The second wave is not viral but economic and social: the appeal of 250 intellectuals

"According to INSEE’s calculations, the management of the pandemic will have cost France around ten points of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a decline unprecedented since the Second World War. By comparison, the 2008 crisis led to a fall of less than 3% in GDP the following year. The unemployment rate is also expected to exceed 10% at the end of the year, when more than a million additional unemployed people are expected, according to the director of the French Economic Observatory (OFCE)."

"This historic decline does not affect all professions; while some have not felt the crisis, it is hitting the retail and craft sectors, business and household services, and artists massively. As the prime targets of the government’s restrictive measures, the events sector, hotels and restaurants are paying a heavy price, especially the most precarious fringes of their workforce: temporary and seasonal workers."

"It is the most vulnerable businesses and employees
that are hardest hit by the management of the crisis"

"France being the most visited country in the world, this sector accounted in 2018 for nearly 3 million jobs and around 7.5% of GDP. This has particularly affected the capital and the Mediterranean regions that depend on summer tourism."

"Health is not merely the absence of disease"

"Moreover, the combination of objective economic and social distress and the fear felt by the most fragile people as a result of particularly anxiety-inducing political and media communication has already had, and will long continue to have, consequences for physical and mental health: increased consumption of tobacco, alcohol and probably other drugs and psychotropic medicines, anxiety, insomnia and other sleep disorders, depression, suicide, failure-to-thrive syndrome in the elderly, etc."

"We demand an end
to decisions taken behind closed doors."

"Everyone agrees that the first duty of the government, as of every citizen, is to protect people "at risk", but it is time to recognise that vulnerability is as much psychosocial as physiological. It is time to recall that the WHO itself, in the preamble to its constitution, defines health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.""

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