Final Word from Wednesday, February 16, 2022
With the current phase of covid winding down, the Western media have found a seamless replacement. Without missing a step, news outlets have gone from permanent covid coverage to permanent Ukraine. It's the same scenario, with the overall direction set by the Western power centers - Washington, London, Paris, Berlin - but each providing its own twist. This then trickles down to the national level so that each country can look at events through its own prism. What's lacking on the Czech level is a daily color-coded alert chart from the foreign and defense ministries with numbers of tanks, missiles, deaths, wounded, hospitalized, etc. A new National Institute for Managing the Ukrainian Crisis could also round up 30 experts, analysts and war-product promoters for advising on all things Russia-Ukraine. For example, should companies hurt by sanctions against Russia be given relief? Or should their representatives instead be treated as being infected and sent into permanent isolation? [ Czech Republic pandemic epidemic infection United States France Germany U.K. U.S. Russian ]
Glossary of difficult words
PES - (Protiepidemický systém) a former Czech epidemic alert system;
seamless - smooth and continuous, with no apparent gaps or spaces between one part and the next;
media outlet - an organization providing news, information and feature stories to the public by way of newspapers, magazines, social media, internet, television and radio;
twist - a new treatment or outlook; a variation;
prism - the clarification or distortion afforded by a particular viewpoint;
to round up - to drive or collect a number of people or animals together for a particular purpose;
relief - financial or practical assistance given to those in special need or difficulty.