Hope you all can enjoy spring despite testing times.
And testing times it continues to be: After a gradual ease of restrictions a seeming resemblance of normalcy. Yet nothing has been won, The infection is still here and here to stay.
The Swiss civil society and government did a good job containing the virus and keeping the economy from falling into the abyss. Yet we seem to be putting at risk this achievement.
A second wave seems to be – and early indications from places as varied as Singapore, Korea, China, Bulgaria, & the USA point to this – a feature rather than an outlier of this pandemic.
We are already faced with the biggest economic downturn in our lifetimes (unless we are lucky and a vaccine is found quickly). It is thus utterly incomprehensible that there is to this date no comprehensive testing and tracing strategy in place covering all age groups in the country.
Some argue about the cost, about privacy and other concerns. A look back at 1918 shows that whatever this costs, is nothing compared to the societal and economic devastation of a second wave.
This is a call to action for us all to push for what’s proven over the last 3 months to be the only working strategy to contain the spread (and no, Sweden is no alternative, as the Swedish approach so far produced a similar economic downturn like elsewhere with a much higher per capita death rate than almost anywhere else).
