Prominent Greek scientists have signed an open letter expressing their doubts about the effectiveness of the implementation of a total Covid-19 lockdown by the government.
As the letter points out, among other things, “it is questionable how the horizontal lockdown, a public order measure that has been proven to have a devastating effect on the health of the population, is characterized as a “smart measure.”
In the letter, co-signed by scientists from a wide range of disciplines who have set up the Network for Dialogue, Research and Analysis for Public Health, an Interdisciplinary Team, as they say, of “Production of Research, Ideas and Policy Proposals for a Multidimensional and Global Approach to Public Health”.
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As the letter points out, “it is questionable how the horizontal lockdown, a public order measure that has proven to have a devastating effect on the health of the population and is practically the only choice of the authorities, is characterised as a ‘smart measure’ and is considered an appropriate strategy to deal with a public problem.”
They also emphasise that “after so many months, the ongoing strategy of managing the Public Health Crisis with the exclusive tool of horizontal lockdown is done in a way that offends the scientific community and society. Fatigue, prolonged deprivation of basic individual and collective rights (even the right to work and a decent life), without the necessary conditions for transparency, information, and scientific documentation, and harm to society, accumulate, discouraging the participation of the citizens”.
As they point out, an immediate shift in management strategy is needed, even now, in response to the epidemic in the community, based on targeted public health precautions, such as prescribing the diagnostic test, serious epidemiological surveillance instead of the blind, and “accidental” “and the immediate decision-making of the integration of thousands of private-sector physicians in the management of the epidemic at the level of Primary Health Care and all this in combination with selective and more specialised, instead of horizontal and ineffective, physical distance measures”.
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