Editorials

Irish Times View on Brazil’s Covid-19 crisis: The Bolsonaro variant

President’s administration failed to ensure oxygen supplies for overcrowded hospitals

The increasingly distrusted president Jair Bolsonaro told Brazilians repeatedly that they had nothing to fear from the disease, ‘a little flu’, and promoted and distributed quack remedies. Photograph: Evaristo Sa/AFP via Getty

Mon Jun 28 2021 - 01:00

Brazil is home to just 2.7 per cent of the world's population, but the country's severely understated 500,000 Covid-19 fatalities represent nearly 13 per cent of global deaths. One in every 400 Brazilians has died from the virus, placing the country behind only the United States in the world league.

In the US, however, the virus is being contained, while Brazil’s toll continues to climb. Its daily case numbers were up a third in the last fortnight, while its death rate is hitting 2,000 a day.

The pandemic abated late last year, worsened as the new year began, and exploded again in March and April. By then, as deaths soared, only 7 per cent of Brazilians had been partly vaccinated.

Responsibility for the scale of the tragedy lies squarely at the door of the country's far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, whose devil-may-care attitude makes his hero, Donald Trump, appear a model of rationality and empathy.

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Huge crowds have protested at what has been called Bolsonaro’s genocidal approach. The chair of a congressional inquiry into the handling of the pandemic has spoken of evidence that Bolsonaro’s administration committed “crimes against life”.

The increasingly distrusted president told Brazilians repeatedly that they had nothing to fear from the disease, “a little flu”, promoted and distributed quack remedies, refused to and then delayed buying vaccine supplies, and led by example in refusing to wear masks – for which he was fined – and in organising mass rallies of supporters in clear breach of pandemic rules.

His administration failed to ensure oxygen supplies for the overcrowded hospitals and patients died in their beds. Social distancing measures have been spotty and badly enforced. The inquiry hearings have also aired suspicions that Bolsonaro actually wanted to let the virus spread freely, to reach “herd immunity”, no matter the cost.

The inquiry reports in August and is expected to provide evidence for impeachment of the president. Whether Brazil’s sclerotic politics are capable of seeing it through is another matter.

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