Today’ I’d like to discuss stricter measures. Coop and Migros both have online shops set up for home delivery but the system is overloaded by people ordering at the same time. They don’t have the truck fleet or staff to cope with the demand so I suggest a better solution.
Both Digitec and Galaxus allow people to order online and choose which shop they want to pick up their purchases. This idea is relevant today because Migros, Coop and other shops are now forcing people to queue outside shops before being allowed to go in and make their purchases.
Queuing, whilst keeping shops from getting crowded inside, will increase the risk of propagation of the virus outside the shops. People have a tendency not to stand with the minimum of two-meter distance separation. The larger the crowd the longer the queue, and the longer the wait the higher the probability of contagion.
If we could shop online and request distribution from a specific point the time we spend at the shops would be cut down to a minute or two and it would have the added benefit that we would not even need to go into the shop. I don’t want to go to the shops at all if I need to queue but there is no choice.
The system they put in place yesterday will result in more, rather than less hoarding and increase the amount of time people spend in proximity to others.
Having said this the graph for Vaud has flattened but I don’t know whether this is because they ran out of test kits or whether they have failed to update the figures at the time when I wrote this blog post. I hope the worst is over for this Canton.
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.
European leaders decided to relax COVID restrictions just at the time when countries like Switzerland were getting within easy reach of COVID-zero. COVID-zero would mean zero infections for two weeks in a row. This would give us back real freedoms. Unfortunately, the Swiss government, and others, do not care about eradicating the disease. They care about not being booted out of power.
For weeks now I have been tweeting the pandemic isn’t over, as I see people behave as if it was. It is frustrating to see how people feel that the pandemic can be turned off from one day to the next. Maria Van Kerkhove tweeted: The Pandemic is not over, Be Smart, Play safe.
The pandemic, that I thought would be over in June 2020 is alive and well in July 2021 and people, who could have learned lessons from the last 470 days of pandemic seemed to have learned nothing. Add to this that governments are not bothered with eradicating the virus, and we are in a bizarre scenario, where people falling sick is acceptable. We are in an absurd scenario.
Countries like Switzerland recently decided that the pandemic was over because lobbies wanted it to be over. Despite high numbers of infections and the percentage of tests being positive Switzerland decided that the acute phase of the pandemic was over. For them the lack of deaths, and the lack of people in ICUs meant that the pandemic had entered a safe stage.
From Wednesday to Friday we went from masks must be worn indoors to “there is no need for masks anymore, even on public transport. From one day to the next we went from “masks are obligatory” to “masks will be tolerated”. In Spain we read about how some psychologists noticed an “empty face” syndrome within the Spanish teen community, which was then spread via the free press to other European states. Wanted to wear a mask had become stigmatised as almost being a sign of mental illness.
From one day to the next the Swiss media went from writing twelve lines of text about the pandemic to writing zero for days at a time. We now hear about Swiss covid numbers once per week. The body that was in charge of monitoring the situation has been dissolved, the state of emergency has been lifted and the pandemic is being ignored.
Meanwhile France, next door, is blood clot read on the RTS map of European infections. The pandemic is far from over but the Swiss government has decided to pretend it is.
That’s where devices like the Aranet 4 come in. For as long as Switzerland was taking the pandemic semi-seriously I felt that such a device was a waste of money and a gimmick. When Switzerland decided to ignore the pandemic such a device became crucial because we need to know how risky the environment we are is. The higher the co2 level, the higher the risk of Covid-19 transmission.
You can set the device to update every minute, two minutes, five minutes or ten minutes. The battery lasts for two years and there are two apps. The first Aranet 4 allows you to keep a log of the air situation over time and see the trends. Aranet 4 display allows you to see the display but nothing else. In theory every mobile phone can access an Aranet 4 without the need for pairing with the display app.
I go to the shops as soon as they open and in the time it takes for me to shop the reading goes from 540ppm to 600 within a few minutes of the shops opening. I have not been later in the day, to see how much further it climbs. The point is simple. co2 rises very quickly, whether you are home alone with closed windows, in a car, or in a shopping center.
We see people queue to wash their hands and disinfect their trollies, but they fail to wear a mask. Masks are the single and best line of defense and people are washing their hands instead.
Aranet 4 devices are great because they are small, light, easy to carry, easy to read and the data is easy to keep an eye on. It allows you to assess air cleanliness within one minute of walking into a room. You can see how quickly opening windows can make a room safer. You can also see whether a lift or hallway is safe. Surprisingly I got low readings in a lift.
Aside from checking that shops, lifts and hallways are safe you can also use it when you visit friends or family. When you step into a room, you can go and open the windows, and when you see that the Aranet 4 shows that the air is fresh you can take the mask off and behave more normally.
And Finally.
The Aranet 4 is expensive for what it does and outside of a pandemic where governments of several nations fail to keep people safe I would class it as a luxury. Due to Switzerland and other EU countries deciding to pretend the pandemic is over the situation has changed and such a device becomes worthwhile. It provides us with a quick way of assessing the level of risk in a room, so that we may decide whether to stay, leave, or open windows. It allows us to quantify whether removing the mask is a risk worth taking or not.
I do not carry this device unless I plan to spend time indoors. It is not designed for falls, being exposed to the outdoor elements etc.
The weather was finally dynamic today. The storm warnings were flashing towards Hermance, on the French side of the lake. This gave a nice contrast between the yellow of the Colza fields and the dark threatening clouds behind.
At moments I thought that rain would begin to fall but luckily the doppler radar, and my instincs were correct, so I did not get drenched in rain or pelted with hail. At one point it did feel as though hail could be a possibility.
In the last week or two I have cycled around 150 kilometres, which isn’t bad. It could be better but single rides are around 49 kilometres. Once the ride was 49 kilometres but I saw that I could easily get an extra few meters to make it 50 so I made the effort. The second time I skipped.
My only trips into Geneva this year have been by bike, but only up from the lake, up the Via Appia and then back towards Vaud. No stops in Geneva itself so far. We are still in a pandemic and I am not going to play Pandemic Roulette, as I like to call it. I am not taking risks that are not worth taking.
If you are so inclined you can now listen to Germinal as podcasts via France Culture. Each episode is 28 minutes long so easy to slot into your day, either commuting or doing other things.
During the pandemic I spent a lot of time reading swiss news, to keep up with current affairs. Now that the Swiss government has decided to pretend that the pandemic is over I have stopped reading the RTS info site. There is not much value when they do not provide relevant news and information.
I will update this blog erratically because it’s hard to know when I will or will not be inspired. Today’s blog post is mainly as an excuse to share photographs.
For three years I did not cycle. For one year it was because I broke my arm while cycling, The second year it was because we were in the first wave of this never-ending pandemic so I preferred not to stray too far from home. The third year it was because the pandemic was still not over, but it felt as if we had a chance. This year is different. This year we know that the Swiss government doesn’t care either way. For the Swiss the pandemic is over, whether that is true, or false.
In light of this we could continue to self-isolate and to avoid doing anything away from home but cycling is one of the rare things that we can do that doesn’t A) Require a car and B) Doesn’t require being indoors with others. For both of these reasons cycling is a good sport to practice when Covid denialism is government policy.
For this bike ride I intentionally went into France, to explore a little. Usually I forget the passport or other documents but not this time. It feels good to explore the old places, once more. Despite the never-ending pandemic, at least solitary cycling can range further afield.
My mental health would do a lot better if I knew that various European countries were working towards Covid-Zero, but as has become the tradition now, European countries are pretending the pandemic is over, so that there is another Autumn and Winter wave. This has become the new normal. The new normal is not moral. There is little we can do about this as private individuals except self-isolate.
Over the last day or two I have taken a break from JavaScript to look at Ruby. It feels like a very different type of language so it’s good to see how things work in another programming language. So far I am struggling with transposing the knowledge with some things, but others are clear. I decided to write the JS equivalent name in my notes, to help with comparing the two. I might continue in this line for the weekend, and resume my regular studying on Monday.
When you’re driving from Nyon to the airport without traffic the journey takes about twenty minutes. If you decide to drive into the city of Geneva that journey time is doubled thanks in main part to traffic lights. It once took me over one hour when scuba diving in Hermance to drive from Place des Nations to the other side of the Mont Blanc Bridge. That’s over one hour for less than two kilometres. That idea cooled down my motivation to dive in Hermance. At the time I was driving a petrol rather than a diesel car.
Yesterday I was driving from the foot of the Jura to Cornavin and the drive from the foot of the Jura to Geneva was fast. It’s when you drive from the motorway to the centre that you lose time. 23 minutes to drive 3.8km. I don’t have a start/stop car so when I’m spending 23 minutes at traffic lights the engine is running and polluting the air for nothing. There is no gain from blocking traffic lights.
It was even worse when I was on Rue Montbrillant. The GPS indicated 15 minutes to travel about 750 metres. Can you imagine the carbon footprint of traffic lights? That’s 15 minutes of nitrous oxide that had no need to be sent into the air. Imagine the health impact of keeping vehicles trapped at traffic lights. Within 30 seconds I went right and parked at Place des Nations and walked the last 750 metres. I wasn’t going to waste 15 minutes because “environmentalists” decided that the best way to discourage people from driving was for them to sit in traffic and pollute the air.
When I was working on Rue Montbrillant I was taking the train to and from Geneva every day and I used an abonnement de route to reduce cost. It works well until you’re reliant on bus schedules. Some routes have one bus an hour. This means that a 30-40 minute drive becomes a one and a half hour public transport route. If you finish your day at 1800 you’d arrive home by around 1930-2000. This means that although you’re taking the environmentally friendly option you’re spending two and a half hours a day to commute. During warmer months and drier days, the scooter was a good alternative. Within minutes you’re on the train to Geneva.
That’s the paradox of environmentalism. You want people to be environmentally conscious and you want them to minimise car use but rather than provide them with time efficient solutions to encourage them to take public transport you trap them at traffic lights.
Waze, Tomtom and other GPS manufacturers should take the heat maps we generate with our mobile devices every time we drive and design public transport infrastructures to replace the need for cars. This data is already available. Below are two heat maps of cycling around London and Switzerland. If you used the same type of data from cars you could design a system that replaces the need for cars.
When you live in a city you see two kilometres as a big distance to drive but when you’re in the countryside 2km is nothing. London on a bike feels tiny after walking and taking public transport. In Geneva it’s not that you have much traffic. It’s that the traffic lights give the illusion of traffic. Most of the side streets are empty of traffic most of the time.
This week I wanted to cycle in to Geneva for my lunch time meetings but chose not to because the bike ride is energetic enough without the weight of a 15inch laptop on your back. I did buy a bluetooth keyboard for the mobile phone as a mac book air replacement. That should make cycling more pleasant. I also have spare tires in case I get a puncture.
Geneva’s traffic light policy did work on me. Several years ago I became so tired of waiting at traffic lights when driving into and out of Geneva that I stopped going. Instead of meeting people in Geneva I drove to various lakes to scuba dive and to the mountains to climb, hike, cycle and do other more environmentally friendly activities. This is especially true when we drive other participants. When I climb Fort L’écluse I meet people at CERN and when I meet people to go to Swiss VF I meet them at the Nyon train station, Fourmi metro stations or even the Lavaux motorway stop.
What do I mean by such an odd combination of words? That today it was warm. 25°c at the time when I set off for my bike ride. It was warm enough to feel comfortable in summer cycling equipment. What was more unusual, for this time of year, is how dry the landscape is. The fields are dry. The sides of the road are dry. Grass lawns look dry, where they have been cut too short. It was a good day to cycle.
I finished Learning Node.js and Learning NPM Manager. These are two courses that are now revision and consolidation, not new knowledge for me. I need them to get one of the learning pathways. I resumed JavaScript Essential Training. I took a break from the course because I wanted to revise some other knowledge before continuing with my progress. I am reviewing a few videos, to refresh and consolidate my understanding.
With cycling I use water bottles regularly and I find that they tend to get the smell of the drinks they contain and mouldy, no matter how careful you are. The mouth piece and the bottles themselves. I have experimented with some camelbak podium bottles today. If you look at modern sauce bottles you see that they require pressure for the seal to break and for sauce to come out. The same is true of these bottles. If you hold the bottle upside down it will not leak like other bottles. To make it leak you need to squeeze it. Alternatively suck and you’ll get water.
This isn’t a sip at a time though. This is like drinking from a tap, while you’re riding a bike. It feels luxurious. It feels efficient.
What is of real interest to me is the ability to dismantle and clean everything properly. With other water bottles I could not reach the top of the bottle, or within the mechanism from which to drink. This one can be dismantled, cleaned, and remantled.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.