Switzerland

During a pandemic it makes sense to go to the mountains and it makes sense to walk where you have space to the left and right to keep social distancing. Today I saw the cows near St Cergue and they were all sitting and relaxing, chewing the cud, waiting for the tourist day to open.

I haven’t been to the mountains much over the last four years because of the pandemic, a broken arm and for one summer no car. I say this but I did go up, on a bike. I have been up at least three or four times this year. I’ve been up to St Cergue via the safe road, la Barillette via the normal road, once, and up the steep La Rippe climb twice. It’s not that I don’t go to the mountains, it is that I do go up and going up is the workout, not what I do once at the top.

There is an article on Swiss Radio and Television that discusses the positive impact that the flooding has had on the water tables. For several years not only have we had warm weather but we have also gone with very little or no rain for months at a time.

During some weeks we were told “The water reserves are so low that we will soon need to switch to retrieving water from the lake rather than our reservoires. Underground water is great for when there’s a drought above ground, but the problem is that underground water is finite, and as a result if it is not replenished then it will eventually run out.

Switzerland and Europe are currently experiencing flooding. All the major Swiss lakes are close to breaking their banks. A few weeks ago, you could read about how Switzerland had been so dry that it had started to register on the aridity index. Now it’s flooded.

Cloudy and rainy Switzerland

Some people are bored by the rain, and wishes that it would go away, but I don’t feel that way. We had years with very little rain, so to finally get some rain is welcome. At least now we know that all the hydroelectric dams will be full. We hope that all the water tables and reservoirs will have recovered as well.

We are in a pandemic where the only disease vector is proximity to others, so in theory this is one of the easiest pandemics to overcome, and end. In practice people are like cats, and getting them to self-isolate is like herding cats. Paradoxically if people were as hard to herd as cats, then the pandemic would have ended over a year ago and today we’d be doing something more fun.

The title of this post is a joke, not a serious delusion of isolation. I saw that a few sunflowers had come out but that they were looking away, rather than towards me. They are looking at the morning sun and I was walking in the afternoon. They are still in the process of coming out.

Today I was asked if I wanted to go to a restaurant and I automatically said no. Given the data about the rising number of cases in Switzerland it makes no sense to go to towns or cities, and to eat in a crowded place, rather than to continue self-isolating. If I was okay with crowds at this stage in the pandemic I would have gone to the IFSC World cup. I am not fine with crowds, when the number of sick is rising.

Two weeks ago, it looked as though next summer we could be out of the pandemic. This weekend, it looks as though the pandemic will never end. Every single time Europe looks as if it has a chance of ending the pandemic, it breaks for either Christmas or the Summer holiday. Every single time Switzerland stands an excellent chance of stopping community transmission, it reopens things.

To add insult to injury tonight 65,000 people are going to watch a football match in a stadium, and retail unions are requesting that masks are dropped as a requirement in shops. My entire reason for going exclusively to food shops is that we’re in a pandemic and I don’t trust people to behave appropriately during a pandemic.

One of the games I like to play is to look at the weather app and see when the rain is scheduled to arrive. I then estimate whether I will make it home before the rain. I took rain stuff just in case, to keep electronics etc dry but I don’t mind if I get wet, at the current temperature.

I went for a fifty eight minute walk and it’s as I sat down this blog post that the rain began. I timed it perfectly. It’s gratifiying to achieve such a fleeting goal. I had originally considered doing a slightly longer loop but as I saw the clouds, and the time it would take. I changed course. I also changed course because I saw two slow moving people blocking one route and I prefer to continue self-isolating.

It is important to know that you are in Justified Self-Isolation. Over the last three or four days I have felt like an idiot for self-isolating, but I now see that this is entirely justified. The R number for some canton went from 0.70 or so up to 1.4 or higher in recent days. This is for Bern, Geneva and Vaud, and it should spread more with the weekend.

Due to the lack of rain for a few years, and the lack of opportunities to socialise through sporting activities, I look forward to rain. Yesterday we were lucky. We got an entire day’s worth of rain. I didn’t leave the flat for the entire day and I still slept fine.

Just a few days ago the daily average for new infections per day was 103 per day but it climbed up to 134 or so today. The R-Index went from 0.7 to 1.14 nationally and across Europe the number of new cases is going up again. Governments and civil society don’t mind. If they did then they would put their masks back on and they would continue self-isolating. I see the opposite happening. Regions in Spain that had been green, and relatively clear of infection, are now red. Nightclubs have had to close.

Yesterday I went to recycle. Two weeks ago when I went, everyone was wearing a mask. Yesterday when I went all the masks are gone. I was the only person wearing one. Within the last day or two the Swiss government has told people that they can walk around without a mask, and enjoy summer. They said this at the same time as there was an increase of new COVID-19 cases. Today the number of new infections has clearly started to rise. This is true of England, France, Spain and other countries.