Bolsonaro’s Brazil is “an open gas chamber …

From Brasilia

Chico Buarque and the theologian Leonard Boff They denounced in a letter addressed to the UN and to the International Criminal Court that Brazil, devastated by the coronavirus, has become an “open gas chamber” which condemns “our population to extermination”. In addition to comparing the government of Jair Bolsonaro with the regime of Adolf Hitler, the document indicates that the country is heading towards an almost biblical catastrophe which the latest statistics show. The president is a “man without humanity, he denies science, hatred of the other is the reason for his exercise of power”. This “monstrous genocidal government has ceased to be a threat to Brazil to become a global threat (…) to civilization”.

Brazil is the second country in the world in number of deaths due to covid-19, with 265,000 victims, and a total of 10.9 million infected, which places it in third place in the ranking led by the United States. According to an inconclusive study by the World Health Organization, the country could rise to the top of the dead by the end of 2021. This Saturday, the bar of ten thousand deaths in a week was crossed, the highest figure since the start of the pandemic. According to some experts, worse figures are expected in the coming days due to the shortage of vaccines coupled with the official lack of interest in purchasing them.

The state of San Pablo, ruled by conservative Joao Doia and with a population similar to that of Argentina, entered the “red phase” of the most severe social isolation on Saturday in order to win the “war “against disease. The city of São Paulo records 80.8% occupancy of intensive therapy rooms. In Rio de Janeiro, where the municipal government has decreed intensified isolation, 90.3% of intensive care rooms are occupied. To make matters worse, the slight “lockdown” decreed by the mayor of Rio, Eduardo Paes, right, is sabotaged by the governor of Rio, Claudio Castro, a pillar of the president.

Bolsonaro has spent the last week questioning the vaccine, attack social isolation and lead events with dozens of people without masks. This Saturday, he went to Brasilia air base where, still without a mask, he gave a brief speech to a group of officials before his expedition to Israel.

The spread of the Amazon strain, or variant P1, reached a large part of the national territory in less than two months, causing the collapse of hospitals in several states, even those located in border regions, which “puts neighboring countries at risk”says the document. Ten South American countries border Brazil along 17,000 kilometers of fairly porous borders. The Amazon variant is already highly contagious, it is believed that those that will emerge from it may have higher transmissibility and be more resistant to vaccines.

According to researchers like Atila Iamarino, the P1 mutation is driven by “bad government” policies that prohibited interstate traffic controls and the lack of intensive testing programs. The press discovered more than six million tests hidden in a warehouse near São Paulo International Airport late last year. At that time, only five million Brazilians had undergone these studies. General Eduardo Pazuello, Minister of Health, acknowledged the veracity of the information, promised to donate part of the tests to Haiti and send the rest to the States.

Bolsonaro likes to fill his mouth with nationalist speeches, abundant in references to a sovereignty guaranteed by the military presence at the land and sea borders. An argument invoked, along with that of national security, to justify the skyrocketing budget of the Armies to the detriment of funds for Health. In the new defense strategy, the conflict hypotheses focus on the borders, giving priority to those of the Amazon, where military exercises have been carried out with increased frequency. One of the last military tests coincided with the arrival in the country of then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the final days of President Donald Trump’s administration. In addition to supporting Trump’s re-election, Bolsonaro pitched it against Democratic candidate Joe Biden to whom he threatened to respond “with gunpowder” if US troops entered the Amazon.

The Covid crisis contradicted this rhetoric by denouncing a deficit of sovereignty: the national state was overwhelmed in part of the territory, in particular in the Amazon rainforest. Manaus, the most important city in the Amazon, was the first capital devoured by the pandemic in mid-January when dozens of people died from lack of oxygen while Minister Pazuello was informed of the lack of this contribution. In view of this, the US government announced its intention to send teams to Manos where several trucks arrived with oxygen tubes donated by Venezuela. Bolsonaro, angered, attacked the government of Nicolás Maduro.

The real thing is that as the pandemic progresses, Brazil becomes more and more vulnerable in the eyes of the world, where some governments fear the export of a supervirus. Washington has sent a signal, or perhaps a warning, through infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci, an adviser to President Biden. “The best is to vaccinate and do it as quickly as possible to as many people as possible,” Fauci recommended to the Brazilian authorities. with whom, he said, he would like to talk to on the subject.

There is no indication that Bolsonaro is willing to receive advice from Biden or the WHO, which has just reiterated its “concern” over the Brazilian situation. On the contrary, the leader has repeated in recent days his bet on the consumption of hydroxychloroquine, a drug against malaria that has no proven effectiveness against the coronavirus and its expectation in a “miracle spray” used in Israel for the treatment of cancer patients. EXDO-CD24 nasal spray was applied to just 30 patients infected with SARS CoV-2, of whom 29 were cured immediately, said the president who sent a delegation led by Foreign Minister Ernesto Araújo to Israel.

Contrary to this miraculous bet, reality indicates that only 8.1 million Brazilians have been vaccinated so far, or just over four percent of the population. The government has signed a single contract for the purchase of immunizanes with the British laboratory AstraZeneca. Most of the vaccines applied come from the Chinese laboratory Sinovac, bought by São Paulo.