Viktor Orbán is the prime minister of Hungary. He has been in power since 2010. During that time, he has underinvested in hospitals. Instead, public money has gone to pet projects, many of them related to the sports he enjoys. In his home village, Felcsút, the government built an elaborate soccer stadium with a heated field and 3,814 seats—which, as The New York Times noted, is twice the number of people who live in the village. Meanwhile, the nearby county hospital’s emergency ward has long struggled to cope with even an ordinary number of patients. On one evening in October, a visiting Times reporter found two harried doctors on call at midnight, and 30 people waiting for treatment.
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In this picture taken on March 24, 2020, Hungarian soldiers stand on guard wearing protective masks in front of the Keleti (Eastern) railway station in Budapest, amid the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic.
