The Brazilian tragedy | Opinion

From Rio de Janeiro. Friday evening it became known: 1,760 deaths from covid 19: again, more than 70 per hour, more than one per minute. The country lives an increasingly tragic image, with no horizon in sight.

In total, there have been 262,948 deaths in one year, according to official data, until Friday evening.

Since January 20, the number of deaths has risen to more than a thousand every day. Since February 25, in more than 1400. And specialists warn that by the end of the month it could have reached three thousand.

Also Thursday, we learned that in Bahia, people are dying in ambulances while waiting for a place in hospitals.

In Rio Grande do Sul, the wind mill, one of the most prestigious private hospitals in the country, had to rent refrigerated containers to store the corpses.

Last Friday, the governor of São Paulo asked for volunteers to help the public health system in a “war operation”, and the mayor of Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais, the third richest state in the country, said that his health care system was in operation. collapse.

In São Paulo, the state capital, the richest and most populous city in South America, even in private hospitals, patients are seated on chairs placed in corridors.

In the northeast region, there were long queues of patients waiting for a place in hospitals.

Tragic scenes are rapidly unfolding across the country. Governors of 16 states sent harsh letter to far-right president Jair Bolsonaro requiring urgent action. They insist on the lack of vaccines and on the inertia of the Ministry of Health, led by an active army general, Eduardo Pazuello.

Several states and municipalities have appealed to the Supreme Court to ask that they be allowed to purchase vaccines outside of the national government. And friday the mayors of 1,700 of the 5,100 Brazilian municipalities have announced a movement to purchase vaccines, independent of the national government, including vaccines not yet approved by health authorities but which are in use in other countries.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, CEO of World Health Organization (WHO), issued a clear warning: after declaring that the situation in Brazil is “worrying” and should be “taken very seriously”, said that the current situation could be reflected not only in other countries of the region, but in the whole planet.

Doctors, specialists and researchers are calling for urgent measures to contain the coronavirus.

One of the most eloquent, Miguel Nicolelis, is also one of the most respected in the international scientific community.

Recognized teacher duke universityIt’s clear: either the country imposes a radical blockade of activities for 21 days, or in a few months the current number of deaths from covid will double.

“Brazil will not become an outcast, it already is. It will be transformed into an open-air laboratory for the creation of new variants of covid-19 ”, alert.

Faced with such an image, how does the national government act?

Erratically, without any sort of coordination with governors and mayors. The general active at the head of the Ministry of Health is dismissed from his post every three days, and the soldiers he has spread around him do not know what to do either.

How does President Bolsonaro act in all this?

Criticize mayors and governors who adopt restrictive movement measures, saying enough moans, enough bundles, that we have to work.

He says the country is suffering from the panic spread by the media. He continues to advocate for the use of drugs which, in addition to being ineffective, can cause serious side effects.

He continues to ignore what doctors say and assure that the WHO is nothing more than a body controlled by Communist China.

This is how Bolsonaro acts: like genocide, a psychopath in the face of reality. And there is no one to stop his hand.