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More than 5,000 Brazilians have lost their lives to the coronavirus, even more people than in China, if you believe their official statistics.
But on Tuesday night, the President of Brazil ignored the news. “And that?” Jair Bolsonaro told reporters when asked about the record of 474 deaths that day. “Sorry. What do you want me to do?”
Bolsonaro’s 11-word response, the latest in a series of comments that belittled the pandemic, sparked immediate fury. A newspaper, the State of Minas, stamped the president’s words on a black cover together with the number of deaths in Brazil: 5,017.
“Bolsonaro is not only a horrible politician and a bad president, he is a despicable human being” tweeted Marcelo Freixo, a left opponent.
“My name is Messiah,” Bolsonaro also told reporters on Tuesday, referring to his middle name, Messias. “But I can’t do miracles.”
A wave of disgust spread through social media as the president’s comments spread. “A sociopath” tweeted Musician Nando Moura. “What a tragedy,” wrote the journalist Sônia Bridi.
“It is a mockery. An insult. It is intolerable” tweeted Mariliz Pereira Jorge, screenwriter and commentator.
Another critic superimposed the words of Bolsonaro to a photograph of the muddy tombs where dozens of Brazilian bodies are deposited every day.
“Bolsonaro wants to turn Brazil into the Republic of So What,” political commentator Bernardo Mello Franco wrote in his column on Wednesday.
The President’s son, Carlos Bolsonaro. reclaimed On Twitter, his father’s comments were being distorted by liberal journalists seeking to destroy his reputation.
Since Brazil confirmed its first coronavirus case on February 26, Bolsonaro has continually downplayed the pandemic, dismissing the media’s “hysteria” about its dangers and suggesting that Brazilians could swim in excrement and emerge unscathed.
The populist Trump fan has also deliberately undermined the patterns of social estrangement, mingling with supporters and firing his health minister on April 16 after publicly challenging the president’s behavior.
Last week Bolsonaro’s popular justice minister Sergio Moro resigned from the government, in part as a result of the president’s unscientific stance on Covid-19, according to a person who knows him.
You cannot escape the scale of the tragedy unfolding in Brazil, with daily images of gravediggers in protective suits emerging from some of the most affected cities, such as Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Recife and Manaus.
When Bolsonaro made his comments, the newspapers and television shows were filled with stories about mothers, fathers, sons and daughters who lost their lives to the pandemic.
In Rio, the victims included Ana María, a 56-year-old nursing assistant who had worked in one of the largest public hospitals in the city and who was left to rest by men in white suits on Tuesday.
“She gave her work to the end,” her daughter Taina told the Associated Press.
In Vila Operária, a red brick favela north of Rio, at least 10 residents were reported to have died, including four members of the same family.
Health specialists fear Covid-19, which is Moving to poor regions, having initially affected middle and upper class areas, could wreak havoc on Brazil’s most disadvantaged and vulnerable communities.
“I am afraid,” Josiete Pereira do Carmo, who lost her mother and three uncles, told a local television network. “We cannot lose anyone else.”
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