
Switzerland Federal Council bans large-scale events - _xoo
https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releases.msg-id-78289.html
======
roenxi
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.

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

~~~
fsloth
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.

~~~
claudeganon
Authoritarianism:

Characterized by or favoring absolute obedience to authority, as against
individual freedom.

...which is entirely compatible with enforcement of high-pressure, in-group
norms. Shunning is an authoritarian practice, even if it’s done by a
collective. See also the Cultural Revolution in China.

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philshem
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.

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

~~~
sschueller
Not completely correct. The street fest "Strassenfasnacht" was also canceled
during World War 2. [1]

[1] [https://www.srf.ch/news/regional/basel-baselland/als-der-
wel...](https://www.srf.ch/news/regional/basel-baselland/als-der-weltkrieg-
kam-machte-die-fasnacht-pause)

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stuntkite
I live in Austin, TX and because Twitter launched at SXSW 10ish years ago our
tiny downtown area turns into a neon cash grab desperation cyclone all spring.
Festival season kicks off with SXSW March 22nd.

It's already a mess of people from all over the world smashed in together. The
city can't maintain it as is. It's already a sewer orgy of drunk/drugged
people from all over the world trading regular diseases. I'm going to
seriously limit my outside time while it's going on.

It's worth so much money to huge companies that don't even live here and is
what the city is known for. I seriously doubt they'll cancel. They really
should.

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greatpatton
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?

~~~
jonathanstrange
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 this is not possible, though.

~~~
akiselev
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.

~~~
xorfish
Switzerland has the capability to run 1'000 tests per day right now, they
currently are not at the limit for testing.

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jpxw
It’s only a matter of time before this starts happening all over Europe.

> England's chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty, said transmission of the
> virus between people in the UK was "just a matter of time". He said if the
> outbreak intensifies, it may be necessary to close schools and stop mass
> gatherings of people for "quite a long period of time, probably more than
> two months".

~~~
claudeganon
Of course the most common mass gatherings, people going to places to do non-
essential work, will continue apace.

~~~
auiya
Like church.

------
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/...](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-cases/#case-
tot-outchina)

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.

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sschueller
Live press conference:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7ZFQhaK7LQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7ZFQhaK7LQ)

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_trampeltier
As I read it, you even would have to ask, if you would allowed to do a Poker
evening with friends at home.

[https://www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/attachments/60470.p...](https://www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/attachments/60470.pdf)

Art. 2 Veranstaltungsverbot

1 Es ist verboten, öffentliche oder private Veranstaltungen bei der sich
gleichzeitig mehr als 1000 Personen aufhalten, in der Schweiz durchzuführen.

2 Bei öffentlichen oder privaten Veranstaltungen, bei denen weniger als 1000
Perso- nen teilnehmen, müssen die Veranstalter zusammen mit der zuständigen
kantonalen Behörde eine Risikoabwägung vornehmen, ob sie die Veranstaltung
durchführen können oder nicht.

~~~
lolc
I am puzzling over that! Because we're having a party tomorrow :-) It's fifty
people tops so it falls under #2. I don't think we're going to care about the
ban since the party is private and not registered.

We do have a public party registered with the authorities for end of March. So
if they extend the ban that may become a problem. But until then I hope we'll
know whether the disease is reasonably contained. If not contained we probably
don't want to be there anyway!

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sschueller
I wonder if I can convince the SBB to refund my Non refundable Super Saver
Ticket I purchased for the Geneva Auto Show.

~~~
spreiti
It will be refunded with the refund reason "Goodwill".

(I work as a Software Developer at SBB and work on the system that does the
refund process)

~~~
curiousgal
I love these small coincidences that remind us of how small the internet has
made the world!

~~~
simplecto
Agreed! HN and some subreddits are unique in this way. This is what keeps me
coming back...

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mc32
What’s the rationale behind barring 1000+ attendee events but allowing up to
1000 attendee events?

If you have an infected person at a <1000 person event that can still result
in a pretty large graph of potentially affected people.

I don’t think there is a magic number other than 1 where transmission is
quashed, but I don’t see how this could have a blunting impact.

More effective might be temporarily barring all international travelers as
extreme as that would be.

~~~
CaptainZapp
The rational, and actually communicated suchly, was that they had to draw a
line somewhere.

And it's not that smaller events automatically go forward, but that the
cantons, where those events happen, together with the organizers need to
perform a risk assessment and decide if the event can go forward.

> More effective might be barring all international travelers as extreme as
> that would be.

No it wouldn't for a variety of reasons. For starters, Switzerland is an
extremely interconnected country and dependent on such connections. In
addition It's part of the Schengen agreement and just shutting down all
borders with its neighbors is legally, let alone logistically not feasible
(and, IMO, not desirable).

Also, what do you do with citizens who have a legal right to return to the
country at any time. Throw 'em all into quarantine camps?

I think that the governments reaction is heavy, but overall measured and
reasonable.

But sure, as a Swiss citizen flying home from Bangkok tomorrow you may accuse
me of being biased.

~~~
mc32
I’m pretty sure the agreement allows for temporary border controls in the
event of serious emergencies.

For people en-route, yes quarantine upon arrival would be the right thing to
do, in the least self quarantine at home with proper precautions.

~~~
CaptainZapp
The agreement does allow for that.

But I don't think that the situation calls for a full throttled shut
everything down, oj! wie is mir, panic.

Since I travelled to Asia 3 1/2 weeks ago I was quite concerned and very
abreast with _valid_ information. So I mostly referred to the one reasonable
source[1].

In no instance have they suggested any bans on travel or trade. And frankly, I
put more stock into the opinion of the WHO than, say, Mike Pence'.

In addition I'm travelling from a country were the risk of infection is lower
than if I travelled from neighboring Italy.

That's not to say that I'm blasé about the issue. If I would feel any slight
symtoms I'd immediately contact my doc, relay my travel history and do
whatever is required. Legally and morally.

Full throttle panic in the line of _The end is nigh, shut down all borders!_
is, if anything, extremely counter productive.

[1] [https://www.who.int/](https://www.who.int/)

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kfk
What do you think of travel the next 2-3 months? Should we avoid it? I was
going to travel to Madrid end of March for fun from Krakow, should I delay
this to May or even June?

~~~
Merrill
In the next one to two months, your risk is mainly having shared a flight with
someone who has coronavirus and being forced into 14 day quarantine.

Later, your chance of actually contracting coronavirus during the flight goes
up. Your chance of contracting it in Madrid depends on the prevalence of the
disease there relative to Krakow, and on the density of your social contacts
in Madrid relative to Krakow. Generally, it would be easier to self-isolate at
home, while tourism involves a lot of contacts.

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shafyy
Absolutely the right thing to do.

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nickik
Well, great. If they had done this a couple weeks earlier, I could have avoid
the horrible carnival that annoys me every year.

~~~
mikl
Oh, are you one of those people who’ve _chosen_ to live in a city that’s known
to have a big festival every year, and is for some reason still angry said
festival happens?

You could just move, you know? Or at least plan vacation when the carnival
happens so it doesn’t have to bother you.

~~~
nickik
In Switzerland you don't get the same day off depending on what canton you
work at. And sorry, that Swiss banks don't plan their software release
schedule, around carnival.

1000s of people need to get to and from the train-station, to go to their jobs
and the city makes almost no extra arrangements.

~~~
lolc
If you can muster the strength to complain about having to make your way
through a (horrible, I grant you that) carnival once a year, your life is
pretty damn good! Maybe you should go celebrate that at the carnival, so you
can value the other 364 days the more :-P

