Final Word from Monday, November 16, 2020
Epidemiology has a 2,400-year history, yet it often seems that today's experts are dealing with a highly infectious disease for the first time. PM Andrej Babiš got livid in Sept. after the Prague office of the World Health Organize wrote on Facebook that, "The situation in the Czech Republic is concerning at the moment." It called for rapidly scaling up contact tracing. Babiš lashed back that this is the same WHO that did not recommend wearing masks and didn't know there was a pandemic. It should keep quiet, he said, but two weeks later he appointed WHO-man Roman Prymula to be his health minister, just in time for the second wave to begin. Prymula's replacement a month later, Jan Blatný, told Czech TV on Fri. that although there's a public pandemic plan for the flu, it wasn't deemed applicable to covid-19, so an alternative plan was put together, based in part on the WHO's advice. It's not a public document, he said. So there is a method to the madness, but it's a secret. [ Czech Republic face Hippocrates recommendations ]
Glossary of difficult words
livid - furiously angry;
to scale up - to expand; to increase is size or number;
to lash out - to attack someone verbally;
method to the madness - a specific, rational purpose in what one is doing or planning, even though it may appear crazy or absurd to others.