This weekend I read about a woman in Zurich who had got into trouble for disposing of old newspapers illegitimately. She had taken a pile of papers – correctly bundled and tied with the mandatory cotton string – to the area in her neighborhood where recycling is picked up once a month. The problem was that she was a week early. At some point, she received a note from the police about it, which she ignored. The fact that the police bothers to track down an old lady who dumped a few pounds of paper at the wrong time tells you most of what you need to know about Switzerland. The rules are many and the problems few.
The development of the corona situation in Switzerland shows that, while the rules might still be the same, the problems have ballooned. Case numbers have been rising since early June. The only measures to fight back are mandatory masks on public transport and, in some cantons, in shops and restaurants. Since the beginning of this month, big public events with more than a thousand attendees can be held again, as if this were 2019. Countries and regions appear on the official risk list at irregular intervals. The way it looks now, Switzerland should feature there in all its narcissistic glory. The second wave has most definitely started.
Daily increase in Covid cases in Switzerland averaged over seven days relative to the previous seven days' average.
My own problems seem trivial in comparison. The pustules in my face that I mentioned in the previous post have receded. Ten days of recovering from chemo have left me with reddish patches on my cheeks. My face looks normal otherwise. I’m a bit scared of how this will change from Wednesday when I get another dose of the offending antibody, but the quick improvement last week eases my worries.
Besides these current side effects I’m still struggling with numbness in my fingertips and on the soles of my feet. This was caused by oxaliplatin, a drug I last took in April. For the first few months afterwards, the problems seemed to get slightly worse instead of better, but it now feels as if I’ve turned the corner. My fingertips are much improved. My feet feel better whenever I cover them in cream, which I should do much more often.
The third side effect is the bleeding. This sounds worse than it is. It primarily affects my nose and manifests itself in snot that looks like waste from a slaughterhouse. Sometimes the nose simply bleeds, though that’s rare and quickly stops. I blame this on the anti-VEGF antibody that messes with blood vessel generation and indeed, the symptoms seem to become milder now that this antibody has been exchanged for another one with a different target.
Last week, the old lady mentioned at the beginning got another letter, this time a penalty order from a court of law. She had been charged with and found guilty of “pflichtwidrige Unvorsichtigkeit”, which should probably – I’m no expert in legalese – be translated as gross negligence. It sounds much more ridiculous in German. This transgression is punishable, as the old lady found out to her detriment, with a fine of 170 franc or two days in prison.
Every once in a while, a public official or media-savvy epidemiologist takes to the mike to state that everything is under control and that [insert the case number at the time] infections per day is nothing to worry about. These people never explain how inaction might stop, from one day to the next, a progression that has been steady since June. The large number of new infections is currently explained away with the high number of tests, which completely disregards that we’re now at ten per cent positive tests when a couple of months ago we were at three. Gross negligence doesn’t do this mess justice. I would level the charge of willful ignorance, though that’s probably not punishable by law.
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