Rowdy minority rules the day

Health Min. Jan Blatný, who is now the uncomfortable face of Czech repression, demonstrated yesterday how simple it is for a tiny minority to upend weeks of careful planning. The PES anti-epidemic system that took effect on Nov. 13 was in essence suspended yesterday. Not only did Blatný have to make an excuse for not returning to alert level four, but he also managed to close restaurants two hours earlier than mandated by PES and to ban all drinking in public, again in violation of PES. "We must realize that from an epidemiological standpoint," he said at 27:20 in the video, "even several hundred people who do not act as necessary can fairly quickly cause a reversal that affects us all." By blaming his own policy reversal on a few hundred drunk partiers, he was admitting a vulnerability that could be exploited by foes from both without and within. If they want to cripple the Czech economy in other ways, all they need to do is to recruit a few hundred saboteurs.