Hungary’s 57-year-old Prime Minister Viktor Orban, one of the best known rebel leaders in the European Union [EU] proved Brussels wrong again becoming the Covid-19 vaccine leader on the European continent. While Brussels drown in bureaucracy, waiting for approval from the Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency [EMA] Orban ordered millions of Sputnik V vaccines from the Russian Federation. While the EMA dithers, Orban jumped on the chance of bringing Sputnik V to Hungary to deal with the spike on Covid-19 cases. Unlike the EU that relies only on Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, Oraban has brought five vaccines into Hungary, including Sputnik V and China’s SinoPharm, currently accounting for 1.2 million vaccinated Hungarians, in a population 9.773 million, accounting for 11.9% of the population, far greater that 27 other EU countries running about 7%.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is busy feuding with Russian President Vladimir Putin over 44-year-old dissident Alexi Navalny, serving out a two-year-eight-month prison sentence in a penal colony, once called in Soviet days a gulag or forced labor camp. Orban knows the shortage of life-savings vaccines in other countries, including the United States, where massive populations around the globe competed for finite vaccine supplies. While supplies could change in the future, Orban has done the smartest thing, putting politics aside and getting Hungary’s population vaccinated. No matter how long it takes to roll out vaccines in the U.S., 78-year-old President Joe Biden has no plan of pushing the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] to approve Russia’s Sputnik V or China’s Sinopharm vaccines. Orban looks at things differently because he thinks out of the box.
Orban became well-known for defying Brussels when they pushed EU countries to take more Syrian refugees during the long-Syrian proxy war to topple President Bashar al-Assad. When Putin joined the fight to defend al-Assad in 2015, it threw a monkey wrench into EU plans to relocate millions of Syrian refugees in EU countries. Orban stood up to Brussels, putting a security fence around Hungary and declaring that he would not accept a massive influx of Muslim refugees. Orban didn’t agree with the EU’s policy of supporting proxy war in Syria to topple al-Assad’s government. Orban saw how the U.S.-EU-Saudi Arabia-Turkey-backed proxy war caused the worst humanitarian crisis since WW II. EU policies imposing more Syrian refugees on the U.K. resulted in the June 23, 2016 Brexit vote to leave the EU. So going it alone on vaccines hasn’t been a problem for Orban.
When you consider that less than 10% of the U.S. remains vaccinated, it only makes sense to bring as many vaccines to market to help in mass vaccinations needed in the U.S. With 30,943,662 cases in the U.S., demand for vaccines, largely Pfizer, Moderna and soon Johnson & Johnson are still in short supply. If Biden were to bring in Russia’s Sputnik V or China’s Sinopharm, the rate at which the U.S. population could could vaccinated would be greatly increased. With 507,627 cases and 16,790 deaths, Hungary has the EU’s 7th highest death rate in the EU at 3.3%, more than double the death rate in the U.S. “I always tell anti-vaccination people that any vaccine is better than a month on a ventilator and possible death,” said Dr. Karoly Dery, a medical practitioner in Htvan, 35 miles east of Budapest. “There’s noting uglier or more awful that death by suffocation,” said Dery.
Hungary fights the EU’s propaganda against the Sputnik V and Sinopharm vaccines, with only 27% of Hungary’s population willing the take the Chinese vaccine, only 43% for the Russian vaccine. Like other EU countries, Hungary’s population is 84% favorable to taking an EU approved vaccine, at this point only Pfizer and Moderna, both in short supply. Dr. Bela Merkely, rector of Semmelweis Medical University, said Hungary’s exceptional vaccine rate at nearly 12% is due to offering the public Russian and Chinese vaccines, regardless of public opinion. Like U.S. public health officials, Hungary’s medical authorities believe strongly that the public should get vaccinated at the earliest possible time, not picking-and-choosing the vaccines’ origin. Whether admitted to or not in the U.S. or EU, the Sputnik V and Sinopharm vaccines are safe-and effective enough to do the job.
Viktor Orban’s Hungary should be a vaccine model for the rest of the world, willing to adopt any safe-and-effective vaccine as long as it helps create herd immunity against the deadly novel coronavirus and its new variants. “Hungary has more vaccines because it gave emergency approval to the Sputnik and Sinopharm vaccines,” Merkely said. “(When) people ask which is the best, I always say, ‘The best vaccine is the one that’s in my arm.’ A vaccine that is in transit or is sitting in the refrigerator cannot protect as single human life,” reminding the U.S. and EU that what’s really important is getting more safe-and-effective vaccines approved. Czech Republic and Slovakia have followed Hungary in ordering as many Sputnik V vaccines as they can get. It’s time for U.S. and EU authorities to get beyond vaccine politics to bring more safe-and-effective vaccines save as many lives as possible.
