Fight Corona Not Liberties

While we absolutely acknowledge the threat posed to public health by the Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV), we also believe the response of countries such as Italy, Spain, France, and others is a massive overstep in terms of infringing on civil liberties, and also the wrong approach in fighting this pandemic. 


We want to encourage our governments to focus on fighting corona and not our civil liberties.  


South Korea leads the way: Cases there are more or less stable (Spain and Italy have both now 10 times more per capita than Korea) and instead of massive lockdowns, they employed smart geotracking of COVID-19 patients and EARLY and MASSIVE testing.  

In Spain, people are being fined 600 euros for taking their bike to work or for two people from the same household sitting in a car. 


We are concerned that lockdown measures are becoming more draconian, and will also cripple people’s personal and economic lives. Lockdowns so far have not been shown to be more effective than early testing and isolating vulnerable groups.  


We launched this website and petition to give a voice to those who support smart measures to combat this pandemic with the fewest unintended negative societal costs as possible (e.g. increased domestic violence due to lockdowns, unemployment, people losing their health insurance, mental health, etc.). 

Fear is being used and abused in this emergency.  

We should not downplay the risk of the coronavirus, but we should acknowledge that large-scale testing is likely to reveal a much lower fatality rate as is portrayed in media.


The public health consequences of locking people down and shutting down factories, offices, and entire economies are likely to be even WORSE. 

Public Policy Recommendations

PROTECT

Protect vulnerable groups and encourage them to stay home.

ALLOW

Allow non-vulnerable groups to continue their economic and (limited) social activity to keep creating value necessary to fight this pandemic.

INNOVATE

Reduce red tape and regulations that might delay testing of patients (trade and market access barriers for testing kits).

AVOID

Lockdowns for entire populations over weeks or even months are not a feasible nor desirable policy and risk causing mass unemployment, poverty, and social problems as we've seen in the south of Italy. 

A petition by 21Democracy