The Czech News Agency has reported that the new Chief Public Health Officer for the Czech Republic will be the current director of the Moravian-Silesian Regional Public Health Department, Pavla Svrčinová, but its brief announcement of that news failed to mention that in October, Svrčinová shared a racist joke on her Facebook profile in association with the Government's measures to fight COVID-19. Whether anti-Romani racism is meant to be the new style of communications to induce the public in the Czech Republic to comply with the Government's measures against the pandemic, some of which have previously only remained in effect for a few hours, is probably a question for its main PR guru, Marek Prchal.
Last October, Svrčinová shared the following anti-Romani joke: "Fero Lakatoš robbed his own apartment today. He is following the quarantine rules and working from home. Be like Fero."
After a screenshot of that post was massively shared online and influential journalists began to comment on it, she deleted it around 19:30 yesterday evening, and after 20:00 her Facebook profile was nowhere to be found. Svrčinová then gave the iDNES.cz news server a classic excuse for having posted the meme, claiming to have nothing to do with it and denying that she was the person who had actually shared the joke.
