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Even at the beginning of the first wave, on April 21, Hungary’s new National Security Strategy (NBS) was published. There was little interest in the dry government document in the post-apocalyptic public environment, although its authors tried to put the material on Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s table in the most current form possible.
It follows that, in addition to the return of cyberattacks, terrorism or traditional wars, the coronavirus has also become a threat to the country’s security.
Although experts are generally unhappy when a ten-year strategy is themed by current operational problems, the new NBS has been received positively by the industry. Mainly because it aligns with the trends highlighted in the documents of NATO and the EU allies, therefore it reflects human factors such as the threat posed by the population, the family or even the global epidemics that analysts have long maintained. .
Defense against the first wave of the coronavirus epidemic also reflected the thinking expressed in the strategy. However, looking at the reactions to the second wave, it seems that the government has forgotten the security policy factor that it has articulated.
That was caught in the second wave
As the Index wrote, the number of people living with the coronavirus in Hungary has multiplied by twenty in the last two weeks, making us one of the countries with the worst statistics in international terms. In Europe, for example, the virus is not spreading at such speed in any other state. While the numbers in the second wave far exceed the spring statistics, we see no trace of the strict epidemiological rules that we have experienced in the past. In an interview on Friday, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also spoke about adapting the government’s new “war plan” not to new infections but to deaths.
Therefore, the Index reached out to several security policy experts on the subject, including a former government official who was also involved in writing the NBS chapter on health security.
“We grapple with Western European countries in many ways when it comes to tackling the health crisis,” our anonymous source began. The legal context in Hungary explicitly provides for the treatment of a situation in which patients are injured and the care system is massively covered. As the expert pointed out, before the national security strategy published in the spring, several legislative texts already provided for the handling of a possible epidemic situation. Such was the case of a decree issued by the Ministry of Human Resources (EMMI) in 2014, which forced health institutions to prepare for a crisis situation. This was complemented by the 2016 legislation of the EMMI, which stipulates the management of the State Sanitary Reserve: in this, it prescribes the reserve of medicines and medical devices in case of a crisis situation.
“But in vain the ministry ordered the preparation in various legislative texts. Shortly before the epidemic, it became clear that the crisis plans in most institutions were incomplete and had not been tested, taught or practiced ”.
Our source said. This highlights a systemic problem: in vain is the country preparing for a crisis situation on paper, if the legislation is then applied on an ad hoc basis. The National Security Strategy and its application are good examples of this. This is because the document is a general security concept that tries to encompass all subsystems of society: in practice, this means that once the strategy is finalized, each ministry will develop the so-called sector strategies for its own territory.
An operational tension beyond strategy
“Until about 2014, it could be said that the Hungarian government was thinking, at least in part, of strategies,” said the expert, who assured that the forecasts made in the treatment of the coronavirus did not indicate planning. the organization was not prescribed.
“It is as if the government does not know its own legislation. The treatment of the epidemic was already ad hoc in the first wave ”, he added.
Due to inconsistency, our expert said that the profession missed a series of ziccert. This is repeated, for example, in epidemiological investigations and contact investigation: despite the fact that Hungarian experts indicated the importance of the field in time, they did not follow the international scientific trend. “At the University of Debrecen, a two-week in-service training took place in 2007.
Although there was a lot of interest, the training in epidemiological research supported by the European Union did not end in the educational system as an independent training ”.
– he continued.
Yet the attrition of epidemiologists from the system has long been spectacular: many have retired, others have been relocated. “The current staff is perhaps just enough to be able to meet the basic legal requirements in peacetime,” said the expert.
Privatized epidemiological laboratories
Of course, it would be unfair to accuse the current government only of reducing the Hungarian epidemic, a process that started much earlier. “Public health has been a stepchild in the system since the national chief physician László Bujdosó, who resigned between 2004 and 2006, decided to partially privatize the laboratories that determined the epidemiological response.” – recalled the expert who told the Index, according to whom it appears that the field of society, the field of maintaining the health of the population, appears at a lower level than the ministry. “For ten years, there was a public health department in the ministry, which was in charge, among other things, of preparing the population for a crisis situation,” he added.
According to our expert, communication about the health status of the population is also generally poor. Although during the first wave, the Operative Court press conference Cecilia Müller national medical director Having accomplished this task, according to our governmental source, it would not only be important to inform society periodically during an epidemic.
Especially in Hungary, where chronic lifestyle diseases are one of the leading causes of death.
As reported by the Index, Eurostat released in august According to their analysis, Hungary is below the EU average in terms of both manageable and preventable mortality. Compared to the EU average, the death rate in Hungary is almost twice as bad for treatable diseases. Regarding avoidable mortality, that is, conscious and avoidable, according to Eurostat data, the situation is the worst in Hungary among EU countries.
Safety risk is unhealthy
Tamás Csiki Varga, an employee of the Strategic Defense Research Institute of the National University of Public Service, also draws attention to the security risk inherent in the health status of the Hungarian population. According to the researcher, this is not only a health problem, but also a strategic one, especially when the state system is overwhelmed by an epidemic.
“Diseases of civilization, such as sedentary lifestyle, passive rest, excessive alcohol consumption or the proliferation of analgesics and antidepressants, affect the productivity of society.”
Tamás Csiki Varga told the Index. Therefore, the expert welcomes the fact that the NBS considers the population as an “important resource”, in the document Hungarian society appears not as its object but as its subject. “If the population is depleted due to scarce mortality data, if people are in poor health, not only will production decrease, but costs will increase, which will be a burden for the state,” explained the expert. Strategically, this leads to a dangerous spiral: as the productivity of the population declines, public spending begins to increase, resulting in an unsustainable society. Tamás Csiki Varga calls this phenomenon
“Shipwreck Society”.
However, according to the expert, the new strategy no longer covers how to avoid the cheating situation, and even the document is silent on the health situation. Csiki Varga sees that in response to the second wave the government appears to be looking for a response to this threat.
“It certainly seems that they have decided that the virus will not stop life in the country again,” said the expert. According to him, the looser regulation is also justified by the fact that they can better model the expected impact of the epidemic on the basis of the first wave, “they can calculate how much the economy would tax with each measure.” At the same time, Csiki Varga added that this did not eliminate the risk. According to the expert, it is still questionable what happens to the health system if the virus is released into society.
(Cover Image: Index)
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