Dear Governor Walz,

Thanks to reporting by the Star Tribune (strib.mn/39opzmf), we now know that your plan for containing COVID-19 (bit.ly/3bDkqbj) accepts the likely deaths of 50,000 Minnesotans. That's almost 1 out of every 100 people in our state.

According to your own projections, your plan means that virtually every person in Minnesota will lose a loved one in the next six months.

You have adopted this plan because you believe that a suppression effort of the kind used in China, South Korea, Hong Kong, and elsewhere is too difficult and too costly. You believe it would be too economically disruptive to leave our stay-at-home order in place for an extended period.

We disagree. We are not willing to sacrifice our parents, our grandparents, our friends, our coworkers -- or ourselves -- to keep our employers financially afloat and our schools open. While the pain of the shutdown is incredible, and the state legislature must take every possible measure to relieve it and protect our employers, there is no pain greater than the death of a loved one. We refuse to accept it.

Some of us are front-line, low-income workers, who will be at the greatest physical risk if you force us to return to work while COVID-19 is still spreading. Most Minnesotans are prepared to accept significant and prolonged disruption in order to save the lives of their neighbors (bit.ly/3amGeaW). Many economists agree: reopening the economy is not worth the toll in human lives (bloom.bg/3avnsyi). We refuse to die for the market.

We, the undersigned people of Minnesota, therefore request and demand:

(1) that you immediately adopt a strategy to suppress the epidemic, not merely mitigate it;

(2) that you immediately announce an extension of the stay-at-home order consistent with that strategy; and

(3) that, in addition to increasing medical capacity, you focus Minnesota's efforts on ramping up testing and contact tracing so that, after we have reduced our local cases to a manageable level, we have the ability to keep the virus contained.

The "suppress, test, and contain" strategy is informed by the work of prominent epidemiologists and public health professionals like Caitlin Rivers (bit.ly/2xyxwYD), Scott Gottlieb (on.wsj.com/2xyosTB), and Tom Inglesby (bit.ly/3bz8gjN). Until a treatment is available, a suppress, test, and contain strategy represents the only plausible way out of this nightmare without the mass graves implied by your current plan.

If you choose to continue on your current course, if you trade tens of thousands of Minnesotan lives for GDP, it will not just hurt you at the next election. It's how you'll be remembered a hundred years from now.

But you still have a choice. Make the right one.

Sincerely,
Minnesotans

(P.S. An FAQ about this petition and Minnesota's coronavirus response in general is available here: https://www.jamesjheaney.com/2020/03/30/covid-coronavirus-in-minnesota-an-faq/ )