Bolsonaro boycotts the vaccine: he announced that he is not buying …

From Brasilia

On how to sabotage the vaccine. Jair Bolsonaro has announced that he will not buy more than three hundred million syringes needed for the mass vaccination campaign against the coronavirus, the disease that claimed the lives of more than 198,000 Brazilians, according to data this Wednesday, and could exceed 200,000 deaths this week.

He alleged that syringe prices “have skyrocketed” recently due to a market move to take advantage of the government’s rush to buy, for which the new auction was suspended indefinitely: until “prices are returning to normal”. . The postponement implies a further delay for the already delayed start of vaccination.

The competition in question took place at the end of December and some governors and specialists had recommended that the Ministry of Health convene it in July or August. in order to have a good stock of syringes and needles before any vaccines are approved. But the call to suppliers was unreasonably (perhaps deliberately) delayed.

Lack of inputs is a “serious” problem due to the “lack of interest” of the national government, “There are many countries that vaccinate, only Brazil has not started, this has no justification,” said Piauí governor Wellington Dias of the Workers’ Party.

Negotiations for the purchase of syringes were as delayed as negotiations with the laboratories that produce the drug, some of whose executives said they were surprised by the requests made by the Brazilians (possibly to delay the agreements).

Last month the president considered unjustified the “rush” of part of the population for the approval of a vaccine which could lead to serious collateral effects. With his humorous style, he asked people to think twice before applying a product that can turn them into “alligators”.

And with other fanciful mentions on the contraindications of vaccines cited a number of miraculous virtues of hydroxychloroquine and an antiparasitic, although both are not recommended by the World Health Organization.

At the same time, an underground ministry which would operate in the Planalto Palace and in charge of dozens of bloggers and flat earth channels, disseminated false news about the irreversible consequences of vaccines, and organized marches against “Vachina”, nickname given to the Chinese vaccine Coronavac, the most hated by the far right. This is because of its origin (they also call it the Chinese Communist Party’s vaccine) and because 11 million doses of it were imported by the governor of San Pablo, Joao Doria, a former Bolsonarist now turned into an enemy. government and potential presidential candidate in 2022.

Doria reiterated on Wednesday that Coronavac will begin to be applied in her state on January 25, but for this to happen it would need to have clearance from the National Health Surveillance Agency, a formally autonomous body that obeys national government orders.

While in São Paulo Doria defended the vaccination in Brasilia, Bolsonaro again manipulated the data by relativizing the delay of Brazil compared to the countries of Latin America and the rest of the world which have started to apply the drug.

He commented that although 44 countries are vaccinating “a lot of them”, the Pfizer lab has given them “only 10,000 doses,” leading to “the media error that other countries are vaccinating their entire population ”.

He avoided mentioning that no government promised to reach the entire population from day one and downplay the data according to him, China only vaccinated 0.31% of its people and Russia. 0.55%, without specifying that this involves more than four million Chinese and a little less than 900,000 Russians.

Rebell

Bolsonaro characterizes vaccination as a fight inscribed in the broad-spectrum war against the “globalists”, a category that ranges from the left, to the WHO and to enemies of the West in general. According to this credo which has among its faithful the president and his influential sons, the outgoing American president Donald Trump is the greatest defender of the traditional values ​​threatened by the “globalists”.

However, not even Trump himself has taken such a radical stance on the vaccine as that adopted by the Bolsonaro clan, which appears to be waging a war on science.

To prevent the approval of the covid-19 quarantine, prevent the use of masks and delay the vaccine as much as possible, the leader militarized the Ministry of Health, the displacement of career executives and the appointment of General Eduardo Pazuello as minister and Colonel Elcio Franco Filho as vice, both without medical training.

Before announcing the postponement of the vaccine offer, Bolsonaro met with Pazuello on Tuesday, who said his role in the portfolio was to behave like a military man, to obey his superior’s orders without questioning them.

After the meeting, on leaving the Ministry of Health, Bolsonaro was booed by a dozen people, and some shouted “murderer” at him.

However, the obedience due to General Pazuello and retired Colonel Elcio Franco, would not be supported by part of the army leadership, which maintains its support for the government, no doubt, but without doing so in a closed book. .

According to CNN-Brazil, there are sectors of the generalate concerned about Argentina’s advantage in the vaccine race, and they are pushing for the captain-president to stop delaying. Similar reports have been published in other media.