Switzerland Today

Hello from Bern,

After BaselWorld, the Geneva Motor Show and the World Economic Forum, it’s now the Basel Carnival (Fasnacht), planned for early March, that has to cancel plans in the face of Omicron. The organising committee of the largest carnival in Switzerland has cancelled the beloved parade for the third year in a row.

This is a blunt reminder of how long we’ve been dealing with the coronavirus. Many people recall the cancellation of carnival celebrations back in 2020 as the moment that the pandemic got real.

This content was published on December 22, 2021 - 18:00

5 minutes

I report on the Swiss pharmaceutical industry and healthcare topics such as access to medicine, biomedical innovation, and the impact of diseases like cancer. I grew up just outside San Francisco and studied international affairs with a focus on development economics and healthcare policy. Prior to joining SWI swissinfo.ch in 2018, I was a freelance journalist and a researcher on business and human rights.

In the News: Booster campaign gets a boost.

Swissmedic is reviewing the booster application from Johnson & Johnson as the booster campaign goes into turbocharge here. The predictions about Omicron are worrying experts. One expert from the public health office said that although cases have dipped in the last few days, this should be interpreted as “the calm before the storm” as Omicron appears highly transmissible and can partly bypass the immune response.
Swiss artist Miriam Cahn is threatening to pull her artwork from the Zurich Art Museum, which has ignited a firestorm over its decision to display works from the Bührle collection. Wealthy industrialist Emil Georg Bührle, who bequeathed the works to the foundation, earned much of his wealth through the sale of arms to Germany during and after the Second World War. In a letter to the Jewish weekly Tachles published on Wednesday, she called out the museum for its “historical blindness” and said she plans to buy back all of her work exhibited in the museum.
The Social Democratic Party said it has a Christmas present for Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis, who will also take over the rotating Swiss presidency in 2022. The “present”, writes the Tages-Anzeiger, is a proposal for a way forward with the European UnionExternal link, after negotiations on a framework deal broke down in May. The proposal is a two-phase plan starting with stabilising relations to secure Switzerland’s involvement in Horizon Europe and the Erasmus student exchange programme. The second phase is negotiations on an economic and cooperation agreement. Whether this would break the impasse with the bloc is unclear but at this point, any plan may be better than no plan, as some would say.

‘Luxury watches can be the answer’ for wealthy Chinese looking for a place to invest.

It seems that Rolex and Patek Philippe watches don’t just make nice stocking stuffers. They are also a good investment for wealthy individuals in China. Today the Financial Times reported that China’s once enthusiastic property investors are turning their attention to luxury watches as a better store of value amid a downturn in the real estate industry.

The shopping spree, said experts, has contributed to a 40% surge in China’s imports of Swiss watches in the first ten months of this year even as the broader economy cooled off. An October survey of 1,500 Chinese wealthy adults found that 88% planned to keep or increase spending on luxury watches in the next year. An author of the study said, “If you go to a Rolex shop right now, it won’t have enough [watches] to sell to the customers.”

The shortage isn’t restricted to the Chinese market, creating a busy second-hand market where prices for some watches are over five times the retail price. A few weeks ago, several media outletsExternal link reported the launch of a special edition Patek Philippe watch celebrating its 170-year-collaboration with Tiffany & Co. The jeweller will only have 170 of the limited-edition Tiffany-blue colour Nautilus Ref. 5711 to give to VIP clients. While it will retail for around $52,000, pre-owned 5711s are already selling online for $120,000. One can only imagine what the price will be on the secondary market.

Women are on museum walls but are they really visible in the art world?

It seems that women are everywhere in art museums. They are sketched in drawings, painted on canvases and sculpted out of stone. But the art world is far from equal.

SWI swissinfo.ch and Swiss public television RTS worked together to conduct the first national survey on inequality in art institutions. Between 2008 and 2018, we found that only 26% of all solo exhibitions in Swiss art museums were dedicated to women. There is hardly a lack of female artists, many of which such as Meret Oppenheim and Miriam Cahn have gained acclaim abroad. But it has been difficult to change the norms and traditions at many cultural institutions.

However, things are slowly changing writes my colleague, Céline Stegmüller, as awareness of the gender gap grows and more women join the top ranks at museums. There are now several projects underway to support more equality including a women-only museum to coaching programmes and street or social media activism. But the slow pace comes as no surprise in a land where women were only granted the right to vote at a national level in 1971.

How to behave on a train

It isn’t just stinky feet or fingernail clipping that are frowned upon on Swiss trains these days. There is a new offence in the pandemic era: slow eating. For the last few days, #KeinFoodimZug, meaning “no food on the train”, has been trending on Twitter as people call out fellow passengers for using the “I’m eating” excuse to take off their mask for long periods of time.

Swiss tabloid daily 20Minuten wrote that one passenger tweetedExternal link: “Every time I take the train, I see fellow passengers sipping from a water bottle during the entire journey in order to avoid the mask requirement.”

There are apparently more calls to ban eating and drinking on trains amid Omicron’s spread. This is especially because there is no requirement to show a Covid certificate in trains except the dining car. It makes you wonder when they’ll develop a way to eat while wearing a mask. I did some googling and apparently there are a few models out there – although I’m not sure the “nose maskExternal link” option will ease passengers’ concerns or the spread of the virus.