As the number of unvaccinated people turning up for a shot dwindles and vaccination centres close, Switzerland’s federal government is launching a promotional effort to encourage those indifferent to or afraid of jabs to come forward and get vaccinated against Covid-19.
Switzerland’s vaccination programme has almost ground to a halt. The percentage of the population that has had one shot or more has stagnated at around 52% over the past week. The bulk of those getting vaccinated are now people getting their follow up shots. Over the recent week, the number that had had two shots rose from 40% to 43%.
Some epidemiologists believe Covid-19 is now endemic and will remain with us forever. Under such a scenario, the fastest way back to normality is to increase the level of population-wide immunity. Given the well known risks from contracting the disease, the fastest, lowest risk and least painful path back to pre-pandemic mingling and mobility is vaccination.
With a budget of CHF 6 million, the federal government will promote Covid-19 vaccination on television, public billboards and social media. The campaign is the largest health promotion ever conducted by Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH).
Zurich-based Rod Kommunikation will spend 20% of the money creating the campaign and 80% on advertising placements. According to a report by RTS, the campaign aims to be neutral and without humour or glamour. Instead it will focus on the science.
However, trying to convince people with scientific reason can sometimes be an uphill battle, especially when people are fearful, trust is low and compelling narratives that compete with the science have become engrained beliefs.
Estimating how far an unglamorous, humourless, scientific, six million franc vaccination pitch will push us back towards normality is probably a shot in the dark.
More on this:
RTS article (in French) – Take a 5 minute French test now
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Fred J Bloggs says
You need both a carrot and a stick. The carrot could be something like a f20 gift card that can be used at any shop. The retailers could be asked to absorb a portion of the cost. The stick could be to require certificates in all restaurants, bars, public gatherings, etc.
Some will say this is discriminatory, but it isn’t. Any resident can have the vaccines,, have been cured or recently tested.
And frontaliers need to be double vaccinated, cured or tested as well. Spot checks need to be introduced on both sides of the border..
Roger says
my body, my choice. the vaccines have not been fully tested and have only received emergency approval. the long term effects are not known. add to this fact that the vaccines don’t prevent someone from getting or spreading covid.
look to england where they just released figures that 40% of the hospitalizations are of people that had 2 vaccines.
you can keep your carrot, your stick, and your experimental shots, and leave me alone.
Le News says
The 40% is an error from Patrick Vallance. In a later corrected statement he said: “About 60% of hospitalisations from COVID are not from double-vaccinated people, rather 60% of hospitalisations from COVID are currently from unvaccinated people.”
In addition, working through the maths, if 88% of the adult UK population is vaccinated and 40% of hospitalisations are from this group, then the rate of vaccinated people being hospitalised is 1/11th (9%) of that of the unvaccinated.
Vallance correction source: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/60-people-being-admitted-uk-hospitals-had-two-covid-jabs-adviser-2021-07-19/
88% UK adult population figure source: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/
Calculation: (40%/88%) / (60%/12%) = 9% (1/11)
roger says
actually, he originally said 60%., and then corrected to 40%. my post above correctly said 40%. incidentally, if you listen to the original comments, he explains the 60% number, so his correction is actually a bit strange.but, we can leave that out of this. 40% of the double vaccinated in hospital is still significant, and i stand by my original comment. ,
you can here Wallace’s original comments and some commentary about the correction here:
Le News says
The 40% is correct. But it is 40% vaccinated rather than 40% double vaccinated. The key point here is that if everyone was vaccinated then 100% of those hospitalised would be among the vaccinated. That it is only 40% at the level of 88% vaccination (UK adult population) shows that vaccines are keeping people out of hospital. Using these numbers (the 88% and 40%) we can compute that the unvaccinated are being hospitalised at 11 times the rate of the vaccinated. Here’s the arithmetic again: (40%/88%) / (60%/12%) = 9% (1/11).