Swiss Review 2/2021

Swiss Review / April 2021 / No.2 20 Interview in the first place. Do you really think the economy will flourish if the popu- lation is sick andmortality rates soar? Does the economy exist in some sort of parallel universe in which other laws apply? It does not. Even nowpeo- ple are still at it, saying that we should open up the economy as soon as pos- sible. I am sick of hearing the same fact-denying arguments over and over again. You can call it my own form of Covid fatigue. It is as if certain politicians and a proportion of the population have turned into whiny teenagers who won’t take no for an answer. There comes a point when you want to say: “Go out this evening if youmust. Drink as much as you like. Here are the car keys. Now clear off.” For a long time, the high mortality rate was less of a public concern. How come? It took a while for us to realise that care homes had basically turned into death traps. I thought the consequent rhetoric was awfully callous. We had the beard-stroking brigade telling us via the media that we all have to die sooner or later. The elderlywere urged to make out living wills, so that inten- sive-care units would not have to re- sort to triage. Why go through the or- deal of being put on oxygen? Let them all die peacefully of Covid instead. By the way, I caved in myself and filled out my own living will. Dare we ask what you wrote? I said I wanted to be kept alive at all costs and not treated by someone in- fected with Covid. Ironically, it does not hurt at all to think about your own mortality nowand again. Anyway, the fact that the authorities failed to act earlier to counteract a second wave is the real scandal. They said the public wouldnot swallowa second lockdown, yet there was no lack of solidarity within the population during the first lockdown. No one said, “Covid is only dangerous for old people and heavy smokers, why penalise us?” Then the debate about Covid deathswas turned on its head at Christmas. Suddenly everyone wanted to hug granny and grandad again but couldn’t. It was over all the newspapers. I have never read so much drivel. Switzerland was nowhere near as good at fighting the pandemic as many thought. Does this change our opinion of Switzer- land, where everything is meant to go like clockwork? Not really. If you have an inflated view of Switzerland, you are probably not that concerned. Actually, you are more likely to think that the middle coursewas terribly un-Swiss. And the rest of us are probably too realistic or fatalistic to have been incredibly sur- prised. But thismeans it could be hard to restore confidence when future cri- ses come around. It certainly will not be the last pandemic we have. Will Covid-19 change Swiss society? No. The pandemic and its sub-plots provide more than enough fuel for everyone to feel vindicated. The best we can hope for is that the powers that be get their act together. Developing a better track-and-trace appwould be a good start. Sobering it might be, but Switzerland never was and never will be a special case. But nor is everything bad here either. We can wallow in self-criticism if we are not careful. Ad- mittedly, Switzerland has not covered itself in glory over the past year or so. Nevertheless, many things have func- tioned very well. And to be fair, other countries that were doing better than us at one stage are also experiencing their second or third wave. A dossier containing every “Swiss Review” article on the Covid-19 pandemic can be found at www.revue.ch Direct link to dossier: revue.link/covid19 “It is not only the myriad restrictions that people currently resent, but also the lack of clarity. They feel disoriented.”