The Geneva one is curious, the opposition may be right. Only condoms stop STDs. If other contraceptives replace condoms, STDs might increase in the population. Not the best public policy.
The Zürich one about buildings up to 40m high is interesting. I guess one of the issues is that some decades ago immigrants arrived to less desirable areas of Zürich. Those areas are being reworked with nicer apartments and offices, more expensive. The children of those immigrants that arrived to a cheap place are seeing the neighborhood change in real time. I don’t know if there’s a right or wrong here. Keeping things as they are, means keeping the place poor(er) forever. Increasing rents displace people. On the other hand, as immigrant it’s important to never forget that Whateveritikon is not the ancestral homeland, but only the place were the parents found cheaper rent, nothing more.
Canton Aargau, no cantonal votes this time. Considering the amount of superfluous votes, it may not be a bad thing.
Interesting - Imho VD has the best prerequisites to reduce it’s taxes long term. It has high earnings, but also a lot of low income subsidies. In VD you want to live in a government sponsored flat, it’s very unfavorable to have a high taxable income.
Interesting that the city of Lausanne voted No by 61,11%. Most rural communes supported it. Morges was also No. Nyon and Rolle had very small majority in favour.
Thanks I was reading more about it, but that’s the point.
I just remembered cantons have loans. Let’s see the reaction of bondholders tomorrow morning. One thing is certain, if canton Vaud wants to sell more bonds, it will at more than the current 2%. Their income situation will change.
Regarding the construction of high rise buildings: This is imho a development in the wrong direction and I honestly don’t get it… Zurich city people are the first to complain about high housing costs, yet they torpedo any attempt to density and expand building activity. Imho this is a very stupid rule. Who cares if a building is 40 or 400 floors high? As long as the developer provides the needed infrastructure? It’s a shame that most of central Zurich is still composed of very small buildings… It’s simply wasteful - but yeah - you know things aren’t right if the environmentalist green and the SVP share an oppinion (albeit for very different reasons)…
From a societal and ethical point, I find the following vote one of the most significant ones of the year. Switzerland has quite a liberal stance already on assisted suicide, making Switzerland a place for Sterbetouristen. In the canton of Zurich, people voted yes to a legal requirement of the possibility of assisted suicide in all retirement or nursing homes.
Euthanasia should be possible in the hospital: A seriously ill person should not have to drive home.
On one hand, I understand. Being “released” from the hospital to go die at home allegedly in peace. If it’s about pain relief, the best stuff is not at home but at the hospital, and really quick But fine, there’s people who has irrational fear of hospitals and feel better at home. I prefer the hard stuff, intravenous please
On the other hand, I work with people. Far away from any real stuff like health care, but it’s people anyway. If I lead a team that cares about people and do their best every day so people get better…how can I tell to my team to let go their hard work, forget about their earlier motivation and switch to euthanasia? That’s why hospices are important. Death happens at another place, not at the same place where people saves lives for a living.
FFS! The dying person is going to die only once. The people trying to save hundreds of lives over a lifetime are forced to see hundreds of wilful deaths. Maybe I’m weak and a prude, but I don’t think it’s optimal to shit on the feelings of health workers. This is not the way to lead a team. The physical separation between hospitals and hospices is great. Once you enter the hospice, there’s no way back, and this makes it easy for everyone. Both for the person dying one time, and for the worker who will be witness to hundreds of deaths. Sending the dying person home spares our workers from (further) stress. A bit hard, but the family has to do this work.
Health workers are overworked, underappreciated, exploited, and now this. As society, we’re shitting on them. A bit sad, but the people said yes to euthanasia in hospitals.
PS. the vote also covered Altersheim (homes) which is a completely different setting. Altersheim is a place you enter knowing there’s only a way to leave. Hospitals are different, let hope survive.
I don’t think the teams change their roles or goals under this. Firstly, euthanasia is explicitly requested by the patient who will likely want to refuse any further treatment, whatever anyone says to them. Secondly, it will be handed to a specialist team with a full and official procedure with guardrails attached.
It won’t be a case of, say, a physio being told ‘look, the patient just isn’t putting his heart and soul into his knee rehab, just inject him with this instead and put him out of his misery’.
Bit if they are professionals, they know that this person has only a few days, maybe a few months left l and even they will be spent in suffering. It’s not that this patient can be healthy again and live a normal life. All the medical care in this case is just about prolonging already very miserable life just a bit more without any chance to increase the quality of life.
That is so powerful.
I have family members (nurses doctors etc etc) in several branches of medicine including palliative care. As a speciality, palliative care may also include palliative treatment for conditions that are not immediately life threatening but the treatment is not going to cure the treatment. Obviously this definition includes a lot of treatments that most people do not classify under palliative.
Having witnessed the death of my two parents and their partners, I can only second the wish to be able to go out in a manner of my choosing - which is a big problem as one gets more incapacitated.
I believe one of the issues that lead to this initiative is that some medical establishments were not allowing assisted suicide because of religious reasons. A large Christian Church. This resulted in some patients having to go “home” or elsewhere in order to fulfill their wishes.
We are a secular country and society and our laws should reflect that.
I only hope the teams at the same facility are not that close.
But, maybe the hospital can help with all the paperwork. They already know the whole story of the patient. There’s no need for new specialists to assess the case and make the same questions another time. If a doc sends a patient home, this could be regarded as the doc opening the door to euthanasia. Maybe the paperwork barrier is more important than the physical location.
I get this, but I was kind of assuming that an “active” euthanasia would involve a different protocol with a different team/department other than, say, when a patient who is deemed never to wake up is just at the stage of a machine switch-off.
If I correctly recall in Switzerland, you can only administer your own meds to end your life, and only then after some psych and other assessments, etc. I think it would also create a necessary firewall between the department responsible for your treatment (oncology, neurology, etc) thus far and your own decision to end treatment and end your life.
But fine, there’s people who has irrational fear of hospitals and feel better at home. I prefer the hard stuff, intravenous please 