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The band Asonance has been an institution for traditional folk songs in the Czech Republic for three decades, singer and instrumentalist Hana Horká (59) is a popular member of the Asonance collective. Now her son Jan Rek told the English-language platform “Prague Morning” that she died last weekend as a result of a corona infection. “She preferred contracting the disease to getting vaccinated.”
Rek explained that he and his father contracted COVID-19 over the Christmas period. But instead of keeping his distance from them, Horká intentionally exposed himself to the virus in the family circle. With the aim of obtaining a “recovered” status after the illness, with the corresponding note in the papers. In the Czech Republic, too, access to theatres, cinemas, bars and cafés requires proof of vaccination or a recovered infection.
Horká was known in the scene for her vaccine-skeptical posts that she published on social media. On her Instagram account she cheered last Friday: “I survived … It was intense. Now there’s theatre, sauna, a concert… and an urgent trip to the sea,” she wrote. “Life is coming back for me.”
Two days after this posting, she was dead. “It was all over in just 10 minutes,” said her son Jan. “She suffocated.” Died from the supposedly recovered virus disease. Rek hopes that his mother’s tragic case is a signal to get vaccinated. He also blames the regional anti-vaccination movement for her death. They had “blood on their hands” because his mother had become more and more radical under their influence. “Real life says more than all graphs and numbers”.
