Former Health Minister Jair Bolsonaro has accused the Brazilian president of not offering “one word of comfort” to the families of the 100,000 Brazilians who lost their lives to Covid-19.
In an interview, the latest Covid-19 milestone from Brazil, utter Luiz Henrique Mandetta – who was fired in April after challenging the president’s internationally condemned coronavirus response – expressed outrage that Brazil’s leaders had failed to recognize so much pain.
“There are 100,000 Brazilian families who have yet to receive a single word of comfort or solidarity from the government,” Mandetta told O Globo newspaper.
The official cause of death in Brazil in Brazil was raised to 100,000,000 on Saturday, with its total rising to 99,572 on Friday after another 1,079 deaths.
But on the eve of that milestone, Bolsonaro threatened to ask his 210m citizens of his country to put the unfinished tragedy behind them.
“We are sorry for all the dead,” the popularly-right popular said during his weekly live broadcast. “But let’s get on with our lives, get on with our lives and try to find a way to get away with this problem.”
Without providing evidence, Bolsonaro insulted state officials deliberately cracking down on their Covid-19 death toll to ‘panic the population’.
Speaking on O Globo’s daily podcast, Ao Ponto, Mandetta attacked the “misguided” reaction of the Bolsonaro attack and the decision, following his dismissal, to hand over control of the Ministry of Health to military officials without knowledge of God bless you.
Bolsonaro lost a second health minister, Nelson Teich, less than a month after Mandetta’s dismissal, before making an active-duty army general his interim chief.
‘You can not go to war with doctors. You can’t do health care with soldiers, “said Mandetta, who said the ministry should be” immediately “re-engaged with health experts.
Mandetta, a doctor as well as a professional politician, also accused Bolsonaro of using hydroxychloroquine – which the president promotes as a treatment for Covid-19 despite evidence that it is ineffective – of his botch response.
“Chloroquine was brought into the debate as a political prop designed to prevent the decisions taken by the President of the Republic, to dismantle the Ministry of Health… be discussed. His responsibility [for the crisis] had to be reduced and he used chloroquine to reduce his responsibilities, ”said Mandetta, who has indicated he will challenge Bolsonaro in the 2022 election.
Mandetta said he believed Bolsonaro’s decision to reduce Covid-19 and blame China, where the pandemic began, for Brazil’s misery could be traced back to a meeting with Donald Trump in early March.
“I have no doubt that the Trump administration has a direct impact on the Bolsonaro administration,” the 55-year-old politician said, adding, “They both had a striking political vision of the health crisis.”
‘The difference was that when the American president understood the extent of the tragedy that would be attributed to him [and] saw that American society would not forgive him for his denial of disease, his attitude toward isolation and distance, and the deaths that would come, [he changed tack]. ”
Bolsonaro, by contrast, “radicalized”, doubled down on his denial of the pandemic and his responsibility to combat it.
“So what?” The Brazilian president said of the rising death toll in April, shortly after Mandetta’s resignation. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”
“The Messiah of my name – but I can do no miracles,” Bolsonaro added, referring to his second name, Messiah.
Mandetta said it was Brazil’s world-famous national health service, the SUS, that had reduced its suffering in part by largely dealing with the wave of Covid-19 patients.
Without their efforts, “we would now be in a situation of every man for himself … In a state of barbarism,” he said.
On Thursday, Bolsonaro claimed that his government had done “the possible and the impossible” to save lives. “Our conscience is clear.”
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