The analysis identifies three contrasting stories. AUR began by offering support before radicalising, deploying a full repertoire of medical populism: dramatizing the pandemic as a crisis of elite betrayal, simplifying science into slogans of danger, and amplifying conspiracy-laden claims about vaccines and restrictions. SOS, formed later, adopted an even more radical outsider stance, framing the pandemic as an existential struggle for national survival, and positioning itself as the uncompromising defender of “the people” against a corrupt state. By contrast, USR, employed a weaker form of medical populist tropes, remaining primarily the inside-outsider: framing the pandemic as a crisis of governance, invoking the need for competence, with corruption and inefficiency as its primary targets. 

This comparative approach demonstrates that medical populism in Romania is not monolithic: different parties construct distinct crises, dependant on political positioning. This study advances existing literature on medical populism, political parties during the pandemic, and moral panic by displaying how populists regardless of ideological positioning can exploit a health crisis context in vastly divergent ways for their own political aims.