(CNN) – To say that Brazil saw the warning signs would be a great understatement.
At a time when the covid-19 was growing in EuropeHitting the UK Prime Minister and strangling New York City months ago, Brazil had many warnings that a catastrophe was on the way. Was the danger drowned by the megaphone of its bombastic president Jair Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly disqualified the virus as a “little flu”?
Brazil now holds the grim title of country with the highest number of cases of covid-19 worldwide after the United States. More than 25,000 people died in Brazil from the virus, and some experts say the death rate could quintuple by August. Both hospitals and cemeteries are being pushed to the limit.
Across the world, citizens are asking their governments how local outbreaks got out of control. But in Brazil, where the acting health minister is a military general with no health record and the president personally attends protests against the closure of activities, it is not clear who in the federal government could even deign to respond. To the question.
“What do you want me to do?” Bolsonaro asked reporters last month. “I do not work miracles,” he added.
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President Jair Bolsonaro participates in a demonstration in Brasilia on May 17, 2020 (Andre Borges / AP Photos).
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A handful of cases
It was not always so. When the lethal virus began to spread in China in February, Bolsonaro expressed clear concern about the threat it posed: he only reluctantly agreed to repatriate Brazilian citizens from the then epicenter of the coronavirus, Hubei province, allegedly concerned that they would endanger the rest of the country.
Brazil’s domestic saga with the virus It officially started on March 5, with the announcement by the Ministry of Health that “the national scenario has changed.” A total of eight cases in São Paulo reported in 10 days showed that the virus was no longer imported, the community spread was underway.
The following week, state governors began to act to contain the spread of the virus, closing businesses and suspending non-essential activities in Rio, Goias, San Pablo and the Federal District. But his precautions raised a red flag for Bolsonaro.
“When you ban football and other things, you fall into hysteria. Ban this and that will not contain the spread, ”he told CNN Brazil on March 15. “We should take action, the virus could become a fairly serious problem. But the economy has to work because we cannot have a wave of unemployment, “he added.
This became the argument that the “business first” president has consistently repeated, even as the coronavirus crisis dramatically evolved around him: The economy cannot be sacrificed for public health.
The first death
Under Brazil’s federal system, state and municipal officials have the power to implement regional measures, while the national government oversees broader issues.
In March, the Bolsonaro government did its part to prevent the spread of the coronavirus: it closed Brazil to the outside world by defining the closure of most land borders and prevent foreigners from entering through international flights. The country’s economy minister, Paulo Guedes, also announced an important stimulus measure to finance social assistance programs and cushion the fall of people who lost their jobs due to the closure.
But the virus was already spreading internally. On March 17, Sao Paulo health officials confirmed the first coronavirus death of a 62-year-old man who had traveled to Italy.
Local government efforts to eradicate the virus were criticized from above: Bolsonaro ridiculed the unpopular quarantine and confinement measures.
“Our life must go on. The jobs must be maintained, ”Bolsonaro said in a speech on March 24 broadcast on national television and radio.
Bolsonaro also tweeted videos of himself visiting business districts in Brasilia, encouraging people to continue working and promoting chloroquine, an untested drug, as a cure for the virus. On March 29, Twitter made the extraordinary decision to delete the messages.
Meanwhile, horror stories about the coronavirus were emerging elsewhere on the continent. In Ecuador, the city of Guayaquil saw how its fight against the virus was laid bare on the Internet in early April, with videos and photos on social media showing bodies lying on the sidewalks and abandoned in front of hospitals.
1,000 deaths
When cold weather began to settle in the fall, Bolsonaro again took steps to strengthen the economy and the public health system.
It pushed forward funds for severance payments for laid-off workers and signed a law to provide three months of emergency funds to the country’s poor and informal workers. The Ministry of Health also announced that it would register five million health professionals to relocate them to the most affected states to strengthen public health systems.
But his personal words and actions continued to deny the work of his Government. On April 9, images showed the president with his face uncovered at a local bakery, hugging his supporters and posing with people in defiance of social distancing advice. Crowds in the background could also be heard booing and yelling through the windows of the surrounding buildings.
The country passed 1,000 deaths on April 10.
5,000 deaths
A series of challenging weeks followed for the Brazilian Ministry of Health: on April 16, after weeks of internal strife and threats, Bolsonaro fired his then Minister of Health, Luiz Henrique Mandetta. He had been one of the main drivers of social isolation, supporting the governors’ decisions to close schools and businesses.
At a press conference after Mandetta’s firing, Bolsonaro praised her work, but insisted that the economy and health at the time should be treated as two diseases. “You cannot try one and ignore the other,” he said, adding that he had already discussed the need to “gradually reopen” with incoming minister Nelson Teich.
On April 28, Bolsonaro expanded the definition of essential businesses, adding retail, food services, transportation, auto repair shops and warehousing businesses to the list.
“We were clearly on opposite sides,” Mandetta told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour weeks later. “They thought that there were not going to be more than 1,000 (cases). And I think we are going to get through this. I think Brazil can become one of the countries with the highest number of cases in the world, “he added.
By April 29, more than 5,000 people had died. Consulted by journalists outside the presidential residence in Brasilia, the president spoke the infamous words “So what? Sorry, but what do you want me to do?
Later he added: “I regret the situation we are experiencing due to the virus. We express our solidarity to those who have lost loved ones, many of whom were older. But that’s life, it could be me tomorrow ”.
10,000 deaths
The infection rate accelerated in May.
On May 7, Bolsonaro and Guedes released a statement insisting that quarantine measures should be relaxed or the economy could collapse. Two days later, Brazil surpassed 10,000 coronavirus deaths.
The following week Bolsonaro again expanded the notion of essential services, this time adding to beauty salons, barbershops and gyms.
“This story of closure, closing everything, that is not the way (…). That is the way to defeat, to break Brazil, ”he told the press on May 14, the same day he signed a decree that exempts public officials from responsibility for their responses to the pandemic, unless action have a “high degree of negligence, recklessness or malpractice”.
The next day, the new Minister of Health, Nelson Teich, resigned. An oncologist by profession, Teich held the position for less than a month, in which he allegedly clashed over the promotion of chloroquine as a treatment. Much later, in an interview with the chain of news Globo, it seems that Teich also criticized the notion of essential business in Brazil that was expanding more and more.
“Health care is absolutely essential. Obviously, ”he told the Brazilian media on May 24. “Is beauty essential? I don’t know, “he added.
President Jair Bolsonaro and former Health Minister Nelson Teich at the Planalto Palace on April 17, 2020 (Andressa Anholete / Getty Images).
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READ: Brazilian Health Minister resigns amid dispute over coronavirus with Bolsonaro
15,000 deaths
After having two medical experts at the head of the Ministry of Health and without having in view the end of the crisis, Bolsonaro changed course. He chose Eduardo Pazuello, a military general with no experience in medicine or public health, to lead the country’s fight against the coronavirus as interim minister.
Brazil exceeded 15,000 dead on May 16. That day, Bolsonaro joined another demonstration outside his official residence in Brasilia. The video broadcast on Bolsonaro’s YouTube page showed him wearing a face mask, shaking hands, and even carrying several children.
The following day, Brazil overtook the United Kingdom and became the third country in the world with the most cases of coronavirus.
20,000 deaths
In a few days, Brazil rose again in the gloomy rankings, beating the highly affected Russia with more confirmed cases of coronavirus than any other country in the world, except United States.
By May 21, 20,000 people had died.
President Jair Bolsonaro in a public appearance on May 23, 2020.
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That night, when Bolsonaro stopped in a hot dog cart in Brasilia, his entourage drew a mix of angry supporters and protesters.
In a video broadcast by local media, a woman could be heard yelling “murderer!”
25,000 deaths
On Wednesday, the Ministry of Health raised the number of deaths in Brazil to 25,598.
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Over the past few months, the federal government’s approach to protecting the economy first has been largely confirmed by measures to ease businesses and inject cash into the economy. But while the Ministry of Health has also supported state health systems, the President has undermined local leaders charged with governing over the behavior that the virus spreads.
“With the example of the Brazilian president, everything is more difficult for us,” Joao Doria, governor of Sao Paulo, told Isa Soares of CNN on Tuesday. “He goes out into the street without masks. Wrong behavior and wrong indication. This is very sad for Brazil and makes everything more difficult for the governors of the Brazilian states, ”he explained.
The populist leader’s strategy appears to have been to leave unpopular decisions to others, while trying to gain credit among his followers, for whom he plays the role of the common person by promoting unproven “cures” against the coronavirus and challenging them to violate restrictions on networks. social.
But citizens who follow their example may be putting themselves in danger. Tens of thousands of new cases are diagnosed every day, but adherence to social distancing norms appears to be declining. In Sao Paulo, for example, more than 60% of the population initially followed the guidelines for staying home, according to city officials. Last week, less than half stayed home.
Bolsonaro has recently started calling the fight against the virus a “war”, although he continues to insist that the economic stagnation will harm Brazil more than the virus itself. As the total number of cases nears half a million, it is unclear whether any number of graves could reverse that calculation for him.
With reports by Taylor Barnes, Flora Charner, Claudia Dominguez, Helena DeMoura, Maija Ehlinger, Jonny Hallam and Jennifer Hauser in Atlanta. Shasta Darlington and Nick Paton Walsh reported from São Paulo and Manaus. Written by Caitlin Hu in New York.
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