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Switzerland Federal Council bans large-scale events

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Re: Switzerland Federal Council bans large-scale events

#51

Post by Erikun »

greatpatton wrote: post #41
_xoo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Switzerland they currently have a good picture of whats going on. They were able to trace backe where all infected people got the disease from.

Yes in Switzerland and all the new cases originated in different place of Italy. So it seems that in Switzerland when people are back from Italy and having symptoms, they look for help and are tested. But as it is very unlikely that all these people were in contact with the 650 people detected in Italy (most of them were back from Milan, Verona, and not from the lockdown cities, my fear is that Italy is facing a diff…

Not sure about Italy, but Imperial college in London did estimates in January for how many in Wuhan were infected based on internationally infected people and the catchment area of Wuhan airport. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/194815/coronavirus-outbreak-...

Re: Switzerland Federal Council bans large-scale events

#52

Post by jobigoud »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #26
greatpatton wrote: post #19

I'm wondering currently we have 40-60 cases in other EU countries all originating in Italy, but there are only 650 official cases in Italy. Based on this, it seems that the infection is widely widespread in Italy and the number of "undetected case" should be important (maybe for instance with a lot of asymptomatic carriers) Is there any model to predict this type of dispersion? Any interesting article on this subject…

I've been wondering for a while why countries do not test people randomly like in phone surveys, i.e.randomly pick several thousand persons from a region and test them. Like in phone surveys you need to compensate for biases created from people declining to be tested, of course. It would be expensive, but it seems to me that it would yield a good picture of what is going on. Maybe I'm missing something obvious and th…

I'm still not clear what "testing" entails. I'm not going anywhere near a hospital to be packed with hundreds of other potential cases if I can avoid it.

On the other hand, if we had a spit-and-mail test, this could turn into the biggest DNA harvest operation of all time.

Re: Switzerland Federal Council bans large-scale events

#53

Post by akiselev »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #26
greatpatton wrote: post #19

I'm wondering currently we have 40-60 cases in other EU countries all originating in Italy, but there are only 650 official cases in Italy. Based on this, it seems that the infection is widely widespread in Italy and the number of "undetected case" should be important (maybe for instance with a lot of asymptomatic carriers) Is there any model to predict this type of dispersion? Any interesting article on this subject…

I've been wondering for a while why countries do not test people randomly like in phone surveys, i.e.randomly pick several thousand persons from a region and test them. Like in phone surveys you need to compensate for biases created from people declining to be tested, of course. It would be expensive, but it seems to me that it would yield a good picture of what is going on. Maybe I'm missing something obvious and th…

Wuhan's capabilities up until about two weeks ago were a max of two thousand tests a day. Even now, they are only able to test more patients because of horizontal scaling, aka building more machines to eliminate bottlenecks in the RT-PCR pipeline. The rest of the world is significantly behind. The test may also be run several times per person because there is evidence that there is a high false negative rate while patients are still asymptomatic.

There are so many people suspected of infection in just about every nation that there is simply not enough tests to go around to test people at random.

Re: Switzerland Federal Council bans large-scale events

#54

Post by fsloth »

Angostura wrote: post #32
roenxi wrote: post #3

Switzerland, most democratic country in the world, reminding people that it isn't just the authoritarians who know how to keep organised. It is very hard to understand how democracies work; it is important to keep an eye on how these things play out.

I've always found Switzerland pretty authoritarian. Try hang out your washing on the wrong day of the week/in the wrong place.

That's not authoritarianism. "Authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by strong central power and limited political freedoms. "

I'm sure you could create a political movement to make it by law easier to hang out your washing where you like.

Re: Switzerland Federal Council bans large-scale events

#55

Post by ht85 »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #28
CaptainZapp wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as a Swiss I can only state for the record that the government is not the enemy. Essentially: The government is us.

Swiss resident (but not Swiss citizen) here. I believe Switzerland is a very unique case in that the Swiss have a culture of local (ie. Canton and Commune) level decision making via direct democracy. You grow up wielding a certain power, and you know your decisions matter and will affect your everyday life. This ingrains a close relationship between the citizens and their representatives. What I'm trying to say is th…

> You grow up wielding a certain power, and you know your decisions matter and will affect your everyday life. This ingrains a close relationship between the citizens and their representatives.

As a Swiss citizen, I think the feeling of individual power plays a minimal role. Unless you're some kind of political advocate you don't really wield any power and you do know that your single vote will almost never matter.

I think the big difference (and the real strength of a direct democracy) is the feeling you have that if a given system is in place, it is because a majority of the people - without discrimination - wanted it. Or, from the other side, that if a majority of people disliked it, they do have the power to change it.

Re: Switzerland Federal Council bans large-scale events

#56

Post by tonyedgecombe »

jonathanstrange wrote: post #26
greatpatton wrote: post #19

I'm wondering currently we have 40-60 cases in other EU countries all originating in Italy, but there are only 650 official cases in Italy. Based on this, it seems that the infection is widely widespread in Italy and the number of "undetected case" should be important (maybe for instance with a lot of asymptomatic carriers) Is there any model to predict this type of dispersion? Any interesting article on this subject…

I've been wondering for a while why countries do not test people randomly like in phone surveys, i.e.randomly pick several thousand persons from a region and test them. Like in phone surveys you need to compensate for biases created from people declining to be tested, of course. It would be expensive, but it seems to me that it would yield a good picture of what is going on. Maybe I'm missing something obvious and th…

They are in the UK, well not completely at random but a number of health centres and hospitals are now testing everybody who has flu-like symptoms.

Re: Switzerland Federal Council bans large-scale events

#57

Post by dntbnmpls »

roenxi wrote: post #3

Switzerland, most democratic country in the world, reminding people that it isn't just the authoritarians who know how to keep organised. It is very hard to understand how democracies work; it is important to keep an eye on how these things play out.

> Switzerland, most democratic country in the world, reminding people that it isn't just the authoritarians who know how to keep organised.

So a democratic country is just as authoritarian as "authoritarians"?

> It is very hard to understand how democracies work

It really isn't. It's been around for many millenia ostensibly going all the way back to the slave owning ancient greeks. And historically, democracies have proven to veer toward totalitarianism. Something even Plato recognized thousands of years ago. It's funny how we conveniently forget that even nazi germany rose from a democracy.

There is nothing inherently good about democracies. After all, democracies have exterminated continents full of people, democracies have practiced race-based slavery and the only form of government to have nuked civilians is a democracy. Hell democracies have attacked and destroyed more democracies around the world than authoritarians have. Instead of focusing on silly labels, why not focus on deeds/actions/results/etc.

Re: Switzerland Federal Council bans large-scale events

#58

Post by vbezhenar »

rimliu wrote: post #46
sschueller wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also stated that infections appear to require less than 2 meter distance between people for at least 15 minutes.

I wonder, does this somewhat explain Italy? My point is: cultures, where personal space is smaller and contact is more frequent are at higher risk of transmitting the virus. Or is this complete bollocks?

I don't know about Italian culture, but in general your statement is true.

Another cultural thing affecting virus is when it's not considered appropriate to stay home with cold or other diseases, rather you're expected to work, of course spreading virus to everyone else. I've heard about Japan, but probably there are plenty of other countries with similar approach.

Re: Switzerland Federal Council bans large-scale events

#59

Post by Merrill »

Worldometer has a nice semi-log graph of total cases outside of China. Since about February 20 the slope has increased to about a factor of 10 every 12 days. If that continues, most of the global population will be sick in about 3 months. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/...

The question is whether the rest of the world will have the governmental organization and social discipline to limit the spread the way that China has.

This is a good first step by Switzerland, but it should be adopted more widely.

Re: Switzerland Federal Council bans large-scale events

#60

Post by tobltobs »

philshem wrote: post #2

As a Swiss resident, I'm happy to see a federal-level decision that is effective immediately and made despite economic pressure to keep the status quo. Cancelled are the Geneva Auto Show (600k+ guests), Basel Fasnacht (carnival), and many other popular events (concerts and sporting events) with more than 1000 people.

Last time when the Basler Fasnacht was cancelled was 1920, during the Spanish flu ...
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