Final Word from Wednesday, March 10, 2021

The covid restrictions of the Czech government are so complicated and change so often that very few people can make complete sense of them. (That's what lawyers are for, right?) This leads to noncompliance even by otherwise law-abiding citizens. In some ways it's reminiscent of the Communists times, when people pretended to work, and the government pretended to pay them. People now are pretending to comply with the rules, and the government is pretending to enforce them (with many exceptions on both sides). Easter is now taking shape as the next big turning point. Either children return to school and life starts getting back to normal, or the response by a large part of society will be far from pretend. Real conflict is possible. Just over one year after the first state of emergency was declared, the government might have to decide whether it intends to turn ruthless and to treat its people the way the Communists did one year after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Aug. 1968. [ Czech Republic holiday covid-19 ]