“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” – Mark Twain
HRV Health was created to address the unsustainable cost of healthcare in Switzerland. We are far from meeting that objective. Since arriving here four and a half years ago, my health insurance premium has increased by almost 27%. Over the same period inflation has aggregated 4.1%, most of which has been the 2.8% in this year.
In 2019, the latest year for which there are figures, the per capita cost of health care in Switzerland was US$9,666.34, very close to the that of the United States, the world highest at US$10,921.01. The Federal Office of Public Health FOPH is nevertheless claiming victory in it’s objective of beating the rising cost of healthcare in Switzerland celebrating that the 2019 figure is a 2.1% drop from the previous years figure of US$9,870.66.
There is a paradox between the rising premiums and the figures that are used to measure the cost of healthcare for the average citizen. It is the premiums that matter most to us.
My insurance premiums fall into the lowest category, for those who can least afford health insurance, and who have to choose between eating, heating and health care. By law, we don’t have a choice – we have to pay the health insurance. So you have to starve to stay healthy.
According to the department of statistics 8% of those most at risk of poverty avoid needed medical attention because of the cost. Premiums are rising fastest for those who are already avoiding medical attention because of the cost. That’s perverse.
This is not the only time the FOPH has failed the citizens of Switzerland. Like many countries, the strategies adopted to deal with the COVID pandemic were a failure.
When we look at the statistics, the reasons are obvious.
The FOPH’s own data reveals that 85% of the people who are hospitalised and/or succumb to the virus, suffer some other co-morbidity. A very high proportion of these are retired and economically inactive, so adopting the same measures of lock-downs that were effective in tackling the great plague of the mid 17th century was inappropriate and has caused substantial damage to this economy.
Already, by February of this year, before the war in Ukraine started, inflation was over 2%. Since then it has continued to rise, affecting the poorest worst.
Then there is the vaccine strategy.
The FOPH claims that “the efficacy of vaccines available in Switzerland is very high. They provide some protection against symptomatic as well as asymptomatic infections and reduce the risk of transmission.” That is complete nonsense.
By the end of November 2021, 70% of the population had been vaccinated. At that point the country had just passed one million infections. Within six months another 2.6 million people had been infected.
Since then another 600,000 people have been infected – effectively almost 50% of the population have had the CORONA virus. How can the vaccine be effective against infection if so many people who have been vaccinated are becoming infected?
Claiming that the vaccine has been effective does not take account of people whose natural immunity has protected them, including the 33% of people who are asymptomatic.
The vaccine is effective in reducing the mortality rate amongst the most vulnerable, and these are the people at whom the strategy should have been aimed.
Hundreds of millions of Swiss francs were unnecessarily spent on vaccinating people who did not need to be vaccinated. Evidence from around the world, including the FOPH’s own data confirms that the vaccine neither prevents infection nor transmission of the virus and claiming otherwise is disingenuous.
It is impossible to prove that someone did not catch the virus because they were vaccinated. The huge numbers of people who were infected after vaccination proves the opposite. Not only that, our own data confirms that even recently vaccinated people are vulnerable to infection.
What has been most astonishing in this pandemic the lack of focus on those who are asymptomatic, as Edward Jenner, the father of immunology, did when developing the smallpox vaccine almost 250 years ago. Had they done this, they would have discovered that people with a strong immune system, correlated with high HRV numbers, are those who are asymptomatic.
We offered to prove this to the FOPH while the pandemic was raging, and our offer was refused. Now Switzerland is paying the price.
Using data to improve healthcare in Switzerland is one of the FOPH’s primary 2030 objectives. In that they have also failed.
Their real accomplishment is in manipulating statistics to hide their failings.
Warum wird uns nicht die Wahrheit gesagt?
