When are the Swiss going to ban the casual cross border shopping?
For sure that will hit (near Basel) the Rheincenter (ghastly experience at the best of times) and the St. Louis supermarkets.

Could be a boost for Coop and Migros, where all the shoppers have the upmost hygeine.
Last weekend I felt a bit of an idiot taking a disinfectant spray to the supermarket and cleaning the trolley handle, this weekend I think it's going to become more normal behaviour.


And now to walk the dog.

Exactly.

Precautions like banning flights from China early on, as in January. You know, the kind of measure that might have saved Italy this mess (to say nothing of our country of residence)? Being open borders at this stage is even more lunatic than in normal conditions.

Meanwhile in Europe, we discover we don't have leaders, just managers. None of them are daring to take the right decisions (quarantines of towns, border closures (including cancelling all flights and ships entries into the country)). Instead they just shrug, say it's too late, go with the "most of you will be infected" despair, and probably hope secretly this crisis will solve the pensions and health care problem by killing off most of our elderly citizens within a very short period of time.

This is beyond unacceptable! They're not even telling us which towns have infections in .ch! Who the hell thinks this is how a major crisis is run? Why aren't journalists prodding more? Why are social media companies cracking down on people discussing the virus in ways that don't please them? Business as usual will not save our older generation, they need protection, and it looks like they're being discounted as unproductive. That is no way to run a society!

There's more social media posts than people infected. Relax, media noise does not increase the risk, it merely projects it further than it actually should be. there's more than 99% you'll be fine by the end of this, which will be just after Easter

Do you really think that information that 10 people are infected in a specific town of population 10'000 is going to make a difference? There's currently 644 confirmed infected people in the whole of Switzerland.

There's a cantonal list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_c...in_Switzerland

If a town has 10% of people infected - then the information might be relevant.

It may not increase the risk, but it does increase the panic...

So, within a few days we went to the next stage of pandemic anxiety; at the beginning people were afraid of travelling to affected places or even to those places which had vague connections with affected areas. And had those (hopefully inner thoughts, unless they posted them on public fora) "OMG, this guy is coughing and sneezing!!!!! Has he been to Italy/China lately?"
Now they're afraid to go shopping in their own town.

Hmm, I think we should stash some toilet paper.

On the flip side.. If the CH strategy of carry on, nothing to see here, low testing and low numbers works.. They'll come out of this very well indeed, financially.

Little impact to the economy while our neighbors crash around us, seen as the strong and safe country of Europe, safe haven for the worlds cash... Couple of thousand dead pensioners as collateral damage.

Government response playbook:

https://twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/s...UH96acsX-25mds

Little impact on the economy? I work in tourism, which is a massive part of the Swiss economy.... right now every man and their dog is cancelling their holidays as they don’t want to travel.

Massive...2.8% of GDP and 4% of employment


https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitze...tourismus.html

I thought it was already well established that most European leaders put their virtue signaling ahead of their own people.

It's massive when you're the one affected.

This seems to me to be exactly the Swiss strategy. It’s worked so well for them in the past, you lot carry on and we’ll hold your wallet for you!

The deafening silence from the EU amidst all of this is quite something.

I was merely flagging the common human fallacy of making inductions

You’d need to close the border completely in reality

Only closing post obligatory schools here, and even then not all of them.

Tom

Me too.

not the #metoo

Except that the outbreak in Italy was caused by returning Italian nationals, not Chinese visitors. Do you mean that Italy should have banned its own nationals? Even Trump isn't proposing that so leaving exactly the same route open. The real issue in Italy was that they didn't realise until too late that they had a Coronavirus problem rather than an flu epidemic and thus were too late isolating infected individuals. Look up the story of patient one.

Anyhow, the number of cases in the US indicates the China ban didn't work. They're perhaps 8 to 10 days behind most of Europe at this stage, that number will increase sharply.

Not arguing about restricting travel btw. That's now the only option left. Expect an Italy style lockdown in most of Europe by the middle to end of next week.

Closing schools is nothing to do with keeping kids safe, they don't have any problem surviving the virus. It is about removing one method of transmission to the community at large via their parents and grandparents.