It's Worth a Shot

KEYS to vaccination

My daughter L has been sick for the last three days, missing two days of French school and one day of English school. She’s had a fever, though I'm not really sure how high because our thermometer is broken (note: and a new one will be in Celsius, so I’ll only be able to tell if she’s boiling or freezing, not if she’s sick). There’s been a little bit of coughing, enough fatigue to be disagreeable but not enough to nap, and of course, waking up sweat-soaked and screaming a couple of times a night. These night fits lead to a) a 30 minute fight over whether to take medicine and b) NPR’s Rebecca Shier, host of “Circle Round,” a podcast for kids, blaring through my house in the wee hours of the morning. And as we enter October here, it’s really hit me that it is absolutely essential that I get my whole family the newest COVID vaccine, because if I don’t, there is a serious, serious risk that I might be annoyed by sick children.

(Note: Okay, okay, I know COVID remains a disease that can be deadly for vulnerable populations and occasionally for others and that long COVID is poorly understood and quite serious, but cut me a break; I am not a serious person.)

As such, I’ve been trying to figure out how one gets the new COVID vaccine here in Switzerland. As best I can tell, one can’t, at least not yet and not easily. The last information I can find, from April 2023, informs me that the vaccination centers at the university of Geneva Hospital (note: fun acronym HUG) is the only place you can get a COVID vaccine in this canton. In addition, one can only get a free COVID vaccine with a prescription from a doctor. If you have to pay, the vaccine costs CHF 64 ($842,000).

Even better, while the centers are open four days a week, they are only open for children one hour per week, which, at least, is on Wednesday when primary school is closed. And, of course, none of this addresses the question of whether they even have the new vaccine.

In addition, Switzerland no longer recommends testing for COVID, even if you have symptoms, provided one is not in a category for which COVID presents special risks. It is implicit that one should take the same precautions as for any respiratory virus and stay home if one suspect’s COVID. I don’t actually have an issue with this part, except for the fact that I am deeply skeptical, that the recommendation to stay home will be widely followed, though this is the sort of country where people follow recommendations. One of the things I loved about COVID testing was it made me feel okay about sending my kids to school with mild sniffles. Yes, staying home is ideal, but if I kept the kids home every time there was sniffling, they would have about six days of school a year. This is not a joke.

As a newcomer here, I would say this is just how the Swiss deal with endemic disease, but that does not appear to be the case. Flu shots are widely available and advertised at most pharmacies, so why aren’t COVID vaccines available there? You got me. Apparently vaccine skepticism is pretty deep rooted here. For example, measles vaccines are not obligatory here, unlike in Italy and France. A now 15-year-old study of childhood vaccination in Switzerland finds that the rates are “sub-optimal” and notes that the rates are particularly low in German speaking cantons. Friends who have been here far longer than I have have recounted stories about being late in submitting their children’s vaccine records to school, and being told with a knowing look “Ooooohhhh…. We understand.”

I’ve been following the vaccine debate much longer than most people. In 1999, when I was working for a Massachusetts state representative, the founder of Mass Citizens for Vaccination Choice (or some such) lived in her district. Because Massachusetts has the right of free petition, that is every citizen can require his representative to file a bill on his behalf, my boss, every session, had to file—though she would never sponsor—a bill eliminating vaccine requirements. This invariable lead to sane people asking what the hell she was doing, though she in no way endorsed the bill. It could have been worse though. Other reps had to file some even sillier bills. One I recall was “An Act to Ban the Teaching of the Religion of Secularism.” For a couple of years, I thought pretty seriously about using free petition to make “They Came to Boston” by the Mighty Mighty Bosstone’s the state’s official ska-core song. Of course, lead singer Dicky Barrett has become an anti-vaccine crank, so good on me for skipping that one.

I do not want to turn this fun, light-hearted blog into a place for debating COVID vaccination (note: because there is no debate). What I want, is just to be able to get my family vaccinated without jumping through a lot of hoops.

Thankfully, Vive la France!

I can see France—the land of efficient service delivery—from my house.

France, which, again, I can see from my backyard, is getting the new COVID booster any day now and will give them to anyone for free, though only people in high risk groups will be able to get them initially.

Who would have thunk it? Here I am in the land of ruthless efficiency, and I’ll probably go to France… because it’s more streamlined.