The Covid Pandemic in Hungary: Lessons from a Human Rights Perspective

The medical, epidemiological, virological, economic, and other consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic are still acutely felt a year and a half later. In this chapter, I will analyze the human rights aspects of this public health crisis and, in particular, those related to bioethics. However, I have not covered the assessment of the environmental impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, as this would call for a separate study. Pandemics have been experienced many times in human history, yet there are several unique characteristics of the current pandemic caused by the SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus. The evolution of the Covid-19 epidemic shows the most similarities with the Spanish flu epidemic between 1918 and 1919. The Spanish flu is estimated to have claimed the lives of more than 50 million people worldwide. Admittedly, there were no vaccines available at that time and, in any case, the war was claiming terrible casualties while intensive care was still in its infancy. In recent decades, the SARS, MERS and Ebola epidemics have also claimed many victims, but the current epidemic caused by the SARS-Cov-2 virus, now sweeping the globe in several waves, is in many ways unique.