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- BBC News World
Hana Horká longed to attend cultural activities, restricted in her country for vaccinated citizens, but she wanted to avoid the covid-19 vaccine at all costs.
The 57-year-old Czech folk singer he died last sunday following deliberately contracting the virus in an effort to avoid vaccination, according to Radio Prague International, the Czech Republic’s public international broadcasting service.
Two days before his death, he had published a post on his Facebook account in which he shared that he was carrying the virus.
The text was adorned with some animal emoticons, smiley faces and suns, which suggests that the woman believed that her covid would be an anecdote rather than a tragedy.
“I survived delta,” he wrote, describing the experience as “colorful.” Afterwards, he made a short list of things he might do without having to get a vaccination card, a current requirement in his country.
“There will be theater, sauna, concert and an urgent trip to the sea,” Horká said.
According to the Czech media, Jan Rek, son of the singer, reacted with fury and indignation once morest some Czech anti-vaccine personalities on his social networks, blaming them for his mother’s death.
Hana Horká was the vocalist of Asonance, one of the oldest folk bands in the Czech Republic.
Rek and her father, both vaccinated, were infected with covid during Christmas. And she, instead of staying away, intentionally narrowed contact with them, her son narrated in an interview for the iRozhlas.cz outlet.
“She brought it on herself. She was supposed to stay away from us, but she decided to stay home with us, preferring to catch the disease rather than get vaccinated,” Rek said.
“It’s sad that my mom trusted strangers more than her own family,” she emphasized.
Anti-vaccine support
His attitude was supported by many of his followers and friends, who expressed the hope that they, too, would be infected with the coronavirus.
However, just two days following publishing the news regarding her recovery, the singer fell into covid-related complications.
After returning from a walk in the fresh air, he began to complain of back pain and died in his bed following suffocating, as explained by his son in the interview for iRozhlas.cz.
Jan Rek is convinced that representatives of the Czech anti-vaccine movement, such as actor Jaroslav Dušek and biologist Soňa Peková, whose claims his mother eloquently shared via social media, are partly to blame for his death.
When he broke the news of his mother’s death on Facebook, he openly accused these people of “having blood on their hands.”
With her message, Rek hopes that sharing her own personal experience with her mother’s senseless death can shed light on the importance of getting vaccinated once morest the virus.
Figures published by Radio Prague International indicate that in the Czech Republic 63% of the population is fully vaccinated once morest the coronavirus, a considerably lower percentage than the European Union average, which exceeds 80%.
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