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Martin Bäumle began doing his own calculations on the course of the corona pandemic in March. The green liberal from Zurich and CFO of Dübendorf is currently on vacation. Yet he continues to feed his models with figures and comes to the conclusion: Switzerland must do much more to contain the spread of the epidemic. Otherwise, the death rate would rise again.
The federal government reported 2,823 newly recorded corona infections on Wednesday. Does that surprise you?
No, the increase basically didn’t surprise me. I have been doing my own calculations and forecasts since the beginning of the Corona crisis. It has long been clear that the virus is spreading exponentially again. But what surprises me: we now have more infections than in the worst-case scenario I calculated in September.
What do your calculations say about how to proceed?
It is believed that there will be more than 2000 cases a day. And if we don’t react immediately and rigorously, the situation gets out of control. We are in a similar situation with respect to potentially contagious people as we were before the close of March.
The difference is that the number of unreported cases is lower now than it was then. Therefore, there are de facto fewer infections than in March.
Yes. The number of unreported cases is now lower. The speed at which the virus spreads is also clearly slower. This is because today we can better track infection chains (contact tracing). Therefore, it is also easier to get the virus back under control. But if we don’t act quickly, we end up facing a blockade again. Fortunately, we still have time to react.
What has to happen now?
Now it is no longer enough to argue about mandatory masks in stores. A mask requirement is required for all public access buildings. In the restaurant, the mask should be worn until you are sitting at the table. Bars and clubs that cannot be proven by measures to have good ventilation should be closed. Meetings of more than 50 people may only take place in exceptional cases. The federal government and the cantons should also recommend going back to work from home and advising against unnecessary travel to risk areas, including within Switzerland. In addition, we have to consider which economically unnecessary areas with high viral risk we can close.
As a green liberal, are you calling for such authoritarian measures? Wouldn’t an urgent call for individual responsibility suffice?
I am always in favor of voluntary roll call. But time is running out now and we can’t babble to everyone. When traveling to areas with a rapidly increasing number of infections, such as today’s Canton of Schwyz, it must now be said to yourself: if you don’t have to, don’t. However, this cannot be enforced with authority. At Easter we saw that certain appeals are enough. Keyword: symbolic police checkpoints on the St. Gotthard when Ticino warned against travel. And if you address me as a green liberal, I would like to add something.
You are welcome.
I not only propose to tense, but also to relax. The quarantine period for people entering the country could be shortened to five days if you test people two times: one at the beginning and then five days later. For the winter season, I also suggest that tourists with a corona test that is no longer than 48 or 72 hours can also enter from risk areas. Such a scheme could be supervised with spot checks and thus allow winter tourism.
In some German federal states, people in risk areas can no longer stay. What do you make of that?
If the virus continues to spread, we will also have to study those measures. Let’s take Dübendorf as an example, where I am CFO. If we had a strong outbreak in town, we would have to tell people, “Stay home!” Local blocks can avoid a national blockade.
There are problems tracking infections. How could you control this?
Smartphone app should be better used. Data protection is still blocking us. We can’t voluntarily provide our data to Google and Apple, but we can’t even make it available to virus detectives if we wanted to. The Federal Council should make it possible through emergency law that location data can be combined with the Corona app. In addition, it should be possible to deny people access to nursing homes or clubs if they do not want to use the application.
That would undermine the application. For privacy reasons, many people no longer want to install the application.
Even today there is little incentive to install the application. There are almost only downsides. That is why you need specific incentives to use the application. For example, access to certain events. But I can also imagine monetary incentives. Why don’t we raffle a Tesla among the app users? Or incentives like in business. With the Cumulus card, people give their data for small price reductions.
His party colleague Pietro Vernazza says that we should stop testing so much and only aim for a weakening of the spread (mitigation) and no longer full containment (containment).
It is completely irresponsible. Or do you take responsibility for additional deaths if your thesis is wrong? In addition, I have never seen him concrete figures with which to base his thesis. He has also changed his mind several times. What is clear is that if there is contamination like the one he has in mind, there will be more deaths than a containment strategy. However, we really should have a quiet discussion about how much effort and costs we are willing to accept to save individual human lives. But we shouldn’t be doing that in the midst of an ongoing pandemic. And as long as we have not decided otherwise, we must avoid as much suffering as possible.
