In mid-October, you said we wouldn’t avoid a lockdown. And we didn’t avoid it. Or wasn’t it a real lockdown when people kept going to work?
The government avoided the word lockdown, but compared to other countries, it was a lockdown. We had a curfew, closed restaurants. When it was the worst, it was not possible to harden much.
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But the situation did not clear up much after the lockdown.
Not that. The Czechia still has days when it has around a hundred victims of coronavirus a day, which, when recalculated, is similarly the same as Italy had in the worst period.
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Do you think the government should have held the reins longer?
On the one hand, the measures were to come much earlier, and antigen (AG) testing was to be launched, which the Prime Minister also said about three weeks ago would be introduced here. But it failed to deploy before Christmas in the amount it needed.
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We take this as a big failure, because AG tests could significantly improve the situation. I can imagine that restaurants could be open, which in combination with massive AG testing would work. Unfortunately, it has not been introduced and there is again a risk that it will close here. And nobody really wants that.
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You estimated that a total of 10,000 people would die by the end of the year due to the epidemic, either due to the infection or the unavailability of quality health care, etc. But now we only have 10,000 victims of coronavirus. Where can the total number climb this year?
It is very important to watch the so-called overweight. It is a comparison of the number of deaths from this year with the average for previous years. And according to the data from the supernatural, in the worst weeks, even 30 to 40 percent more people died than the official covid numbers state.
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The numbers are still very high, but we got used to it. Even though we still have up to a hundred people dying every day. People are already apathetic to that.
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So there are probably more people who have died in connection with the covid than in the statistics. We estimate that there are 12 to 13 thousand of them at this time. The increase is caused by covid, but also by the restriction of other health care, there may be secondary health problems. But the main problem is really covid. So the statistics of comparison with previous years clearly show that he is not dying with a covid, but unfortunately really with a covid.
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Abroad, they have a much stricter membership. In Germany, with the growth of unfavorable numbers, shops closed quickly, in the Netherlands overnight. Are we better off?
We are getting worse and worse when it comes to deaths per million inhabitants, etc. Unfortunately, many Czechs have already resigned. When a problem lasts a long time, it is very difficult to convince people again and again that it is a problem. The numbers are still very high, but we got used to it. Even though we still have up to a hundred people dying every day. People are already apathetic about it.
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It’s sad, because behind every number in the statistics is a unique life story. People who are someone’s grandparents are dying, and we know from studies that they would be here for an average of 10 more years.
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The biggest health crisis since World War II is taking place here, but many people no longer want to watch it. We know from psychology that one of the basic reactions to stress is denial.
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Now, for example, restaurateurs are rioting the loudest. So isn’t it a legitimate fear that if the government tightened the measures, it would be a social detonator?
This is real, entrepreneurs are on the edge of their options and reserves. There are a lot of human tragedies going on here, people have lost their jobs. But if we acted like Germany, if we introduced veils in time, reduced some things in time and at the same time compensated entrepreneurs for the restrictions, we could have been much better off – both in terms of the number of deaths and economically.
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Compared to other states, it is quite tragic how our government communicated the measures and how it implemented them unconceptually throughout the whole six months.
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It turns out that the states that introduced the measures earlier are also out of it sooner and their economies will not suffer so much.
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It is a great failure of the government in communication, but also in crisis management, that it went from wall to wall. One day open, the other close, and that only makes people tired of it. And I’m not surprised at all. Compared to other states, it is quite tragic how our government communicated the measures and how it implemented them unconceptually throughout the whole six months.
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But in other countries, they also have higher compensation for the losses caused, so that’s why the resistance is lower there?
Yes, again, let’s take a model from Germany. Segments that are limited due to lockdowns actually have high compensation. It’s fair. When there is a natural disaster and the state has to confiscate a piece of land from someone, it is also compensated for them. It’s the same here.
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In order to handle this as a whole, one segment is limited, and each should be compensated. In Austria, Germany, this model has been operating since April, so it was enough to use what has already been invented.
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But the Minister of Industry and Trade Karel Havlíček says that Germany is much richer, so he can afford it. It is so?
But if we don’t, we will lose even more weight, it will come back to us like a boomerang. It’s the same as with lockdown. Data are already available that shows that states that introduced lockdown earlier did the economy cost less. For those who put it off, the economy is bleeding much more and longer.
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If we make compensation, companies will not go bankrupt and will feed the economy in the long run. If we let them go bankrupt, we will save on it in the short term, but in the long run the impact will be harder.
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If we subsidize companies for four months now, it will pay off the economy for another ten years. But if we let them go bankrupt, many will not start again. I believe that even the Germans have it very well calculated.
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Is there a chance that over Christmas the situation will calm down, traffic will be reduced, people will stop crowding so much in shops and on the streets, in public transport, and that we would return to the 3rd grade after the New Year, for example?
I’m afraid we will repeat what happened in America on Thanksgiving three weeks ago. Today, it can be seen in the United States that the number of hospitalizations is skyrocketing after those three weeks, and this cannot be explained by anything other than the fact that people have spread all over the United States and infected their relatives.
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This is the fourth time we’ve fallen asleep. We fell asleep with clever quarantine, with the reintroduction of drapes in September, the third time we fell asleep with AG tests, and now we are rushing to be late with vaccination.
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The holiday looks very similar to Christmas in our country, people go to visit a lot, meet their relatives. And it is in families that the risk of infection is highest. When one is infected at home and families spend whole days together, they probably infect everyone.
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I think in January there will be a big increase in infection caused by Christmas. And also because, as in the summer, we disbanded again too soon, but no accompanying measures, such as the aforementioned massive testing, occurred.
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The vaccine will probably be delayed, so you think spring will be uncertain?
That is the crucial thing. Germany is preparing logistics centers and we fell asleep again. This is the fourth time we’ve fallen asleep. We fell asleep with clever quarantine, with the reintroduction of drapes in September, the third time we fell asleep with AG tests, and now we are rushing to be late with vaccination. We’ll start when the other states are vaccinated.
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And every day when vaccination is delayed, it costs an awful lot of money. The Germans are aware of this, that is why they are preparing for it, that is why they have a great project to vaccinate the nation as quickly as possible and to kick the economy back as quickly as possible.
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But with the experience of how the government has done other projects, I don’t think it can handle vaccinations.
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