The closure may end in “shooting and death”, says the mayor of Manaus

Manaus Mayor Arthur Virgílio Neto (PSDB) was once again moved by describing the dramatic situation facing the largest city in the Amazon amid the pandemic of the new coronavirus.

“Every day I see deaths of people I know,” says the toucan in an interview with BBC News Brazil. “It just doesn’t affect a person with a very bad heart: powerlessness, lack of resources, and dying people, dying people.”

He continues, citing the episode in which the son of a man who died of the coronavirus in the capital of Amazonas attacked one of the professionals responsible for the burial.

“The gravedigger! The gravedigger. If he had to hit, hit the governor, hit me. But the gravedigger …”

According to him, the number of deaths in the city went from the historical average of 20 to 30 burials per day to a maximum of 140. “We are now stabilized at an average of 120, which is a lot.”

However, the mayor resists the recommendation of the State Attorney’s Office to implement a blockade (mandatory confinement), citing the risk of social chaos in Manaus.

“(Someone) throws a stone at someone, starts shooting with a rubber bullet that can blind someone, begins the reaction of people living in a situation of despair. Something that ends up shooting, killing,” he says.

In the past decade, the North and Northeast regions took turns at the top among the most violent areas in Brazil. According to last year’s Atlas of Violence, made with data from 2017, Manaus was the ninth capital among the leaders in murder rates in the country: at the top was Fortaleza (CE), followed by Rio Branco, Belém, Natal ( RN), Salvador (BA), Maceió (AL), Recife (PE) and Aracaju (SE).

On the other hand, scientists around the world point to the blockade as an effective and necessary measure to contain the disease. This week, in the midst of the partial reopening process in countries like Germany and Spain, World Health Organization epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove warned of the risks associated with relaxation. “If the closure measures are abruptly lifted, the virus can take off.”

The interview takes place days after Arthur Virgílio sent videos asking for help to international personalities, from French President Emmanuel Macron (“if he has all this concern for the Amazon, he should help”) to activist Greta Thunberg (“the mental brats call her a brat “)

According to him, who says he is “not at all concerned” about President Jair Bolsonaro’s reaction to the appeals, the time has come to understand whether the international leaders’ speeches about the Amazon region “are mocking or serious.”

Read the main parts of the interview below.

BBC News Brazil – One of several images that went around the world in this crisis is specifically from Manaus: those mass graves opened in the city’s cemeteries, those tractors opening long lines that would later receive especially the victims of the coronavirus. What is the state of the city’s funeral system at the moment?

Arthur Virgílio Neto – Well, now it’s under control. We are preparing a commemorative project on behalf of all the people buried there. We are working on the separation, so that each one is identified.

But hospitals have scenes that also traveled the world and it is obvious that people died and there was no way to bury them. Because we go from 20 to 30 burials per day to a maximum of 140 and I don’t know how many, and now we are stabilized at an average of 120, which is a lot.

We know that war is war. We have a war. I see the crown as a war. We had to bury people. We could not look at each other, undecided, as it happened in some hospitals, sick along with the dead. We couldn’t do that.

We had to bury him. And the order that I gave the Secretary of Public Cleaning was to try to give him a maximum of dignity, but to bury him immediately, to prevent it from becoming much worse.

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Reuters

BBC News Brazil – You spoke of the normal average burial in the city, which ranged from 20 to 30. On Tuesday, 111 people were buried, thus at least 80 more than the historical average. Of these 111 buried, only 13 were diagnosed with covid-19. Dozens were buried with respiratory failure or “unknown cause.” This exposes a possible brutal underreporting in the city.

Virgílio Neto – When I see severe respiratory failure, I read covid. When I see unidentified causes, I don’t laugh because it’s not time to laugh, but …

I am in the hospital, then I died and nobody knows why I died. It’s complicated. Leo covid. When I read pneumonia in the hospital bulletins, I read Covid. It is obvious that there is under-registration here and in Brazil.

BBC News Brazil – You recorded some videos with calls to world leaders. What led you to ask for outside help?, since we hope that the aid comes from the interior of the country. Why appeal?

Virgílio Neto – First, because no help came here. Now, after the conversation with the Minister of Health, a very nice person started, but a small and small thing came.

It is a region of planetary interest. Obviously it has national sovereignty, but it is a region of global interest. It is time for this planetary interest to manifest itself concretely, not just loading.

I’m not the type to live in the past, I don’t use these arguments, which are very similar to those of the president, who thinks devastating doesn’t hurt. I am against mining in Amazonas, against agribusiness in Amazonas. Do it somewhere else.

I am in favor of taking advantage of our gene bank, keeping it intact, to bring prosperity to our people. In this field, we also need national and international cooperation. And if we are this important region, and if the Amazon is the nucleus of this region, I do not understand how, in an hour of anguish, the only moment in which the State can do something, it is not attended to. It must be taken care of. Either the speech of world leaders is a service of words, it is to make a statement to the press, or that speech is serious.

Everything that happens that is bad for the people of Amazonas is reflected in the forest, it is reflected in the rivers, it is reflected in the containment of global warming.

I have just spoken to a French newspaper, one of the help that I clearly hope is that of President Emmanuel Macron. Because his speech indicates it. I like to combine my speech and my practice. If you have all this caring and smart concern for good governance in the Amazon, you should help.

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Reuters

BBC News Brazil – The appeal to President Macron specifically, which was most emphatic during the fires, may cause annoyance with the Brazilian president. Bolsonaro stood in front of Macron, even in the Assembly–UN General. How do you deal with this tension?

Virgílio Neto – I will tell you how I deal with Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro creates tension every day. When he fights with someone, with beltrano, with I don’t know who. You have an enemy a day. And I cause him problems from time to time when I answer, when I talk or I give an interview.

That doesn’t matter to me at all. I do not agree with your foreign policy, I do not agree with your foreign minister. It is not even a mature option, it was a junior ambassador. So I’m not worried at all.

So, I went to the G7, the main leaders. I addressed them. If they help, they helped, if they don’t help, it’s because they don’t understand Amazon’s cause.

And why Greta? Bolsonaro’s people fall on me. When I see them calling you a brat, I know where it comes from.

BBC News Brazil – Where does it come from?

Virgílio Neto – Bolsonaro His town Being a brat was so good, I miss you so much. Terrible it is if I were a brat ruling the country, right?

And Greta, who they call irresponsibly a brat, some mental brats call her a brat, is the one who is talking to us to get to something objective, something practical.

The help that comes is welcome. We need medications, personal protective equipment, CT scanners.

BBC News Brazil – You have already criticized the behavior of President Bolsonaro in this crisis, said that you cannot expect anything from him and, at the same time, you are optimistic about the support of the G7 countries. Do you have more hope of receiving external help than internal?

Virgílio Neto – It is difficult to measure what a statement by Greta represents. It’s hard to measure what’s going on in the head of a person I don’t know, but I admire from a distance who President Macron is. It’s hard to measure what’s going on in the head of a man who could have died from a greedy, (British) Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Of the G20 leaders and countries that can be considered expressive, we have the only leader who insists on contradicting his own Ministry of Health. I have hopes for the Minister of Health, because he committed himself to me, I believe in him. And there is also one thing, I don’t see President Jair Bolsonaro sitting down and dispatching.

BBC News Brazil – The Minquisition Pthe public filed a public civil action asking that the PThe reorganization of Manaus and the state government decree the blockade. And he classified the measure as extreme and risky. But he already said that he saw “scenes of terror” in the capital, he said that he advocates tougher measures, he even cried when narrating what happens in the city. When he suggests a measure that has been adopted around the world, in the main capitals, he says that it is extreme. Is there no contradiction there?

Virgílio Neto – No, you give blocking as your only solution. But I think, for example, of a great popular rebellion. There will be elections soon. An opportunist throws a stone … I already faced a dictatorship. Despite my age, if I had another, and I won’t, I’d face it again. I know what repression is, it doesn’t always depend on the commander. It was said that in the dictatorship, one was not so afraid of the general, he was afraid of the guard on the corner.

Then he throws a stone at someone, starts shooting with a rubber bullet, which can blind someone, begins the reaction of people living in despair. Something that ends up shooting, killing. I think it is a measure that should be taken to the maximum, as we do with intubation. Last grade …

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AFP

BBC News Brazil – Mayor, what is the last degree, if you have already classified the situation as a collapse of public health, withOR horror movie? What else needs to happen?

Virgílio Neto – The horror situation is mitigated, God willing, with the arrival, which was a benign intervention by the minister (Nelson) Teich and the general (Eduardo) Pazuello, many people came to the state government. If these people are going to solve it or not, we will see soon, if it will improve … I think that getting worse cannot, it should improve.

Our field hospital grows every moment. We are organized at funerals. That racket, that confusion is over. That story of the son of someone who died wanting to attack the gravedigger, who is the subject most exposed to the coronavirus.

BBC News Brazil – So you see a window for possible social upheaval in the running of the bulls, is that it?

Virgílio Neto – I wanted to make sure I didn’t, to support the blockade. I spoke to all the important people in this episode of the crash and found no security at all. None. No one is sure this is the best way.

I have met people who say that we do not have the tools of repression to suppress a large-scale popular rebellion. So, I look responsibly at the closure. The deputy suggested, suggested. We will analyze, we will make a conference call and we will discuss. But I can’t declare a lock without being absolutely sure I need it as if we were wearing a respirator. We use the mechanical respirator only when we believe the person is going to die.

BBC News Brazil – Now, mayor, isn’t it a little late or late to find out if the blockade makes sense or not and what would be the alternative?

Virgílio Neto – I just said that a brutal reinforcement has come for the state government. Two Boeings (with tickets).

But, when you mean the episode where I cried on television. I am a very sentimental boy. Very sensitive. Nor was I raised in a family where a man does not cry. Cry man and cry woman. In my family, beat the man, beat the woman. In my family, we accept everything. It has everything there is.

I exploded because you see the preaching “go to the street”, and I saying “don’t come to the street”, and people do not answer me and go to the street. And people die.

Unlike H1N1, which killed several people in the world, I don’t have the name of anyone who has died from H1N1, a person close to me, in my head. I don’t remember anyone. Today, every day I see deaths of people I know. Or humble people from the neighborhoods, whose names I identify, or wealthy people that I also know, middle-class people that I know.

Every day I see this. It just doesn’t touch a person with a really bad heart. A very dishonest heart until you don’t feel something like that. And powerlessness, and lack of resources, resources did not come, and have not yet come, we are fighting in our own strength. And dying people, dying people.

Coveiro almost beaten by the son of a person who was to be buried. The funeral home! The funeral home! If I had to hit, hit the governor, hit me, but the gravedigger. I mean, someone doesn’t feel sorry for that, they don’t get excited about it … I think it’s at least someone other than me.

I have a maxim: in my life, when I get excited, I cry. In politics, who cries is who confronts me.

BBC News Brazil – You are in your second term as mayor, you were a deputy several times, you were a senator, you were a minister of state and you also represented your region in some way. What is your self-criticism at this moment of collapse?

Virgílio Neto – I don’t know how the first case started. Theoretically, it had to be detected by the primary network. But it could have been someone who felt the flu, self-medicated, infected the whole family. I don’t know how to tell you this story.

A self-criticism I made yesterday with the Secretary of Health: we have not spoken about dengue here since the end of the government’s first year. Now it’s dengue season here and one person accused dengue the other day.

I think we were somewhat relaxed, obsessed with facing the crown, in relation to other diseases, endemic or not. And our obsession remained throughout this time covid, covid, covid and we made room to have a case of dengue.

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