By Francisco Herranz on August 12, 2020
You can say it louder, but not clearer. President Jair Bolsonaro is the man responsible for Brazil’s disastrous handling of the pandemic.
The histrionic leader seems indifferent to the magnitude of the crisis shaking his giant country, where 100,000 people have already perished as a result of the coronavirus, making Brazil the second deadliest nation in the world, surpassed only by the United States.
It also ranks second in the world in the dire classification of the number of people infected by COVID-19: no less than three million. For every seven deaths worldwide, one is Brazilian. And the horrific daily average of 1,000 deaths has been repeating itself for two months, making it the new normal.
Faced with this dismal and desolate panorama, Folha, the most influential newspaper in Sao Paulo and probably in the whole country, has published a short but devastating and extremely critical editorial. The authors of the article don’t mince their words and call it for what it is.
“The major responsibility for this tragedy resides with Jair Bolsonaro. Instead of leading a national action plan, he instead denied the gravity of the public health emergency and promoted unprotected crowds and false therapies, such as chloroquine, and cultivated eight cases of infected ministers in addition to his own and the first lady’s,” wrote the São Paulo newspaper. “Brazil’s destiny is to not even have an effective president and health minister in this moment of mourning,” the editorialists added with a distinct tone of resignation.
The digital archives of the newspaper make a formidable case in retrieved statements, and with characters like Bolsonaro, touched by verbal incontinence, they are relentless. In a video for his social networks broadcast four months ago, the president compared COVID-19 to the 2019 influenza A. “The number of people who died from H1N1 last year was about 800 people [in Brazil]. The forecast is that this coronavirus will not reach that number of deaths, “he said.
In late April, when the fatal number had skyrocketed to more than 5,000, he had the audacity to respond: “What do you want me to do? I am the Messiah, but I do not work miracles”. Bolsonaro’s middle name is Messiah. What an idea! And the last thing he did on his way to foolishness and helplessness was to lash out at confinement by saying he kills like the virus itself. Wouldn’t it be better if he shut up?
As former President Lula da Silva pointed out, this high mortality rate can be explained by the fact that the disease “was despised by those who should be caring for the people” in a cruel exercise of “arrogance”. According to Lula, Bolsonaro has come to defy science and even death, and “will carry in his soul the responsibility for thousands of victims.”
To tell the truth, the evident lack of coordination among the 26 states that make up the Brazilian federation has also been partly to blame. Some governors followed the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) and decreed strong measures of citizen quarantine. However, others aligned themselves with Bolsonaro’s lack of concern and did not encourage the use of masks or the mandatory use of social distancing.
This profound intra-territorial contradiction contributed to the community spread of the disease. And now we see the consequences in horror show with hundreds of graves dug in the cemetery of Vila Formosa, one of the 96 districts of Sao Paulo.
Another obvious problem has been the chronic lack of money, although now tens of billions of reales have been released in emergency aid, funds that were not linked to prevention policies but which, unfortunately, have arrived too late for many people.
Furthermore, it does not help that Brazil is a country with enormous regional and social inequalities, a low distribution of per capita income, high levels of unemployment, a declining economy and a very weak public health system to begin with.
Another remarkable aspect is that the “poor performance of the public authorities” in the fight against the pandemic is even more irritating because it was avoidable. The harsh lessons accumulated in Italy and elsewhere in Europe have been of little or no use. The lessons from abroad were not learned.
The terrible thing about this trend is that there could even be a “boomerang effect”, i.e. a new peak in those regions apparently stabilized such as the cities of Manaus, Fortaleza or Rio de Janeiro. That is the opinion of three national experts consulted by UOL, the largest Brazilian digital services and Technology Company with several journalism channels.
Miguel Nicolelis, volunteer coordinator of the Northeast Consortium’s Scientific Committee for Combating Coronavirus; Paulo Lotufo, epidemiologist at the University of São Paulo; and Domingos Alves, professor at USP’s School of Medicine, believe that “the state capitals that have reported in the media that they have everything under control are increasing opening up. So they will experience the same thing as the virus cycles around in the coming weeks with an increase in new cases.”
The trio of specialists agree that the authorities in Brasilia have not done everything in their power to reduce the infection and diminish the fatalities. They also stress that the disorganization of the federal government, almost three months without a health minister, and Bolsonaro’s interest in proposing solutions without scientific proof, and in minimizing the human cost of the pandemic will directly contribute to the increase in the number of deaths.
With this person at the helm of the ship, it seems impossible to wake up from the nightmare.
The histrionic leader seems indifferent to the magnitude of the crisis shaking his giant country, where 100,000 people have already perished as a result of the coronavirus, making Brazil the second deadliest nation in the world, surpassed only by the United States.
It also ranks second in the world in the dire classification of the number of people infected by COVID-19: no less than three million. For every seven deaths worldwide, one is Brazilian. And the horrific daily average of 1,000 deaths has been repeating itself for two months, making it the new normal.
Faced with this dismal and desolate panorama, Folha, the most influential newspaper in Sao Paulo and probably in the whole country, has published a short but devastating and extremely critical editorial. The authors of the article don’t mince their words and call it for what it is.
“The major responsibility for this tragedy resides with Jair Bolsonaro. Instead of leading a national action plan, he instead denied the gravity of the public health emergency and promoted unprotected crowds and false therapies, such as chloroquine, and cultivated eight cases of infected ministers in addition to his own and the first lady’s,” wrote the São Paulo newspaper. “Brazil’s destiny is to not even have an effective president and health minister in this moment of mourning,” the editorialists added with a distinct tone of resignation.
The digital archives of the newspaper make a formidable case in retrieved statements, and with characters like Bolsonaro, touched by verbal incontinence, they are relentless. In a video for his social networks broadcast four months ago, the president compared COVID-19 to the 2019 influenza A. “The number of people who died from H1N1 last year was about 800 people [in Brazil]. The forecast is that this coronavirus will not reach that number of deaths, “he said.
In late April, when the fatal number had skyrocketed to more than 5,000, he had the audacity to respond: “What do you want me to do? I am the Messiah, but I do not work miracles”. Bolsonaro’s middle name is Messiah. What an idea! And the last thing he did on his way to foolishness and helplessness was to lash out at confinement by saying he kills like the virus itself. Wouldn’t it be better if he shut up?
As former President Lula da Silva pointed out, this high mortality rate can be explained by the fact that the disease “was despised by those who should be caring for the people” in a cruel exercise of “arrogance”. According to Lula, Bolsonaro has come to defy science and even death, and “will carry in his soul the responsibility for thousands of victims.”
To tell the truth, the evident lack of coordination among the 26 states that make up the Brazilian federation has also been partly to blame. Some governors followed the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) and decreed strong measures of citizen quarantine. However, others aligned themselves with Bolsonaro’s lack of concern and did not encourage the use of masks or the mandatory use of social distancing.
This profound intra-territorial contradiction contributed to the community spread of the disease. And now we see the consequences in horror show with hundreds of graves dug in the cemetery of Vila Formosa, one of the 96 districts of Sao Paulo.
Another obvious problem has been the chronic lack of money, although now tens of billions of reales have been released in emergency aid, funds that were not linked to prevention policies but which, unfortunately, have arrived too late for many people.
Furthermore, it does not help that Brazil is a country with enormous regional and social inequalities, a low distribution of per capita income, high levels of unemployment, a declining economy and a very weak public health system to begin with.
Another remarkable aspect is that the “poor performance of the public authorities” in the fight against the pandemic is even more irritating because it was avoidable. The harsh lessons accumulated in Italy and elsewhere in Europe have been of little or no use. The lessons from abroad were not learned.
The terrible thing about this trend is that there could even be a “boomerang effect”, i.e. a new peak in those regions apparently stabilized such as the cities of Manaus, Fortaleza or Rio de Janeiro. That is the opinion of three national experts consulted by UOL, the largest Brazilian digital services and Technology Company with several journalism channels.
Miguel Nicolelis, volunteer coordinator of the Northeast Consortium’s Scientific Committee for Combating Coronavirus; Paulo Lotufo, epidemiologist at the University of São Paulo; and Domingos Alves, professor at USP’s School of Medicine, believe that “the state capitals that have reported in the media that they have everything under control are increasing opening up. So they will experience the same thing as the virus cycles around in the coming weeks with an increase in new cases.”
The trio of specialists agree that the authorities in Brasilia have not done everything in their power to reduce the infection and diminish the fatalities. They also stress that the disorganization of the federal government, almost three months without a health minister, and Bolsonaro’s interest in proposing solutions without scientific proof, and in minimizing the human cost of the pandemic will directly contribute to the increase in the number of deaths.
With this person at the helm of the ship, it seems impossible to wake up from the nightmare.
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