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With the closure of borders, while social isolation remains the main recommendation of the World Health Organization (WHO), the world population is witnessing the beginning of a global economic crisis with few precedents. The instability of the oil market, the successive falls in the stock markets, fall in the Gross Domestic Products (GDP) of several countries and the exchange rate of the dollar in reais, breaking weekly records. These facts, normally ignored by the majority of the population, seem increasingly important.
At the same time, the United States’ withholding of medical supplies imported from China by Brazil and other countries, the decision of US President Donald Trump to end WHO funding and the impact of international diplomacy with President Jair Bolsonaro’s denialist stance brings geopolitics closer to the daily life of all those who fear being contaminated.
For Deisy, some consequences are clear. The United States government’s position on the retention of cargo purchased by other countries can be considered an “international crime of piracy” and will lead to “unimaginable mistrust” in relations between the country and other nations. Trump’s lack of interest in leading the response to the health crisis and China’s role in this regard should reverse the power relationship between countries. And Brazil has become an “international pariah”.
“Brazil has been playing an international leadership role, including on health issues. The country is an international reference in various programs. [nessa área]. Today Brazil is ridiculed, harassed. There is a bewilderment among the governors of the most important states in the world regarding what is done here, “he said.
The great change we have in relation to other previous crisis scenarios is the absolute absence of leadership by the United States. This is nothing new, there has been a decline in North America’s leadership in international relations for some years. It intensifies with the Trump administration. But, with us, who work with international cooperation, and especially international cooperation in health, it is disconcerting to see the great international forums and initiatives, the specific cooperation programs involved in the response in total absence, omission of the United States, in the impossibility of this. leadership
Same sense A puzzling geopolitical element is the absolute absence of leadership from Brazil. The silence of Brazil is felt in the configuration of politics here, mainly in South America, but not only because Brazil has been playing a leading role, even on health issues. The country is an international reference in various programs, on the subject of the fight against HIV and AIDS, the fight against tobacco, breast milk banks, the so-called South-South cooperation, developed in recent decades, mainly with Portuguese speaking African countries. And here, within the scope of Unasur, Brazil hosted, last year, the South American Institute of Government and Health, which formed cadres of national governments in the area of public health. So, the Brazilian role is evident in an initiative like the Unasur drug bank, which could be extremely important now, [para] negotiate the purchase of supplies together. So, this absence of Brazilian leadership is also a very important element.
This behavior of President Donald Trump is a crime. American behavior is extremely destructive. The United States is a rich country, with a large industrial plant, which should not require this kind of attitude. We expect countries that are self-proclaimed democracies that do not act in violation of the international legal order. This hacking behavior is considered one of the first international crimes.
Intercepting and taking goods and products belonging to others, which we can easily call piracy, does not contribute in any way to the harmonious relationship between countries; on the contrary, it generates mistrust that reaches unimaginable levels between the United States and other countries.
I think we should wait a while to reach these conclusions. We cannot have the illusion that we already have an idea of what the Covid-19 pandemic will be like. We are still far from the end of this process. China’s position is not without controversy. It is a dictatorial regime that probably omitted information at the beginning of the outbreak and that probably still does not offer us a reliable and transparent diagnosis of what happened and happened there.
To answer that question, I think we need to have the outcome of the American elections. This is the crucial element in evaluating this response. If we still have a far-right government in the US With this way of proceeding politically, which implies the decline of multilateralism and the impossibility of constructing collective objectives between states, we have a very different scenario, imagining a democratic government that takes over the multilateralism agenda, in a scenario in that the United States is once again fighting for leadership on at least some essential issues.
The truth is that today Brazil is an international pariah. Brazil is ridiculed, harassed. There is a confusion among the leaders of the most important states in the world regarding what is being done in Brazil. It is important to note that the division in taking a position regarding the pandemic is not due to an ideological or partisan spectrum. There are far-right leaders who saw an opportunity to focus power on the pandemic. This was the case in Hungary, in Israel.
The issue of patents is curious, we experienced it during the H1N1 flu pandemic, between 2009 and 2010, the pandemic that started in Mexico and involved pig farming, so much so that this flu was initially called the swine flu. At the time, we had a very strong patent problem, because, unlike Covid-19, for H1Nn1 flu we had the treatment, which was Oseltamivir, known as Tamiflu. Brazil even had reserves of Oseltamivir, which it negotiated at more advantageous prices with Roche. It was encapsulated by the Fiocruz laboratory in Manguinhos, and we did not miss this medication in Brazil.
We hope that intellectual property rules will be relaxed in light of awareness of the potential for damaging public health worldwide in these episodes. But it is necessary to remember that it is not enough to have the so-called patent break, it is necessary to have the inputs, the manufacturing capacity. Therefore, it takes much more than just breaking the patent. In that sense, I think the question is earlier. It is very important to have an autonomous industrial park; It is very important that there is a national pharmaceutical industry, that there are industries, that we do not depend on the international field.
There will be a great world economic crisis, the foundations of which are already established, and we will see how emerging countries will position themselves in it. Everything is in dispute. If there is something that is important to say at the moment, it is that the current geopolitical scenario is in dispute, the narrative that will be built on this pandemic and its impact on everything, in international relations and the economy. This is all in dispute. And we still do not have essential elements of response, such as what will be the scope of this pandemic in emerging countries such as Brazil; how it will develop; how catastrophic it will be; if the health systems of these countries will survive; how the economy of these countries will survive and with what characteristics. There are great traumas that can occur, and we still don’t have that measure.
Obviously there will be a crisis of scarcity in some places, occasionally. When the responses are well organized, well structured, there is no reason for a general shortage. Absolute isolation has not been adopted anywhere in Brazil, so essential services are preserved everywhere, including access to food.
