'Saddest March of our lives': Brazilians lament Covid devastation as critics decry Bolsonaro

[marmar]

(Guardian UK) Like so many on Brazil’s left, Pedro Carvalho was certain Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency would prove a nightmare: for human rights, for the environment and for the national health system the 41-year-old doctor cherishes and serves.

“I felt this profound sadness, just utter, personal sadness,” Carvalho remembered of the fateful moment in October 2018 that the far-right populist was confirmed as his country’s new leader.

“He’d been a politician for 30 years. Everyone knew who he was,” the intensive care physician said of the dictatorship-praising former paratrooper. “He is hatred. He is hatred itself.”

Back then, of course, nobody knew Brazil was also barreling towards its most devastating public health catastrophe since the Spanish flu, or that Bolsonaro would so ruinously mishandle an epidemic that has now killed more than 300,000 of his citizens, his wife’s grandmother included.

....(snip)....

The consequences, say critics, have been deadly. On 24 March 2020, with Brazil’s Covid death toll at 46, Bolsonaro claimed the pandemic was being exaggerated “and soon it will pass”. On Wednesday, exactly a year later, the number of fatalities surpassed 300,000 after a record 3,000 lives were lost for the first time in a single day. Only the US, governed until January by Bolsonaro’s rightwing inspiration, Donald Trump, has suffered greater losses, with scant sign of Brazil’s outbreak being brought under control. ...........(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/25/brazil-coronavirus-bolsonaro-300000-deaths

[róisín_dubh]

1. My heart is broken for my Brazilian friends and colleagues.

I remember being asked by a student in Fall 2018 what I thought about Bolsonaro. I said the same thing I'll say now. He violated human rights as part of the military dictatorship, and will do the same if he's elected. He's a monster.