When feelings count for more than lives

Why are Slovaks still dying in horrific numbers from a preventable disease?

(Source: TASR)

Most countries have committed blunders during the coronavirus pandemic: failure to lock down effectively, unwarranted confidence in opening up after the first wave, lack of preparation for the second, incoherent vaccination policies, continuing to advocate pointless surface cleaning long after it was recognised to be mere theatre.

SkryťTurn off ads
Article continues after video advertisement
SkryťTurn off ads
Article continues after video advertisement

As the crisis drags on, the excuses wear ever more thin. Knowledge of the disease has accumulated gradually but we now have the wherewithal to defeat it.

A management problem

Take Britain, which in January was losing a thousand people a day to the disease – most the grim result of its government’s failure to anticipate the second wave. By last Saturday, April 10, it reported just seven deaths from Covid. On the same day, 78 Slovaks – ten times more in a country one-tenth the size – died from what is now a preventable disease.

SkryťTurn off ads

The reason for the UK’s turnaround? A ferocious and – compared to the incoherence of its lockdown policies – superbly managed campaign to buy and administer vaccines. Whatever the doubts about suspected side-effects, or the morality of some countries getting access to vaccines before others, the evidence is now clear: they work.

So why are Slovaks still dying at a rate 100 times higher than Britons?

The rest of this article is premium content at Spectator.sk
Subscribe now for full access

I already have subscription - Sign in

Subscription provides you with:
  • Immediate access to all locked articles (premium content) on Spectator.sk
  • Special weekly news summary + an audio recording with a weekly news summary to listen to at your convenience (received on a weekly basis directly to your e-mail)
  • PDF version of the latest issue of our newspaper, The Slovak Spectator, emailed directly to you
  • Access to all premium content on Sme.sk and Korzar.sk

Top stories

Janka, a blogger, during the inauguration of the first flight to Athens with Aegean Airlines at the airport in Bratislava on September 14, 2023.

A Czech rail operator connects Prague and Ukraine, Dominika Cibulková endorses Pellegrini, and Bratislava events.


Píšem or pišám?

"Do ľava," (to the left) I yelled, "Nie, do prava" (no, to the right), I gasped. "Dolšie," I screamed. "Nie, nie, horšie..." My Slovak girlfriend collapsed in laughter. Was it something I said?


Matthew J. Reynolds
Czech biochemist Jan Konvalinka.

Jan Konvalinka was expecting a pandemic before Covid-19 came along.


SkryťClose ad