Croatia – In an interview broadcast on 10 September by the Croatian news channel N1 Hrvatska and quoted by Total-Croatia-News, Croatian President Zoran Milanović (a Social Democrat) shared his thoughts on the Covid pandemic, saying it is now time to move on with our lives.
“I don’t care. We are sufficiently vaccinated.”
Asked by a journalist about the vaccination rate in Croatia, which at 50% is significantly lower than the European average, the Croatian president replied:
“I don’t care. We are sufficiently vaccinated, and everyone knows it. We will not go beyond 50%. Let them fence us in with wire. They won’t do that.
[…] There is simply no chance of putting these people at risk. […] We need to know what the purpose of this frenzy is.
If the purpose is to completely eradicate the virus… […] if someone tells me that’s our aim, I’ll tell him he’s out of his mind. It is impossible.
[…] Do we want to eradicate Covid-19? It is impossible. It is obviously impossible. What matters now is to adjust and get back to a normal life.
I start my days with CNN and those other channels, and I wonder if I’m normal or if they’re crazy? They spread panic. They’ve been doing that since the beginning.
They are not the only ones. […]
There is simply no absolute safety. There is no life without risk, without the possibility of falling ill. People become ill because of thousands of other, more serious things. Meanwhile, we’ve been talking about Covid for a year and a half.
All right, for one year, I can understand.” However, he said, “Since the New Year, all I hear is nonsense […] The media frenzy over the coronavirus is starting to get on people’s nerves […] Everything has been said. Those who have been vaccinated have solved their problem. If you get the vaccine, you will not develop symptoms or suffer serious consequences. It’s like the flu, then.
Resuming normal lives
Confirming his remarks on 20 September in New York, where he visited the United Nations and the local Croatian diaspora, President Milanović further said:
I have been saying this for months: it’s time to start living normally.
If someone doesn’t want to get vaccinated, they are not a threat to me. I start from myself. This should be understood and we should start living normally, because we will not be able to eradicate this virus.
