Brazil: New notes on a country adrift | …

From Rio de Janeiro.The figures for the coronavirus pandemic in Brazil are increasingly thunderous. The total of deaths exceeds 182 thousand, the number of infected is close to 6 million 900 thousand.

In recent days, the total number of new infections has remained over 50,000. More than two thousand hours. Almost 35 per minute.

And in the face of such a tragedy, what is the far right government doing Jair Bolsonaro (Photo)?

In less than two weeks Eduardo Pazuello, the active general who occupies the post of minister of health of the government, although he admits to not knowing anything about public health, announced five different and contradictory measures in relation to the vaccination campaign in Brazil.

He stuttered uncertainly in some statements, seemed firm and bossy in others, but at no point was he convincing.

He did not explain, for example, how he intends to obtain the more than 400 million syringes with their respective needles to vaccinate the 210 million Brazilians.

He did not present a concrete and clear plan of what the logistics will be to distribute the vaccines in a country with continental dimensions.

He announced that “maybe in December, but probably in January” the first shipments of the vaccine developed by the company would arrive in Brazil. Pfizer.

It was categorically denied by the pharmaceutical company, which also reported that in August it sent Pazuello a proposal that would allow the acquisition of millions of doses of his vaccine, and there had never been a response.

Meanwhile, the The Instituto Butatan, in São Paulo, began packaging the Coronavac vaccine last Thursday, in partnership with Chinese manufacturer Sinovac. The prospect is to pack up to a million doses each day.

With such an announcement, the right-wing governor of São Paulo, João Doria, who from an ally has become an irreversible enemy of Bolsonaro (the president does not admit adversaries, he transforms them into enemies), opened a new war front with Brasilia.

It is that if Saint Paul indeed begins to vaccinate already in January, this will highlight the inertia of the national government, and such a prospect led the general minister to announce something which he could not put into practice, l arrival of the national government. Pfizer.

Bolsonaro has already chosen to stay on the other side, traveling, causing crowds and assuring, against all tragic evidence, that the pandemic in Brazil “is already coming to an end.”

The president says every day that he has three main areas of concern: the elections of 2022, maintain a coherent speech with your most die-hard fans and protect your children.

The trips have a very clear electoral character. And a good example of the movements led by his fans was the announcement, with joy, that from January there will be no more tax on the importation of revolvers and pistols. Unbridled weaponry is one of the most notorious flags of the presidential clan.

Already the emphatic search for means to protect his three children who act in politics – Carlos, counselor in Rio; Eduardo, national deputy; and Flavio, senator – turns scandals in sequence.

Carlos and especially Flavio are the subject of a rigorous judicial investigation for the offense of hiring phantom advisers for their respective parliamentary offices and maintaining their salaries and bonuses.

Last Thursday he became known, thanks to the weekly Time, that there were meetings between the lawyers of the senator’s son with Bolsonaro and his most senior advisers in the presidential cabinet.

And, more serious: also Brazilian Intelligence Agency, the highest body in the sector, was tasked with producing secret reports which were passed on to Flavio’s lawyers to help defend the defendants.

Beyond the mixture of private interest and public interest, this is a crime characterized by Brazilian law. The Attorney General of the Republic he’s already investigating the case.

Once again, Bolsonaro denies everything, despite concrete evidence.

The distance between the devastating reality experienced by Brazil and the president’s attitudes only confirms that the country is increasingly adrift, moving closer to a shipwreck that seems inevitable.