The reason is that Brazil’s Minister of Education tweeted that the virus is a conspiracy of China to rule the world, because the whole world wants to buy China’s materials, and China is going to make a fortune …
It is worth mentioning that in the original tweet, the minister of education also deliberately used racist language against Asians (changing the word R to L because foreigners think that Asians can’t pronounce R’s. )
You know, Brazilian Health Minister Mandetta has been talking with China about medical supplies orders for some time. With this move by the Minister of Education, the originally negotiated medical supplies transaction is also in jeopardy.
You, the minister of education, have to have a leg about the epidemic, and you can’t understand it.
(Photo: Brazilian Minister of Education)
In response, the Minister of Education responded: "If China is willing to sell 1,000 ventilators to Brazil, he will kneel in front of the Embassy of China to apologize and admit that he is an idiot."
If they [China] sell us 1,000 ventilators, I’ll get down on my knees in front of the embassy, apologise and say I was an idiot,” he told Radio Bandeirantes.
People in China: Do you want an empty glove respirator?
Since the outbreak, South America has been the latest region to be affected.
However, in April, the region also began to explode, with the cumulative number of cases in Brazil, the worst, reaching 14,000.
The figure below shows the number of new patients in Pakistan every day in the past, and it can be clearly seen that the growth is still accelerating.
It can be said that yesterday in China is today in Europe and America and tomorrow in Brazil.
So Brazil, is it really ready?
At present, the news from Brazil is not optimistic.
At present, the death toll in Brazil is 688, and the calculated fatality rate is 4.9%, which is higher than that in developed countries such as Germany, but lower than that in the hardest hit areas such as Italy, and the data seems to be acceptable.
However, medical staff in Brazil are warning the society that this data is largely the result of the government’s omission. Edmar Santos, the health minister of Rio State, said in the Guardian that there may be 50-100 undiagnosed patients behind each of the 1688 confirmed cases in his state.
(Brazil in the epidemic Source: Guardian)
So is the death toll. Fernando Bozza, a researcher at the Brazilian Institute of Epidemiology, told reporters that the death toll is only the tip of the iceberg, because a large number of other dead people may have died directly or indirectly from the virus, but none of them have been recorded.
Brazil has testing equipment, but the problem is that the speed of testing is too slow. A nucleic acid test may take a week from sampling to results.
As a result, many patients died before the test results came. And these people are not included in the death data.
(Source: Guardian)
Rello, a doctor in a private hospital, said: I’m just a doctor. The number of critically ill patients I saw, as well as the data my colleagues told me, are quite different from the published data.
In Sao Paulo, the worst-hit state, it takes 15 days for a test to produce results. Sao Paulo, a local newspaper, reported that at least 30 COVID-19 patients are buried in local cemeteries every day. Most of them have not been diagnosed.
Hospitals in Amazonia, like new york, have deployed refrigerated trucks to carry bodies. These trucks used to be used to transport meat.
In Rio and Sao Paulo, medical staff found that supplies were stretched. Brazil’s Health Minister Mandetta said: If the situation does not improve, the national health system will collapse at the end of April.
The peak in Brazil is far from coming.
Anyone familiar with Brazil knows that there are many slums in Rio and S? o Paulo. These slums have a huge population density, frequent contact between people, and lack of sanitary conditions at the same time. All these indicate that once the virus breaks out in these places, the epidemic will be as fierce as wild fire burning hay.
(Source: journey wanders)
In fact, these poor areas are fully aware of Covid-19. In the absence of government organizations, local slum residents in Sao Paulo organized themselves, recruited ambulances, found doctors to deal with the epidemic, and even elected the leaders of each block to be responsible for preparing food and ensuring that every resident could get help.
(Source: Reuters)
In many of these slum communities, it is actually gangs that help implement these policies. Different from what people imagine, some gangs in Brazil have had their own fixed sites because they have existed for too long, and their main income has changed from robbery to regular protection fees.
The safety of local residents directly affects the amount of protection money they can collect, which is why these gangs maintain law and order in their own territory and even provide some community services. To some extent, their existence has replaced the grass-roots government.
(Photo: Rio in the city)
However, despite these preparations, it is still difficult to close the city in Brazil’s slums.
Most people don’t have formal jobs, they do odd jobs every day, and they don’t continue. This means that if they are not allowed to go out, they will have no income to maintain a normal life.
The reporter interviewed a barber shop manager. He said that when the news of the epidemic just came out, he closed his shop, but later found that he could not afford the rent and could not eat. So I had to open the door again.
In addition, on April 6th, the first case of Amazonian aborigines infected with Covid-19 appeared in Brazil, which also made the outside world start to worry about the safety of these aborigines. They lack sanitary means: they don’t use soap, share tableware and so on. And because of geographical reasons, it is difficult for them to get medical help.
(Source: BBC)
In this epidemic in Brazil, we have seen that local governments are very active. In sharp contrast, it is their federal government President Bolsonaro.
Since the outbreak of the epidemic, the president, who is known as "Trump of Brazil", has publicly declared on many occasions that the epidemic is not so serious, just a minor cold, which is a crisis caused by the media. He asked everyone not to be bewitched by the local government, but to come out and enjoy the fresh air …
(Source: Reuters)
When asked by a reporter whether Brazil will be as serious as the United States in the future, his reply is: I don’t think Brazil will become so bad. You need to study Brazilians more. We never have infectious diseases. Have you ever seen a Brazilian boy jump into a gutter and dive, and then go ashore without any problems?
In the same way, the Brazilian president also feels that his people are immune to all kinds of drugs …
(Source: AFP)
Last Friday, the president even bluntly said in a televised speech: I’m sorry, some people will die, and this is life.
"There are also many people who died in car accidents. Don’t you see anyone trying to ban cars?"
In the past week, Bolsonaro also held an official activity called Brazil Cannot Stop to encourage Brazilians to live in the streets normally. Don’t engage in a scorched-earth war that paralyzes the economy because of the epidemic.
In order to promote this "activity", he himself has always gone out recently, shaking hands with supporters and taking selfies.
At the rally, he said, "The virus is here, and we should face it like men."
A smell of straight men’s cancer is coming …
These videos were then compiled into a book and distributed on various official channels of the Brazilian president. Twitter also deleted videos of two Brazilian presidents because the website thought they were spreading rumors related to the virus.
Bolsonaro has been working on a new moth recently: calling on Brazilians to fast for one day to get rid of the evil epidemic. You may not understand that hunger strike has a religious meaning in western culture. This is because the Brazilian president wants to jump into the gods.
In the face of such an unreliable president, the governors of several Brazilian States broke the barriers between political parties in an unprecedented way, and United to deal with the president and fight the epidemic with all their strength. And the sense that Bolsonaro gives people is that it has been completely dazed, and it must be dead with the local government.
(Source: politico)
Like Trump, there is also a reliable official beside the Brazilian president, that is, the Brazilian Health Minister Mandetta mentioned earlier. After the outbreak of the epidemic, he, like Dr Fauci of the White House, refuted many unreliable suggestions of the President and provided the public with many feasible means. Like Fauci, he is considered as the only reliable source of information in the Brazilian government.
(Source: EBC)
He is still actively coordinating with China recently, and wants to import more masks to solve the urgent need. How urgent is the situation? On April 2, he revealed that Brazil’s previous global purchase of medical supplies was rejected four times in a row until the fifth country finally agreed.
The fifth country is China. China can deliver a large amount of materials within one month, which is enough for Brazil to support for another month or two.
But reliable leaders still can’t stand the stupidity like Bolsonaro in the government, and the Minister of Education has to insult China on Twitter at this time …
And the health minister Mandetta had to earnestly come to peace talks with China again: please don’t cancel the order …
It’s really hard to be the minister of health, who is engaged in diplomacy and commerce.
What Mandetta has done has won him the love of the Brazilian people. And this has gradually made him an opponent in the eyes of President Bolsonaro to challenge himself …
Like the United States, Brazil’s biggest difficulty in facing the epidemic is not the epidemic itself, but their complicated political vortex and extremely unreliable leaders.
Uniting as one to fight the epidemic, which seems to be a matter of course in some countries, has become a luxury here.