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Jair Bolsonaro's Brazil

Brazil tops 1 million cases as COVID-19 spreads inland

Friday, June 19, 2020

Brazil's government confirmed on Friday that the country has risen above 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases, second only to the United States.

The country's health ministry said that the total now stood at 1,032,913, up more than 50,000 from Thursday. The ministry said the sharp increase was due to corrections of previous days' underreported numbers.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro still downplays the risks of the virus after nearly 50,000 deaths from COVID-19 in three months, saying the impact of social isolation measures on the economy could be worse than the disease itself.

Specialists believe the actual number of cases in Brazil could be up to seven times higher than the official statistic. Johns Hopkins University says Brazil is performing an average of 14 tests per 100,000 people each day, and health experts say that number is up to 20 times less than needed to track the virus.

 
Brazil could surpass the US as the country worst hit by coronavirus this summer

June 20, 2020

Brazil reported a new 24-hour record for new coronavirus cases on Friday, pushing the country’s total to over 1 million confirmed cases — an indicator that the South American nation could surpass the US as the worst-hit country in the world this summer.

Experts say that President Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-scientific attitude toward the virus and resistance to robust social distancing measures have contributed significantly to the accelerating spread of Covid-19 and its mounting death toll.

The 54,771 new cases reported on Friday bring the country’s confirmed total to 1,032,913. Total official fatalities due to the coronavirus hit 48,954, and given the pace of new infections, the country could surpass 50,000 deaths over the weekend.

Experts say the number of actual cases in Brazil is likely significantly higher. Alexandre Naime Barbosa, a medical professor at the São Paulo State University, told NBC News that he believes there is “under-reporting of a magnitude of five to 10 times.”

“There are questions about really how much testing is going on in most of the areas worst-affected, which may also influence the numbers,” Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA)’s director of the Andes, told CBS News.

Sánchez-Garzoli also added she wouldn’t “trust” the numbers released by the government.

 
Top Brazil newspaper in pro-democracy drive as unease grows about Bolsonaro

Sun 28 Jun 2020

One of Brazil’s leading newspapers has launched a major pro-democracy campaign as unease grows about the threat many fear Jair Bolsonaro and his most militant supporters pose to the country’s political future.

Unveiling the initiative on Sunday, the Folha de São Paulo said systematic attacks from pro-Bolsonaro extremists were putting Brazilian democracy through its greatest “stress test” since the return of civilian rule in 1985.

The broadsheet urged readers to wear yellow in support of democracy and said voters needed to urgently remember the dark days of Brazil’s 1964-85 military regime, when hundreds of political opponents were killed or disappeared.

“We saw, and will never forget, the horrors of dictatorship, and we will always champion democracy,” the Folha de São Paulo declared.

 
Brazil's favelas forced to fight coronavirus alone

Brazil's densley populated favela communities have been largely abandoned by the state in the fight against coronavirus. Residents are now organizing their own responses to contain the pandemic.

When the novel coronavirus began spreading in Brazil, it was predominantly wealthy people who were affected. A Sao Paulo businessman who had recently returned from a trip to northern Italy was the country's first official case of COVID-19. Since then, the virus has spread rapidly across Latin American's most populous nation, infecting some 1.4 million people and killing more than 60,000. Brazil's poor, many of whom live in informal settlements, or favelas, are now feeling the brunt, too.

So far, the 13 million people who inhabit the favelas have been spared any major outbreaks. Yet there are fears this could change. These densely populated settlements often lack proper sanitation systems and most residents are not able to self-isolate at home. For many, going to work to earn a living is of existential importance. "If you don't leave your home to work during the day, you won't be eating that night," says Michele Silva, who lives in Rio de Janeiro's Rocinha favela, one of Brazil's largest. He co-founded the Fala Roca citizens' newspaper.

 
Bolsonaro could either use his illness to change his ways to help fight COVID-19 in his country or he can use the illness to prove that COVID-19 is "no more than a little flu."

That's why, as I eluded to above, I hope he spends a few weeks in the ICU on a ventilator to give him a dose of reality.
 

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