Hungary will procure a vaccine for the novel coronavirus and it will be made available to all Hungarians who want it, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said in an interview to commercial broadcaster TV2. Orbán said that Hungary had successfully defeated the epidemic once and would do so again.
In the pre-recorded interview broadcast on Sunday evening, Orbán said, “Brussels estimates the virus will be ready by 2021, while the Americans expected it to be ready by the end of the year”.
“We will be free from this misery, and we will endure it until then,” Orbán said.
He said the country’s health-care system and economy would function. “We won’t retreat; we’ll preserve Hungary’s chance of coming out of this crisis fortified.”
The vaccine is no big solution to pandemic. Far more important and efficient is : prevention, prevention, prevention. That is how for instance the Republic of Korea managed to lower the number of daily cases to less than 100 ( population: 52 million ca. ). Prevention means : washing hands and using hand cleansing gel, strict distancing rules, mask obligatory everywhere, outdoor and indoor, extensive free of charge testing of population, efficient internet app which allows effective monitoring of those in quarantine. And, most important, law enforcement.
Instead, what Orbán fails to say is that in Hungary we observe: many people do not wash hands frequently, zero social distancing, widespread reluctance to wearing mask, very few ( and expensive ) testing ( few hundred people a day is peanuts ) and almost zero law enforcement.
Vaccine is the easy shortcut all populist leaders dream of ( Orbán, Trump, Putin, Bolsonaro etc. ) simply because it is low-cost propaganda. But an efficient vaccine is far, far, perhaps available in autumn 2021. And it is no guarantee that it will solve the issue.
Prevention is the key that populists hate, since it implies time, efforts, education, and it is not too popular among those ignorant masses they target.
Does mr. Orbán have an answer to why death rate in Hungary is so high? I guess he hasn’t got it, and obviously nobody will dare asking him, and obviously if anybody did dare asking there’ll be no answer. Trump-style.
This is Hungary.
Will we get vaccine available November 2020?
Why on Earth doesn’t that worm ‘MARIO’ slide back into his underground lair ?
His only use is as BAIT for starving fishes – although the poor creatures would definitely get terrible stomach cramps from eating such rubbish !