...one reason Israel managed to get their hands on such a supply of the Pfizer vaccine is that they agreed to share patient data with Pfizer. They realised that here the general public good easily outweighed patient confidentially. If only some other governments could wake up to this.

Very good news, with some luck Switzerland will enter the worst part of the epidemics with step downcurve and this will save lot's of lives.

Now it is important that government not yield to "yeeee, let's totally open up and not wear masks" voices that without any doubt will become more vocal.

Patient data belongs to patients, not to governments. Sharing patient data involves patient concent, and actually there are a lot of privacy concerns over the Israel’s agreement with Pfizer. I don’t think the governments should be routinely sharing data with pharma companies, pharma has to collect data themselves and follow the privacy protection laws.

I guess it's time to place bets, which will become the dominant strain in the third wave in CH, African or UK variant?

Non-essential stores closed from today. So why were FNAC, Swisscom and a Swiss chocolatier open in Fribourg this morning?

You say it best yourself: this isn't routine, or a standard situation.

Probably we should check if the definition of "non-essential" has changed.

But I remember in Spring, telecoms were actually open part-time. It is essential to have access to twitter these days.

I am rather wondering, why there were soooo many essential workers on the trains today. Didn't feel like the number of people reduced even a little bit.

Chocolate is food, and a great one at it We were so happy that the chocolatier in Aarau stayed open also during the last April/May. I guess no one goes daily there, once or twice a month is enough. Also, it is not a shop with lots of customer traffic, even before the whole covid mess it was very infrequent to be at the shop with other customer.

If the point is to stay at home, books are essential. If there are no books, what else you can do? Drugs, more children from auslanders? The SVP people would be triggered

I drove today to work to take a screen and a chair to work from home more comfortably. Packed the stuff an left 10 min later. Traffic on the A1 was normal, as if nothing were happening

Pretty sure you can order books online!

There's everything online but serendipity

Back to what matters, distance among people, when have you seen a crowded bookstore?

Totally agree- then on to Insurance companies too ... The basic principle is massively important.

Here in Brazil it was hard to start to vaccinate the population, coz the gouvernment politicized Covid-19 towards his personal interests.
Yesterday it was historic mark for the nation, it began the vaccination campaign against Covid-19 in Sao Paulo, even if the Brazilian leader is against of vaccination.

Today, in the afternoon, it was turn for Rio de Janeiro.

https://riotimesonline.com/brazil-ne...-january-18th/

It's time to celebrate it.

Ski touring beat internet the last couple of days but I just found this in the Tagi (Deepl translation):

https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/warum-t...9-2f684ff3364b (requires registration)

Strangely enough books are not considered essential and stores selling books have to prevent access to them. I find that rather bizarre considering what other things are considered essential.
Libraries are open but bookstores aren’t.

I was in the centre yesterday to get pet food as I decided against joining the massive queue on Saturday to get some. That was bizarre too, I’ve never seen a queue to get in the pet store before ever and it didn’t even make sense since they were allowed to stay open.
The Manor in the centre has about half of the ground floor open selling ‘essential’ items and a click and collect desk with the rest of the store blocked off by giant shower curtains. The are allowed to sell toiletries, underwear, some children’s and baby clothes, some household items and some stationery items. When I was there the police were there with the manager checking that it confirmed to the rules.
Now I’m not disputing that underwear is essential but it’s not generally the kind of thing we need to buy urgently is it? Why was it considered necessary to keep underwear store open?
And flower stores?

Some of the ‘essential’ things seem anything but essential to me but hey, I’m not the one making the decisions.

Makes sense. You can easily buy books over the internet but a library requires you to pick up and return books.

I thought libraries were closed? The ones in Bern are at least...

For goodness sakes, books are not essential (from a confessed bookworm) ... there are so many classics online for free and if you want to support your local book seller, you can most likely still order from them online.

One of my favorites:

https://www.biderundtanner.ch/start?...zIxfWu_6UsCQ--

The problem with insurance companies is if you want to claim you lose the privacy angle.

I could be wrong (I've got no doubt you'll let me know if I am), but there seems to be a strong element of mean reversion to the second wave.

When the libraries here were closed they all offered a book pick service.
I’m sure they could do the same now.
Books are important but they are pretty easy to get online be that e-books, from online stores or from libraries.
Browsing the library in person looking for books doesn’t seem like an essential activity to me.

Ditto, same around here on A1 both yesterday and today, no change. I wonder where everyone is going. And this was after I read an news article saying traffic was really reduced, apparently around Bern.

As for shops, I think IT stores are allowed, so that might explain Fnac. I went into a discount store, essential stuff like food, cleaning products, pots and pans were allowed. Other stuff like clothes, games, toys, etc. were cordoned off. Lady behind was in line had toy for her kid, not sure if cashier would allow it or not.

A local small business I frequent was closed but had a pick-up hotline number on the door, obvoisly to arrange take away service of merchandise. Call, order, pickup.