[Julian658]

This statement doesn't hold in the eastern EU. Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia all have basically populist governments. They all managed the crisis exceptionally well, human loss is minimal and spread of virus is slowing down. It turned out if correct measures are employed, there is no need to panic like some members on this forum do. In this region the pandemic has been nowhere near as deadly as predicted. Economic downturn will be caused mainly by low market demand from western EU due to being hit harder.

Eastern Europe has less migrants. Sometimes you have three generations of the family living in a small place. This is a set up for high Corona numbers. In American cities the virus was awful in neighborhoods like that.

[wat0n]

Portugal was just lucky because, at the periphery of the continent, it was hit later than others. By the time infections started to be imported from Spain and Italy, it was already clear what was happening and the virus could have been stopped, if the authorities had acted in time. Portugal has far more cases than it should have. The health system is very weak and would be overwhelmed at a fraction of the Italian outbreak. At least it looks like they are making an effort now by scaling up testing.

If there is a socialist country in Europe, it is Portugal and no Spain.

Both Portugal and Spain are influenced in their response by their totalitarian past. In Portugal, that takes the form of a legalistic attitude which, for example, led some to absurd discussions about the alleged unconstitutional quarantining of Wuhan returnees.

Better not make bold statements about what you obviously don't understand

Portugal started announcing measures 10 days after the first case was detected. Spain took a lot longer - and hence pays the cost. IIRC Portugal also took testing a lot more seriously than Spain at the beginning of the pandemic.

If Spain is in the situation it is now, it's because they literally took no measures at all beyond testing here and there.

Oh, and Portugal currently has a center-right President cohabiting with a social-democrat Prime Minister. Spain is a Constitucional Monarchy with a Parliamentary system, with a narrow leftist coalition (social-democrats, actual socialists and small left-nationalist parties): Something a lot more like how a Corbyn government in the UK would have looked like, than how Portugal currently looks like.

[Robert Urbanek]

It's not how I define it, it is what is.

Why has no one in Vietnam died from Coronavirus?
As the U.S. government’s incompetence is put on full display by the COVID-19 crisis, many are rightfully looking to other countries around the world for an alternative to the disastrous profit-first approach of the Trump administration. The Socialist Republic of Vietnam has stood out as one such example of how to effectively respond to the pandemic. Vietnam, which shares a border with China and is about 1,200 miles from where the outbreak was first reported in Wuhan, has overcome steep odds in the global fight against COVID-19. As of April 6, the Vietnamese government has reported 245 confirmed cases with 95 recoveries and no fatalities.

Vietnam appears to be doing everything right, much like South Korea, but perhaps they also had very few people entering the country who had been to the infected part of China.

[fokker]

Eastern Europe has less migrants. Sometimes you have three generations of the family living in a small place. This is a set up for high Corona numbers. In American cities the virus was awful in neighborhoods like that.

Eastern EU has practically zero illegal immigrants. The number of granted asylums is extremely low (as most of them are economic migrants). They have Gypsies who have lived there for centuries and still haven't adapted to host country. That serves as a warning against arguments to take in illegal immigrants. Even left there is tough on illegal immigration. My opinion is that legal immigrants should be able to lead decent life, otherwise they should not be granted work permit at all.

The high number of cases in western EU could be perhaps attributed to poor migrant communities that live in small spaces in high numbers, but such statistics are not made public similarly like ethnic background of majority of criminals.

Trafficking of illegal immigrants into Europe is organized by German non profit organizations, claiming to be helping them by picking them up just a few kilometers off African shore and bringing them to Europe.

Better not make bold statements about what you obviously don't understand

It's really entertaining how you manage to criticize yourself

[Sivad]

Eastern EU has practically zero illegal immigrants.

Because it's a shit hole.

[Patrickov]

Because it's a shit hole.

A bit exaggerated, but I agree that the number of (illegal) immigrants is directly proportional to the destination's desirability.

Just like how China is a major emigrant source.

[fokker]

Because it's a shit hole.

The EU did try to impose common asylum policy and distribution of illegal immigrants but failed due to resistance from some countries. It's not only question of attractiveness but also willingness to accept them which is very high in Germany.

[Atlantis]

As I said, the pandemic exposes the inability of right-wing populism to deal with a real crisis.

The virus brings panic and with panic, it was feared, many citizens will throw themselves into the far right's arms. Two months after the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis in Europe and approximately six weeks after the confinements were applied, the political reality seems quite different. The mainstream parties are consolidated and the far right falls almost throughout the block.

Of its 17 most important parties (there is no updated data about the French National Front), 12 suffer setbacks in polls published in recent days. Despite the fact that the crisis made some of their dreams come true, such as the hermetic closure of borders, both external and internal in Europe, they are unable to exploit it to grow.

Some analysts are beginning to think that in these troubled times citizens look for certainties, reliable managers and powerful public services, who value the work that immigrants do (exposed to the virus in professions of public care such as nursing, cleaning or transportation). And they have seen how three great western countries ruled by reactionary populists (the United States with Donald Trump, Brazil with Jair Bolsonaro and the United Kingdom with Boris Johnson) are among those who are handling the crisis the worst.

At first, some of these parties tried to take advantage of the crisis to fuel fear against immigrants, whom they accused of being vectors of the spread of the virus. They said that refugees fleeing in inflatable rafts off the Libyan coast would carry the virus to Europe. Instead, it was European citizens who seem to have brought the virus to Africa, mostly on business-related trips.

A few of these parties sought in recent times to make opposition trying to make citizens break the confinement in demonstrations against their governments. In countries like Spain, the far-right wing VOX asks citizens not to applaud healthcare workers but to hit pans and pots against the government, which remain anecdotal. In Belgium, the neo-Nazi far-right Vlaams Belang and the xenophobic right-wing N-VA are almost inaudible, they have been out of the media focus for weeks. AfD managed to mobilize just 1,000 people last Saturday in Berlin, in an illegal demonstration that was dissolved by police.

Some of these parties also tried unsuccessfully to follow the line of a Donald Trump [sic] and downplay the virus. That was the first strategy of the far-right German AfD, a case that shows the difficulty that these parties have had to react to the crisis with a coherent speech. Axel Gehrke, their Health spokesperson, said for weeks that the virus was "demonstrably less harmful than a common flu" and "the biggest fake of the year." More than 90% of Germans consider that the management of the crisis by Angela Merkel's government has been correct and supports confinement measures.

Since minimizing the pandemic did not work, AfD has lately chosen to accuse Merkel of reacting too late to a serious crisis. Berlin was one of the first European capitals to raise the alarm and began to mobilize its health system, making massive tests to detect even thousands of cases of asymptomatic patients. And at the same time, without taking into account the contradiction, AfD accuses Merkel of applying a confinement that "is a massive interference in the fundamental rights" of the Germans. Between one thing and another, the polls place them at 10% of the national vote, clearly below the Merkel's conservatives, the environmentalists (who consolidate themselves as a second force), and the Social Democrats.

The polls known in recent weeks are clear. Two of the largest far-right parties in Europe, the German AfD and the Italian Lega of Matteo Salvini, lose four support points in just over a month, while 71% of Italians support the work of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. The Slovak SNS also loses four points. The Swedish SD, Austrian FPO, Dutch FvD and the Finnish PS lose about 3 support points. VOX in Spain and PVV in the Netherlands, two points. Minor losses are suffered by the Danish DF and the Czech SPD, as well as by one of the most right-wing parties in Europe, true neo-Nazis with brown shirts and night marches with torches, the Hungarian Jobbik.

Very few rise. The losses of Salvini's Lega in Italy are partly due to the rise (+2.8 points) of Frattelli d'Italia. The Polish nationalist PiS is also consolidating, trying to force presidential elections in May that would be held by mail and which the opposition threatens to boycott. In Hungary, the unstoppable Viktor Orban, who declared a state of alarm that only he can revoke, turning the country into a de facto autocracy, also strengthens 2.6 points. All these parties have something in common: when their tale reaches the end they resort to shooting the pianist, criticizing a European Union that does not have sanitary powers.

[fokker]

As I said, the pandemic exposes the inability of right-wing populism to deal with a real crisis.

You still haven't explained why V4 countries having populist governments managed to deal with the crisis well. Most of those parties in your article are not in power because they are not fit for it.