Why Brazil’s Health Collapse Won’t Engage the World Like India’s

RÍO DE JANEIRO.- Two developing countries, both with populations and immense territories, are in the grip of a devastating epidemic of coronavirus: hospitals without supplies, patients rejected for lack of beds, circulation of new variants everywhere. The need for international aid is desperate.

India’s call, which is breaking records for new infections, the world has answered. This week, the White House announced loudly that more than $ 100 million in medical supplies had been sent to India. Singapore and Thailand have sent oxygen, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said Britain will do “whatever it can”.

But in Brazil, which in the past two months alone has buried 140,000 victims of Covid-19, the international community has responded with silence instead. In March, President Jair Bolsonaro appealed for help from international organizations. A group of Brazilian state governors have requested “humanitarian aid” from the UN. And two weeks ago, Brazil’s Ambassador to the European Union (EU) pleaded for help: “In Brazil, we are racing against time to save thousands of lives.”

These requests have for the most part been met with indifference, with blame and criticism for Brazil’s mismanagement of the pandemic, but so far little or no help. “What is happening in Brazil is a tragedy that could be avoided”, responded this month a European parliamentarian to the Brazilian ambassador, during a hearing. “But this tragedy is the result of bad political decisions.”

In his speech, another MEP said that instead of “instead of declaring war on the coronavirus, President Bolsonaro has declared war on science, medicine, common sense and life”.

Since Tuesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has tweeted three times about the aid India needs. But nothing seems to have been said about Brazil.

Answers

The contrast between how the international community reacted to the Indian and Brazilian crises shows how Brasilia’s growing diplomatic problems have complicated the country’s response to the health crisis. The international image that Brazil took so many years to build – a friendly, multilateral country with an environmental agenda – was set back decades by a president who was busy insulting much of the world, and right on time. where Brazil needs help the most.

Bolsonaro, a far-right nationalist who came to power to castigate globalization, accused European countries with a green vocation of colonialism and illegal deforestation. Bolsonaro went viral on a social media post that mocked the appearance of the wife of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, echoed Donald Trump’s unfounded accusations of electoral fraud, and was the last G20 president to be acknowledged the victory of President Joe Biden.

For months, members of his administration and supporters launched racist attacks on China and mocked its vaccine. On Tuesday, Brazil’s Minister of Economy said China “invented the virus”.

Since the start of the pandemic, the federal government has downplayed the severity of a pathogen that continues to disrupt the lives of 210 million Brazilians. Bolsonaro has always called on people to carry on with their normal lives, and enough Brazilians have listened – whether because of poverty, political affinities or fatigue – to undermine uneven measures to stem the pandemic. More than 400,000 Brazilians have died from Covid-19, the worst humanitarian disaster in the country’s history and the second highest number of victims in the world, just behind the United States.

Cooperation

Asked why the US has not come to Brazil’s aid with the same urgency it has shown with India, a State Department spokesperson provided a list of US aid in Brazil – mostly last spring, before the country’s worst outbreak – totaling more than $ 20 million in aid. The same spokesperson pointed to an additional 75 million “in support from the private sector”. This aid, mainly sent when Trump was in office, included 1,000 respirators and 2 million hydroxychloroquine pills.

“We continue to work actively with the Brazilian government to meet their needs and find ways to continue to cooperate to help meet those needs.”the State Department spokesman said.

Other countries have also contributed. When the health system in the Amazon city of Manaus collapsed, Germany sent in ventilators. The World Health Organization (WHO) has already started shipping vaccines through Covax, the program to tackle global inequalities in vaccine distribution. The EU and its member states have disbursed some $ 28 million in grants since the start of the pandemic, according to a spokesperson for the regional bloc. In March, in response to a request from Brazil, the bloc helped ship “80,000 units of essential drugs”.

But the lack of international aid and even demonstrations of solidarity during the most desperate months confirmed what many Brazilians fear: that Brazil would pay a high international price for Bolsonaro’s confrontational foreign policy and his disdain for anti-coronavirus measures on which there is consensus among world leaders.

“The country has lost its influence on several levels,” says Oliver Stuenkel, professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo.

Brazil has never been a problematic country for the world. Huge, uneven and developing, Brazil has always followed what Stuenkel describes as “predictable” foreign policy, dependent on building alliances. Year after year, it has attempted to broaden the reach of its diplomatic corps, one of the largest in the developing world. Going against this history and tradition was a gamble that Brazil could not afford.

“America has managed to get by with a Trump because it doesn’t need the rest of the world as much,” Stuenkel says. “He can produce his own vaccines. But this attitude of Brazil is extremely reckless, because it is a country which depends on the international community. We don’t have hard power: we need multilateralism. “

The Bolsonaro administration, on the other hand, undermined confidence in China and its vaccines, while Brazil relied on China for vaccine manufacturing. Last April, Bolsonaro’s former education minister tweeted a racist message, which deserved an angry response from China and the Brazilian Supreme Court. The president’s son, Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, accused China of being responsible for the pandemic and later accused it of using 5G as a spy weapon.

The Chinese government has warned that, if continued, such rhetoric would have “negative consequences.” In January, the shipment of vaccines from China to Brazil was delayed for a long time, prompting speculation and some newspaper articles about the “consequences” of government offenses.

This week, just as Brazilian health authorities voted to reject Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, citing a lack of transparency, Finance Minister Paulo Guedes directly attacked the Chinese vaccine that Brazil is applying.

“The Chinese invented the virus,” he said. “And their vaccine is less effective than the American one.” The Chinese ambassador responded quickly: “At the moment, China is the main supplier of vaccines and equipment to Brazil.”

The Washington Post

Translation of Jaime Arrambide

The Washington Post