe, with cases just starting to decline from a peak over 1000 per 100k over 14 days. By all accounts, it should have been put on Switzerland's quarantine list, except that the country relies on Switzerland for its border and customs controls, parts of its justice system, over half of its workforce, and perhaps most importantly, it relies on Swiss hospitals as an integral part of its own healthcare system. All of which clearly makes closing the border completely impossible as doing so would essentially cause the country to completely cease to function.

Begs the question as to why exactly we don't just stop pretending and revoke it's pseudo-"independent" status once and for all.

Does the Swiss constitution allow a canton to be a monarchy?

Nope, and there is even a precedent, Neuchâtel was a principality with the King of Prussia as head of state until the revolution and constitution of 1848. A coup d'état to restore the monarchy failed in 1856 which led to a final acceptance of the 1848 constitution with the Swiss confederation as guarantor of its status as a republic.

So as of the 1848 constitution, it is effectively impossible for any Swiss canton to have a royal family.

[parochial boy]

Liechtenstein has been experiencing one of the worst outbreaks in Europe, with cases just starting to decline from a peak over 1000 per 100k over 14 days. By all accounts, it should have been put on Switzerland's quarantine list, except that the country relies on Switzerland for its border and customs controls, parts of its justice system, over half of its workforce, and perhaps most importantly, it relies on Swiss hospitals as an integral part of its own healthcare system. All of which clearly makes closing the border completely impossible as doing so would essentially cause the country to completely cease to function.

Begs the question as to why exactly we don't just stop pretending and revoke it's pseudo-"independent" status once and for all.

Does the Swiss constitution allow a canton to be a monarchy?

Nope, and there is even a precedent, Neuchâtel was a principality with the King of Prussia as head of state until the revolution and constitution of 1848. A coup d'état to restore the monarchy failed in 1856 which led to a final acceptance of the 1848 constitution with the Swiss confederation as guarantor of its status as a republic.

So as of the 1848 constitution, it is effectively impossible for any Swiss canton to have a royal family.

Then I don't see how their "pseudo-independence" could be ended since being a monarchy is Liechtenstein's whole raison d'être and backed by nearly all of the population.

Basically tell them they need to fend for themselves when it comes to their justice and healthcare systems, border controls, customs, regulatory environment, tell them they can no longer use the Swiss franc and revoke the agreement on cross border commuters. Faced with the reality of how completely dependent on Switzerland they actually are, it would basically leave them with the choice of complying, or their country completely collapsing in on itself.

Of course, it's all a complete fantasy and would never happen, but I think the dissapearance of Liechtenstein would be a net positive for the world. On balance.

[parochial boy]

Basically tell them they need to fend for themselves when it comes to their justice and healthcare systems, border controls, customs, regulatory environment, tell them they can no longer use the Swiss franc and revoke the agreement on cross border commuters. Faced with the reality of how completely dependent on Switzerland they actually are, it would basically leave them with the choice of complying, or their country completely collapsing in on itself.

Of course, it's all a complete fantasy and would never happen, but I think the dissapearance of Liechtenstein would be a net positive for the world. On balance.

Couldn't they just switch to Austria for those needs?

It's not like Liechtenstein is an independent enclave inside Switzerland like San Marino or Vatican City

Probably, although the transition time would be pretty destructive. Even then, it would require them adopting the Euro and joining the EU customs union. Which I doubt is especially popular as an idea. Plus geographically and culturally it doesn't make a lot of sense. The population lives overwhelmingly along the Swiss border, while the Austrian side is basically a load of high mountains; and the cultural, economic, social ties the people in the country have are already tied up in Eastern Switzerland - so simply changing everything over to Austria would be difficult.