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Miguel Nicolelis speaks of the situation in Brazil as an “organic Fukushima”.
“When people ask me to make a metaphor, I say that for me it is like Chernbyl or Fukushima, a nuclear reactor, but biological, which is uncontrollable in a chain reaction”, the famous neuroscientist and professor at the Duke University (United States) from its home in Sao Paulo.
Since the start of the pandemic, covid-19 has left 13 million people infected and more than 350,000 dead, making the South American nation the second country with the most deaths after the United States (559,000), according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
While there is concern that a more contagious variant of the virus, P.1, could lead to the increase in cases, there are not a few experts and health workers who denounce that the health system is, in some areas on the verge of collapse. .
In this context, that of Nicolelis, who has advised certain states in the northeastern region of the country in the fight against the disease caused by SARS-Cov-2, is one of the voices warning against the seriousness of the situation.
Fireplace
According to the expert, the factors that explain how Brazil has become an uncontrollable biological nuclear reactor can be summed up in three: “the lack of government leadership, the ignorance (of the government) and the reliance on news and false information or scientific denial ”.
One of neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis’ best-known projects is the one that allowed the kickoff of the 2014 World Cup opener to be done by a paraplegic patient who was using an exoskeleton controlled by his brain.
And for the scientist, it is essential that not only Latin America but the whole world know that what is happening “is not the fault of the Brazilian people”.
“The Brazilians want to get out of this, they don’t want to export variants all over the world,” he says, but underlines what he considers to have been lack of strategy and direction to deal with the pandemic by the federal government, which it accuses of lacking empathy.
“The Brazilian government has never devised a strategy or taken any initiative with the real intention of fighting the pandemic.”
And so, he warns, Brazil has become a hotbed of variants that threaten the world. “We are literally allowing this virus to devastate the whole country, which is huge.”
“Despite the fact that we have a fairly good national public health system, the government has never taken advantage of it to fund and significantly strengthen it in the midst of this crisis.”
Intensive care unit at Sao Jos Municipal Hospital, Rio de Janeiro.
As a result, “we are in the midst of a national health collapse, which has never happened in Brazilian history.”
Several states have reported shortages of oxygen and sedatives.
Nicolelis also talks about the high occupancy rate of intensive care units in various regions of the country, close to 100% in some cases.
All of this is “the reason we have so many cases and so many mutations occurring simultaneously across the country. ”
“And when there are a lot of mutations like the ones we have, we expect variants to appear. This is something you can take for granted that will happen.
The Brazilian public health institute Fiocruz claims to have detected 92 variants of the coronavirus in the country, including P.1.
The government
Nicolelis questions the fact that Brazil has not created a central command, a scientific working group or “a leadership of the president and his government that would be effective in dealing with all this tragedy”.
President Bolsonaro has declared 2021 to be the year of vaccination for Brazilians.
“The president has denied the seriousness of the crisis from the start,” recalls the expert.
Already at March 2020Jair Bolsonaro has criticized the closure of schools and businesses in parts of his country due to the coronavirus, which he compared to a “flu” or a “cold”.
“He campaigned against any measure of social isolation, he opposed masks,” continues the expert. And this, in his opinion, created “massive confusion” across the country.
Nicolelis is far from the only one wondering how the chief has handled the pandemic.
The doctors in charge of intensive care units consulted by BBC Brazil stressed that, although they are defended by the president, the so-called “covid kit“or” early treatment “of the coronavirus is helping to increase the number of critical patient deaths.
And it is that “more than a year after the start of the pandemic in the South American nation, the leader continues to support the use of drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, despite the fact that several surveys indicate that these drugs are not effective in the treatment of covid-19, ”noted journalist Nathalia Passarinho.
“The whole world will suffer the consequences”
According to the professor, “if Brazil is not under control, (if there are) hundreds of thousands of cases every day, we are going to have a repository of new variants that can emerge and spread to South America and in Latin America, then to the whole world in a few weeks. ”
Several states in Brazil have reported shortages of oxygen and sedatives.
“If so many people are allowed to be infected every day and nothing is done to control this pandemic here, the whole world will suffer the consequences.”
It is, in his view, a threat to the efforts of the international community to stem the pandemic.
Nicolelis is one of several Brazilian experts who believe Brazil should enter national lockdown.
“It will be the only alternative that we really have at that time to try descend radically and rapidly the number of new cases and reduce the transmission of the virus, ”he said.
But Bolsonaro opposes any containment measure, arguing that the damage to the economy will be worse than the effects of the virus itself and has tried to overturn, in court, some of the restrictions imposed by local authorities.
The president argues that such measures impoverish the poor.
Vaccination
One of the priorities, according to Bolsonaro, is mass vaccination. In fact, he has already said that 2021 is “the year of vaccination of Brazilians “.
“We have been fighting and struggling from the beginning relentlessly against the pandemic. We are an example to the world,” said the president.
President Bolsonaro opposes a national lockdown that many Brazilian experts and scientists recommend to slow the spread of the virus.
According to the Brazilian Ministry of Health, 24,809,790 people They have already received the first dose and 8,000,733 the second, in a country of more than 210 million people.
According to BBC reporter Jake Horton, by the end of March, the country had received half of the 46 million doses it was targeting.
“Brazil has now ordered enough doses to immunize its entire population, but critics say those deals came too late as other large countries with similar purchasing power are now leading the queue. “, noted Horton.
Brazil, he noted, has “a solid experience in conducting immunization campaigns and, compared to many other Latin American countries, has a well-established health care infrastructure.”
However, explains Nicolelis, relying on a vaccination program “clearly it’s not enough solve the problem”.
And Chile proves it.
The neighbor’s example
For the teacher, Chile has become an example of what to do: a combination of measures.
In March, the Butantan Institute reported that it was seeking permission from Brazilian regulators to launch human clinical trials of its covid-19 vaccine candidate.
Although the country has made rapid progress on vaccination days, it has had to impose containment measures as it has seen an increase in cases.
And it has been shown that vaccination cannot replace other preventive measures, such as social distancing and the use of masks.
Nicolelis, who has lived in the United States since 1989, says the pandemic caught up with him in Brazil as he visited his mother in Sao Paulo.
Has been invited to coordinate a group of scientists to advise the governments of the northeastern states of the country in the face of the crisis generated by the new coronavirus.
For almost a year, I worked as a volunteer.
“I found myself in the middle of the crisis doing something that I had done when I was a medical student, since I started my scientific career working on epidemiological issues.”
He says that, like many Brazilians, he has been confined to his apartment for over a year.
Among the solutions he is considering, he insists, is national, lasting containment at least 30 days and that it start as early as possible, and that between two and three million people can be vaccinated every day.
“There are solutions,” he said, to prevent the “tragedy” from getting worse.
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