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].
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.
It also requires a certain willingness to compromise. In Switzerland one sees is all the way from the local government (gemeinde) up to the top (the federal level). Compromise is not a dirty word here; when politicians do it they are not (usually) looked at as 'giving in to the enemy'.
That's an extremely insightful comment and very true.
Not that it's universally adhered to by all proponents, but generally that's very much the understanding how the system should work.
As a for example: Switzerland has a "president". But that doesn't really matter since that changes annually and another member of the federal council gets to be president.
Except representative the "president" is not more powerful than any other member of the council.
To further clarify: The president have mostly a ceremonial and diplomatic role.
What is considered the Head of the Executive Branch in other countries is collectively represented here by the Federal Council. The Council is made of 7 peoples elected proportionally from the various political party by the Federal Assembly (== parliement). The Council should also by picked so that all regions of Switzerland are represented.
One of the hall marks of the Swiss system is to push as much power as possible to as locally as possible.
Communities have a lot of power in their decision making as long as such decisions do not violate cantonal (state) or federal laws.
It demands, though, quite intense interaction with policies and referendums (there are usually about three referendums about various subjects on local, cantonal and federal level per year) and that said, I would wish that there would be more engagement and a higher ratio of voters actually going to the polls.
The smaller the group, the less hierarchy you need. I think that Switzerland is at the size limit of what direct democracy can support. In fact, it is not fully direct.
Wealth also helps. The richer you are, the more you can focus on your role in running the county and make informed decisions. That's because you have all your basic needs covered and don't really need to think about about your survival, leaving you open to higher level activities.
The classical example is Athenian democracy (the original). It worked because it involved only about 30000 people of the highest social class. Women and slaves didn't count.
Looking at the country's history, you will see that Switzerland isn't rich since a long time. The country is considered successful economically since around 1848[0]. But the confederation is known to have been formed around 1291 (that's the official date that is part of the national myth, the actual date could be slightly different).
Swiss democracy and the Old Helvetic Confederacy precedes its modern wealth (early 20th century) by half a millennium (14th/15th centuries?).
The old leagues and communes of Graubünden, which had some semblance of communal voting based democracy, was happening in the 1200's or earlier, long before Swiss wealth.
What it takes is a way different culture than the modern American mindset.
> 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.
"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 also requires ancient banking roots that enable it to sit on the largest 'pot of gold' in the world (1/3 of the entire world's foreign investment) and put the management surpluses into its treasury. And to add, much of that 'gold' was, and is, owned by some really, really bad people and stashed away in the mountains specifically because said keepers don't have qualms about the origins of said wealth.
Surplus money makes a lot of things a lot easier. (Much like the tone of a startup: flush with cash? It's all good times. Going out of business? Death marches!)
Switzerland for all its great things is a little like Lux, Norway, and Monaco, which is to say it's hard to separate their exceptionalism from their 'special status' of having huge piles of immense easy per capita wealth.
Also, to headline a post indicating 'national events shut down' which is an interesting but not particularly exceptional act, with the statement "We are the most X in the world, etc. etc." is slightly cringe-worthy. A lot of major events have been cancelled in a lot of places with similar risk exposures.
I fail to see any evidence for how 'direct democracy' is the primary, or even relevant social artifact which drove the special directive highlighted in the article (i.e. cancellation of public events), or even any evidence that such 'direct democracy' provides superior social organization.
It's really odd that someone would even bring that up.
Switzerland was the last country in the modern world to allow women to vote (1971) - and it was direct democracy that specifically blocked women from voting; a popular plebiscite in 1959 (obviously by men only) specifically prohibited women from enfranchisement. So much for popular progress? In Canada, women could vote in 1917. In Turkey, 1934. Finland, 1906. India, 1950.
The reason that Switzerland will be able to address the Coronavirus pandemic effectively will not be 'direct democracy', it will be wealth. Switzerland became wealthy largely due to a national economic strategy of banking secrecy, asset protection, and of course enabling evasion of taxation and other authorities. At almost 10% of the economy relative to assets under management, the banking sector in Switzerland is indeed substantially larger than other sectors relative to the sectors of other nations [1]. In the US it's 1%. Canada 2%.
Luxembourg, in the last 70-ish years, went from a backwater to even wealthier than Switzerland on a GDP/per-capita basis for similar reasons: it became a tax haven, a policy driven by no less than the outgoing EU Commission head JC Junker who was the PM of Lux. There is no real economy in Monaco, of course, but its high-income status is also derived from its special variation of tax haven. Even Irleand's massive economic renaissance in the last 20 years has largely been driven by asymmetrical tax benefits for large American tech corporations. And of course, Norway's sovereign wealth fund which owns 2% of all public stocks in the world is derived from another existential special economic bit: Oil.
When Corona hits, the 'rich' countries will be the safest (I think the US may possibly be an exception), and I think it will have little to do with their relative forms of government. Aside from their deep social ties to China, I think Singapore, for example, would be one of those ideal 'safe places'.
> I fail to see any evidence for how 'direct democracy' is the primary, or even relevant social artifact which drove the special directive highlighted in the article (i.e. cancellation of public events), or even any evidence that such 'direct democracy' provides superior social organization.
The thread you're commenting on so far has gone like this:
OP: "See a democracy can institute sweeping authoritarian-like bans, but with the will and blessing of the people"
Next: "I'm Swiss and it's because the government isn't our enemy, it is an extension of us"
You: "Nope it's because y'all are wealthy, that's the only reason y'all will survive!"
Grandparent: "uh dude the government system has been around longer than the wealth"
You: "I don't see why the government system matters, it's the money!"
The reason you're being downvoted is because you came into a conversation specifically about how the democracy of Switzerland is able to act quicky with a decree that could be viewed as an authoritarian-like policy, but with the implied general will (to use Rousseau's term for Sovereignty in political philosophy) of the people, and said "I don't see the effectiveness of this quick decisive action of democratic government, instead it's about the money they have!"
I don't necessarily disagree with you that wealth is an important tool but that might have been better as a response to the top level comment rather than that comment chain.
That comment chain went as follows (I am quoting only part of the comments):
1) "Switzerland, most democratic country in the world, reminding people that it isn't just the authoritarians who know how to keep organised."
2) "Well, as a Swiss I can only state for the record that the government is not the enemy.
Essentially: The government is us. "
3) "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."
4) your comment which was quoted the line above and discussed the role of Swiss wealth in being able to respond effective to a pandemic.
To me, your comment would have made more sense in reply to the first comment. The "It" from comment 3 that you responded to is the Swiss attitude towards the power of their government(s) and the placement of your comment might therefore lead people to think you meant that their wealth lead to that attitude rather than what you intended which was that their wealth would aid their ability to respond to an outbreak of disease.
On another note. While I do not think Swiss-style direct democracy gives a particular advantage in fighting pandemics (and has led to some not-great outcomes such as women in one canton not being able to vote until 1991), I do think that systems of government in which citizens have a high degree of trust are at an advantage. The Swiss do have a high regard for their system and they will do what they are told without resenting they system because they feel invested in it.
Having a lot of wealth certainly makes some things easier. So I agree with you there. It is however highly simplistic to say that the wealth is ill-gotten.
Swiss banks have indeed sat on funds where they could have been proactive in looking for heirs. They have traded and trade with companies and regimes that should be shunned. Switzerland is a tax haven and profits by taxing capital gains that could have been taxed where the work was done. Still there are many other factors that contribute to wealth. One thing is steady, low-corruption government and an investment mindset in public infrastructure. This coupled with a culture that fosters strong work ethics leads to accumulation of wealth. Another huge factor is no wars for centuries which is part luck, part ugly realpolitik.
So yes the Swiss system could not be implemented as-is by other countries. Yet looking at real-world implementations of certain policies can help illuminate how to get a wealthy population. And it doesn't have to be the tax thievery.
Switzerland is a rare example of a country with instruments of direct democracy (at the levels of the municipalities, cantons, and federal state), excerpted from [1] which has more details of how Switzerland implements direct democracy in pure format and in combination with federal structures.
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.
So what would happen? You would get punished for causing inconvenience to a person who had a right to hang their washing on that day? Sounds very reasonable, how is that authoritarian?
Democracies where the people only have a voice every few years are regularly seen doing things against the will of the people, because the politicians know they can get away with it, because it’ll be forgotten by the time the next election comes around.
It's working great. In Switzerland we do not only have elections every few years but we can also (directly) vote on issues from all three legal jurisdictions (municipality, canton or federal level) multiple times a year. Thus, we not only have a democracy but a direct democracy.
To be fair, it's very democratic (is it the most?), not very free. Living there you have to put up with all sorts of restrictions that may seem overzealous for someone from, say, Eastern Europe. And they have the same ridiculous bureaucracy (unlike the UK, for example).
> 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.
> There is nothing inherently good about democracies.
Besides the fact that we naturally evolved toward them since everything else we tried so far was worse ? And the fact that people are fleeing authoritarian regimes risking their lives to get into democratic ones daily yet the opposite never happened ?
> 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.
When you put lions in cages they're still lions.
> Instead of focusing on silly labels, why not focus on deeds/actions/results/etc.
Right, open an history book and it'll be painfully obvious that the vast majority of authoritarian regimes are worse than being "not inherently good".
> It's funny how we conveniently forget that even nazi germany rose from a democracy.
It's neither funny nor forgotten. It's also pretty clear germany and their neighbours weren't better off after being under dictatorship. It's almost as if desperate times lead to desperate measures... more than democracy leading to authoritarianism.
> the only form of government to have nuked civilians is a democracy.
The US is as far away as you can get from democracy and still call it a democracy.
> Besides the fact that we naturally evolved toward them since everything else we tried so far was worse ?
Oh god, the silly "documentary" trope. Let me guess you heard that from a silly documentary with churchill? The same applies to democracies as well. We had them and they failed and we "naturally evolved" from them. It's almost like all forms of government are bad and have a shelf life. You do realize that the ancient greek democracy failed miserably right?
> And the fact that people are fleeing authoritarian regimes risking their lives to get into democratic ones daily yet the opposite never happened ?
No. People are fleeing poorer regions to wealthier regions. Most of the migrants around the world are from democracies not authoritarian regimes. Did you know that 1.3 billion people are without electricity? Do you also know that almost all of them are living in democracies? Did you know that almost all of the world's poorest countries are democracies?
> When you put lions in cages they're still lions.
That excuses everybody, not just democracies. What bizarre rationalizations.
> Right, open an history book and it'll be painfully obvious that the vast majority of authoritarian regimes are worse than being "not inherently good".
Yes, open a history book and it'll be just as painfully obvious the same applies to democracies. Most of the human suffering around the world today are in democracies. Most of the wars started around the world today are by democracies.
> It's almost as if desperate times lead to desperate measures... more than democracy leading to authoritarianism.
So it's the desperate times and nothing inherent with the form of government. Okay, now you are starting to make some sense.
> The US is as far away as you can get from democracy and still call it a democracy.
Pretty much the definition of modern democracy. But you are right, we are a republic and that also is inherently flawed.
I used to think like you because I consumed the same documentaries and propaganda as you did. I agree with you that people should "open a history book" and look at what really happened. Most of the world's suffering in the past 200 years was caused by democracies sadly. It still applies today sadly.
> There is nothing inherently good about democracies. After all, democracies have exterminated continents full of people...
You might have missed the reason why democracies are so popular; they win wars and they are capable of managing the complexities of capitalist systems. If you expect anything inherently good in politics you are in for a lifetime of disappointments because the entire game (in any political system) is deciding which group of undeserving people get to be in charge.
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.
Remember when they banned Chinese exhibitors from Basel World[1] during the SARS crisis?
There was a hell of a lot of "Bloody Murder! That's such an over reaction!" going for that.
I was not so sure at that time. Ultimately (and mind you, it was a super painful decision and to describe the Chinese and Hong Kong delegation as royally pissed and offended would be a massive under-exaggeration) I figured that the BAG (health authority) was doomed whatever they decided. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
But since the situation could have ultimately run out of control I thought the decision was right.
I also think so in this case. Even though, it's hard core and will be very unpopular with a lot of the public (let alone 20 Minuten commenters).
[1] The most important watch and jewelry exhibition in the world, at least it was at the time. Hong Kong was the most important foreign exhibitor
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.
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.
In the press conference was said, that currently, they are worried about large events, where people are very near to each other for quite some time. But large train stations, like in Zurich, Bern or Basel, are not yet affected.
Also border controls do not seem to be affected. There are many people crossing borders to Italy or Germany for work by car or train.
All in all, I think the swiss government reacts very reasonably. But I also think that containing the spread already seems out of the question.
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.
> 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.
Of course it's cancelled, Berset put 1000 people as a hard maximum with events with below 1000 people attending only allowed under risk assessment measures (ie. they might even cancel events below that threshold).
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.
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?
No, what we have is Italy being the most efficient at testing. Other countries simply limit testing, either not testing at all or only some people directly returning from China. For example we had UK nurse complaining on twitter two days ago about NHS telling her no tests for Italian tourists! plenty of similar stories https://twitter.com/PedroiasFace/status/1233284022089940992
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.
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.
I am not aware of countries that test completely randomly. But many countries have so-called sentinel surveillance, where 1-5% of family doctors (general practitioners) send in samples to a lab from patients who appear with influenza-like or respiratory symptoms. This is how they monitor the spread of different kinds of influenza strain. In principle, if there’s enough testing capacity and it’s judged worthwhile, this could be expanded to also test these samples for SARS-CoV-2.
This makes it sound like at least one German state has tested for coronavirus as part of their sentinel surveillance, but I’m not sure if that test was completely random:
Not quite random since they are only testing people with cold and flu symptoms but these are spread around the country in order to act as an early warning system for spread of the virus.
It might have to do with the testing technology. If your false positive rate is high, but you’re only testing people with clear symptoms, it’s fine. But if you test random people the data could be too noisy
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.
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.
The area affected by the virus in Italy contains 20-30m people. If there are 10000 infected, they are only 0.05% of the population. A country would need to test tens of thousands of people to get any meaningful results.
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 different order of magnitude of cases. And that's why I was interested in potential model to simulate this.
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-...
yes I just heard from the team that did the sequencing of the virus in Italy they now believe that the virus has been circulating there for weeks without being detected...
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".
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
It is very hard to understand how democracies work; it is important to keep an eye on how these things play out.