The View from a Quarantined Hungary

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{snip} March 15, was a national holiday commemorating Hungary’s 1848 revolution, and even the Friday announcement of school closings could not dim the mood. Locals garlanded a bridge with flowers and Hungarian flags before congregating at a nearby pub to exchange pleasantries. Other than a few aborted handshakes and cheek kisses, nothing seemed amiss.

The air of unreality persisted into the following week, when Prime Minister Viktor Orbán decreed limits on public gatherings and a three p.m. curfew for all local businesses save supermarkets, pharmacies, and tobacco shops. At the time the school closings were announced, only 19 cases of the coronavirus had been confirmed within Hungary’s borders. By Tuesday morning, the official tally had reached 50.

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{snip} Hungary’s borders were closed without any hand wringing about xenophobia. While New York City dithered over school lunches, Hungary, a country of 10 million people with far fewer financial resources, closed schools and made stopgap arrangements for providing food to needy families. No one has been scolded for calling the disease the “Wuhan virus” or the “Chinese flu.” The WHO’s exhortations to avoid “stigmatizing language” have been mercifully ignored. The inane squabbles over vocabulary that take up so much oxygen in American politics are almost entirely unknown here.

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{snip} In the midst of a genuine crisis, the nation-state is still the most important actor in international politics. European solidarity was cold comfort to the Italians when the European Union could not provide vital medical equipment. Hungary’s hastily reoccupied checkpoints at the Slovakian and Austrian frontiers are a reminder that national sovereignty still matters, even in the putatively borderless EU.

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