“Brazil must prepare for more …

This weekend, Jair Bolsonaro once again walked through Brasilia without a mask to greet his followers, revealing a smile that appears to have been copied from the Joker, that mocking villain who challenged Batman.

The same laugh that he exhibited on Friday in Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, during a visit disowned by opponents who blamed him for the dozens of Covid-19 patients who died of asphyxiation due to the lack of oxygen tubes occurred at the beginning of the year, when the national government did not send the inputs required by the local authorities. And not only that: despite the increase in famine deaths, federal authorities have not opened the doors to Amazon military hospitals where more than half of the beds are said to be unoccupied.

The deputy of the State of Amazonia, Commissioner Pericles, of the far-right Social-Liberal Party. celebrated the arrival of the president and his award with the title of honorary citizen of that state where the P1 strain appeared, causing most of the infections that have occurred in recent months across the country.

Until next Friday (if not before), the pandemic will have claimed the lives of the equivalent of the entire population of the cities of Corrientes and Puerto Iguazú, located in two Argentine states bordering Brazil. This is why el scientist Miguel Nicolelis affirms without hesitation, in this interview with PageI12, that his country, with 17,000 kilometers of borders in South America, is a “regional and global threat”.

“If there is no material change, I mean the implementation of a total lockdown decreed by the national government, which seems unlikely to me, and if there is no leap in the level of vaccination, My forecast is that there will be around 500,000 deaths from the coronavirus between late June and early July, and I’m making a conservative estimate. “

The National Council of Health Secretaries of Provincial Governments reported this Sunday evening that the death toll reached 390,797 and that of contaminated 14,340,787. Between April 1 and April 25, the 69,000 death mark was exceeded. , surpassing the record for the pandemic, recorded throughout the month of March, with 66,500 cases.

“Brazil can be seen as an open-air laboratory where the virus spreads quickly, mutates, becomes more aggressive and spreads to other countries, as has already happened with the Amazon variant or the P1 strain.

“We need to prepare for more mutations leading to more lethal variants that they might be rebellious to the vaccines we know. “

Based for three decades in the United States, where he is a full professor at Duke University, Nicolelis is one of Brazil’s most renowned scientists and has been hired as a pandemic consultant by a group of state governments.

“Jair Bolsonaro has become the number one public enemy in the world, we must be aware of the dimension of this humanitarian catastrophe.”

When he was a federal deputy, the current president said that the dictatorship he served as lieutenant had defected in the dirty war on democratic resistance for failing to kill 30,000 opponents like Argentina did. Darkened by his militarist conception, Bolsonaro interpreted the pandemic as a field of military operations. And as a commander, his combat strategy was a failure.

The president and former member of the military designed the virus as a late chapter of the Cold War, appointing Eduardo Pazuello, a retired general who did not study medicine, as head of the health ministry and a admiral at the head of the national health surveillance. Agency.

With this conception, separated from reality, Bolsonaro and his military postponed certification of the Chinese vaccine Coronavac for as long as they could and continue to sabotage the approval of the Russian drug Sputnik V. until today.

“If our projections are confirmed (500,000 deaths in June), Brazil will have had more deaths in 15 months than during the Battle of Stalingrad, the bloodiest of the Second World War which, between August 1942 and February 1943, caused the death of 478,000 people in the USSR, between soldiers and civilians ”, compares Nicolelis.

“Without a doubt Bolsonaro is primarily responsible for the worst tragedy in our country’s history, the codification of the crimes committed is left to the jurists within the framework of Brazilian law or international law. Returning to the example of World War II, with the Battle of Stalingrad, perhaps Bolsonaro deserves to be brought before a tribunal like that of Nuremberg, “where Nazi war criminals were tried.

For now, Nicolelis is awaiting what might happen from this Tuesday or Wednesday when the Senate puts ICC members in power in the pandemic.

If the opposition succeeds in getting its members to occupy important positions in this body, one of the first guests should be General Eduardo Pazuello, who served as Minister of Health until March, after just under a year in power.

Pazuello, following Bolsonaro’s orders, did the opposite of the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO): he did not prioritize the purchase of vaccines, he joined the campaign against the lockdown and purchased millions of doses of hydroxychloroquine, some of which was imported from the United States, which were distributed to public health centers.

“This government is the enemy of science, the president referred to scientists qualifying them as scoundrels,” denounces Nicolelis.

“Bolsonaro has taken steps that have facilitated the spread of the virus, but he has done something that may be equally or more pernicious by spreading false news about covid, inducing behaviors that may have cost lives” such as consuming hydroxychloroquine or raise doubts about vaccines.

“Denial has caused thousands of deaths, denial fails to understand this tragedy of the 21st century, denial views the virus with ideological prejudices. But the virus does not belong to any party and is faster than backward mentalities “, concludes Nicolelis.