10 ms·

Switzerland Federal Council bans large-scale events

129 points by _xoo 7y ago

nickik 7y ago
Well, great. If they had done this a couple weeks earlier, I could have avoid the horrible carnival that annoys me every year.
- mikl 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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 7y ago
      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
philshem 7y ago
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.
- piquadrat 7y ago
  Also the Engadin Ski Marathon on March 8, the second largest cross country skiing event in the world with 14000+ participants. I was looking forward to it, but I understand the decision. I can't really imagine a worse scenario than thousands of exhausted, coughing people in tight spaces for a virus like this. Also terrible for volunteers, which might get into close contact with hundreds or thousands of participants during the day. Meanwhile, the largest cross country skiing event in the world, the Vasaloppet in Sweden, still looks like it's on this Sunday.
  - philshem 7y ago
    Ah yes true, although I thought that was cancelled before the press conference.
    - piquadrat 7y ago
      Right, it was cancelled yesterday by the cantonal authorities due to two confirmed cases of the virus in the region where the race was to take place. Sorry for the confusion.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  > 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. This ain't true based on few web checks, for now they decided to go on (although I believe they will cancel eventually as cases ramp up in following days). I wanted to go like every year since its in my backyard and it takes 20 min bus ride, but not under these conditions. Sources: [1][2] [1] https://www.thelocal.ch/20200228/switzerland-bans-all-major-events-to-stop-coronavirus-contagion https://www.thelocal.ch/20200228/switzerland-bans-all-major-... [2] google etc.
  - chli 7y ago
    Of course it is cancelled. The federal government announced all events with more than 1000 people involved cancelled till 15th of March. It just cannot go on.
roenxi 7y ago
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.
- philshem 7y ago
  It's also a highly federal democracy, with Cantons being considered "sovereign"[0]. So it's not to be taken lightly that the federal government has taken such steps. Several questions in the press conference have been about the Cantons specifically[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland#Constitutions_and_powers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland#Constit... [1] https://www.bag.admin.ch/bag/en/home/krankheiten/ausbrueche-epidemien-pandemien/aktuelle-ausbrueche-epidemien/novel-cov.html https://www.bag.admin.ch/bag/en/home/krankheiten/ausbrueche-...
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  Well, as a Swiss I can only state for the record that the government is not the enemy. Essentially: The government is us.
  - short_sells_poo 7y ago
    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 that I don't think it is possible to just take the Swiss model and transplant it elsewhere. It requires a multi-generational cultural conditioning to develop the civic mind that the Swiss have nurtured. It is also not clear how scalable it is ultimately. It requires a certain amount of enlightenment without which the system would not work.
    - CaptainZapp 7y ago
sschueller 7y ago
I wonder if I can convince the SBB to refund my Non refundable Super Saver Ticket I purchased for the Geneva Auto Show.
- hocuspocus 7y ago
  They usually do but charge a 10.- processing fee, so it's rarely worth it.
  - _xoo 7y ago
    I got some tickets refunded in the past. They were quite courteous with special cases.
    - philshem 7y ago
      I've even gotten a hotel costs reimbursed when my "guaranteed" train connection couldn't be made.
- bestest 7y ago
  I believe it's a _force majeure_, so usually no refunds, unless a goodwill policy is intact.
  - philshem 7y ago
    In this case travel insurance would be valid. It's not required, but many if not most Swiss residents have policies.
- maweki 7y ago
  The DeutscheBahn said it will refund all tickets originally purchased to travel to events cancelled due to coronavirus.
- spreiti 7y ago
  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)
sschueller 7y ago
Live press conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7ZFQhaK7LQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7ZFQhaK7LQ
jpxw 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Of course the most common mass gatherings, people going to places to do non-essential work, will continue apace.
  - auiya 7y ago
    Like church.
greatpatton 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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.
  - jobigoud 7y ago
    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.
    - Mvandenbergh 7y ago
      In the UK it is now being done on a "drive through" basis at some hospitals. You park and nurses in protective gear come out to take a saliva sample while you stay in the car. Then you drive home, self isolate and wait for the results.
  - _xoo 7y ago
    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.
shafyy 7y ago
Absolutely the right thing to do.
stuntkite 7y ago
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.
Merrill 7y ago
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/#case-tot-outchina 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.
kfk 7y ago
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?
- FDSGSG 7y ago
  Excellent time to travel, the hotel prices in places like HK are insanely low right now.
- DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
  if you normally stay home and go out only for shopping or an occasional walk in nature then you will be safer at home. also depends if your home is rural vs urban. also it would depend on how active / social you are when at home compared to what you plan during a trip. you have the additional risks of airports, or buses during travel. there is also the risk of being flagged down for testing. if you're positive then a forced quarantine in a foreign country sounds much worse than at home (where you speak the language). to me this would be more annoying and frightening than the virus itself. on the upside you can probably get really good deals and empty restaurants / bars and other sites usually crowded with people. if I wouldn't live so close with family and kids (which I'd be returning to - AND be 20 years younger), I'd go.
- Merrill 7y ago
  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.
_trampeltier 7y ago
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.pdf https://www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/attachments/60470.p... 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 7y ago
  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!
mc32 7y ago
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.
- NullPrefix 7y ago
  30km exclusion zone?
- sschueller 7y ago
  This is more of a authority thing. All events over 1000+ people are now under the control of the "Bund", as in they decide if they take place or not. Cantons have the authority over smaller events and can individually decide to cancel or not. They stated the closing borders would cause a shortage of doctors and staff which commute over the border every day.
  - mc32 7y ago
    Sure but if the border is sealed, then, if they contain any patients testing positive, there would be no need for those physicians. It’s a kind of a reverse catch-22.
- CaptainZapp 7y ago
  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.

129 points by _xoo 7y ago

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

mikl 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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 7y ago
    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

philshem 7y ago

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.

piquadrat 7y ago
Also the Engadin Ski Marathon on March 8, the second largest cross country skiing event in the world with 14000+ participants. I was looking forward to it, but I understand the decision. I can't really imagine a worse scenario than thousands of exhausted, coughing people in tight spaces for a virus like this. Also terrible for volunteers, which might get into close contact with hundreds or thousands of participants during the day. Meanwhile, the largest cross country skiing event in the world, the Vasaloppet in Sweden, still looks like it's on this Sunday.
- philshem 7y ago
  Ah yes true, although I thought that was cancelled before the press conference.
  - piquadrat 7y ago
    Right, it was cancelled yesterday by the cantonal authorities due to two confirmed cases of the virus in the region where the race was to take place. Sorry for the confusion.
saiya-jin 7y ago
> 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. This ain't true based on few web checks, for now they decided to go on (although I believe they will cancel eventually as cases ramp up in following days). I wanted to go like every year since its in my backyard and it takes 20 min bus ride, but not under these conditions. Sources: [1][2] [1] https://www.thelocal.ch/20200228/switzerland-bans-all-major-events-to-stop-coronavirus-contagion https://www.thelocal.ch/20200228/switzerland-bans-all-major-... [2] google etc.
- chli 7y ago
  Of course it is cancelled. The federal government announced all events with more than 1000 people involved cancelled till 15th of March. It just cannot go on.

roenxi 7y ago

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.

philshem 7y ago
It's also a highly federal democracy, with Cantons being considered "sovereign"[0]. So it's not to be taken lightly that the federal government has taken such steps. Several questions in the press conference have been about the Cantons specifically[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland#Constitutions_and_powers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland#Constit... [1] https://www.bag.admin.ch/bag/en/home/krankheiten/ausbrueche-epidemien-pandemien/aktuelle-ausbrueche-epidemien/novel-cov.html https://www.bag.admin.ch/bag/en/home/krankheiten/ausbrueche-...
CaptainZapp 7y ago
Well, as a Swiss I can only state for the record that the government is not the enemy. Essentially: The government is us.
- short_sells_poo 7y ago
  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 that I don't think it is possible to just take the Swiss model and transplant it elsewhere. It requires a multi-generational cultural conditioning to develop the civic mind that the Swiss have nurtured. It is also not clear how scalable it is ultimately. It requires a certain amount of enlightenment without which the system would not work.
  - CaptainZapp 7y ago

sschueller 7y ago

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

hocuspocus 7y ago
They usually do but charge a 10.- processing fee, so it's rarely worth it.
- _xoo 7y ago
  I got some tickets refunded in the past. They were quite courteous with special cases.
  - philshem 7y ago
    I've even gotten a hotel costs reimbursed when my "guaranteed" train connection couldn't be made.
bestest 7y ago
I believe it's a _force majeure_, so usually no refunds, unless a goodwill policy is intact.
- philshem 7y ago
  In this case travel insurance would be valid. It's not required, but many if not most Swiss residents have policies.
maweki 7y ago
The DeutscheBahn said it will refund all tickets originally purchased to travel to events cancelled due to coronavirus.
spreiti 7y ago
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)

sschueller 7y ago

Live press conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7ZFQhaK7LQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7ZFQhaK7LQ

jpxw 7y ago

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 7y ago
Of course the most common mass gatherings, people going to places to do non-essential work, will continue apace.
- auiya 7y ago
  Like church.

greatpatton 7y ago

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 7y ago
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.
- jobigoud 7y ago
  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.
  - Mvandenbergh 7y ago
    In the UK it is now being done on a "drive through" basis at some hospitals. You park and nurses in protective gear come out to take a saliva sample while you stay in the car. Then you drive home, self isolate and wait for the results.
- _xoo 7y ago
  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.

shafyy 7y ago

Absolutely the right thing to do.

stuntkite 7y ago

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.

Merrill 7y ago

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/#case-tot-outchina 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.

kfk 7y ago

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?

FDSGSG 7y ago
Excellent time to travel, the hotel prices in places like HK are insanely low right now.
DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
if you normally stay home and go out only for shopping or an occasional walk in nature then you will be safer at home. also depends if your home is rural vs urban. also it would depend on how active / social you are when at home compared to what you plan during a trip. you have the additional risks of airports, or buses during travel. there is also the risk of being flagged down for testing. if you're positive then a forced quarantine in a foreign country sounds much worse than at home (where you speak the language). to me this would be more annoying and frightening than the virus itself. on the upside you can probably get really good deals and empty restaurants / bars and other sites usually crowded with people. if I wouldn't live so close with family and kids (which I'd be returning to - AND be 20 years younger), I'd go.
Merrill 7y ago
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.

_trampeltier 7y ago

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.pdf https://www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/attachments/60470.p... 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 7y ago
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!

mc32 7y ago

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.

NullPrefix 7y ago
30km exclusion zone?
sschueller 7y ago
This is more of a authority thing. All events over 1000+ people are now under the control of the "Bund", as in they decide if they take place or not. Cantons have the authority over smaller events and can individually decide to cancel or not. They stated the closing borders would cause a shortage of doctors and staff which commute over the border every day.
- mc32 7y ago
  Sure but if the border is sealed, then, if they contain any patients testing positive, there would be no need for those physicians. It’s a kind of a reverse catch-22.
CaptainZapp 7y ago
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.