BUENOS AIRES — “The collateral damage can’t be worse than the disease. … Our mission is to save lives without neglecting jobs. … Hydroxychloroquine seems pretty effective.”
What may sound like a Donald Trump press briefing from a month ago, when U.S. deaths from COVID-19 had barely topped double digits, was actually Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro last week as his country logged its 200th fatality from the viral disease.
For weeks, Mr. Bolsonaro has not just downplayed but outright dismissed the COVID-19 pandemic as a “little flu.” That view that has put the “Trump of the Tropics” — a moniker the maverick conservative former legislator embraces — on a crash course with key governors, Congress and much of his own Cabinet.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s vice president, Gen. Hamilton Mourao, publicly contradicted his boss’ call to defy “mass confinement.”
Sao Paulo Gov. Joao Doria, a political rival, was less subtle. He said the president lacked “the mental fitness to lead the country.”
Mr. Bolsonaro’s address to the nation on March 31 was his most subdued yet. “The virus is a reality” and “our generation’s greatest challenge,” he acknowledged at one point. A day later, though, the leader of South America’s most populous nation again lashed out at governors who on their own have decreed commercial lockdowns and mandatory social distancing.
Following the lead of Brazil’s major South American neighbors, Argentina, Peru and Colombia, into a national quarantine thus seems out of the question, and as late as last week, his administration hammered home the Bolsonaro-coined slogan “Brazil can’t stop” with a near $1 million advertising campaign.
On Monday, Brazil’s reported cases of COVID-19 were a tiny fraction of those in the U.S. — 11,516 positive cases, 506 deaths and 127 patients who have recovered. But the curve has been climbing sharply since the last week of March, and public health professionals say there has likely been severe underreporting of cases in Brazil’s vast urban areas and poor, crowded favelas.
As elsewhere, Brazilian health officials are warning of a looming lack of hospital beds, masks, testing devices and trained staff, The Associated Press reported Friday.
As with Mr. Trump, Brazil’s president says a collapse of the economy presents its own health risks and that a rational balance must be struck. His dual mission, the nominally independent former army captain insists, is saving both lives and jobs.
“What about the peddler, the hawker, the meat-skewer vendor, the day laborer, the bricklayer’s mate, the truck driver and others who are self-employed?” he wondered aloud in his televised address, instructing his Cabinet to do all it can to minimize layoffs.
But his fiercely loyal base notwithstanding, many Brazilians are turned off by a president whom they view as a politically isolated “coronavirus denier.” For more than two weeks, thousands of residents across the country’s major cities have been banging pots and pans in protest every night.
Leaders across the world have faced agonizing choices over whether, when and how long to shut down normal life in hopes of containing the contagion. But even given the varied strategies and urgency with which major countries have fought COVID-19, Brazil under Mr. Bolsonaro stands out as an outlier.
Economic fallout
His handling of the coronavirus crisis, widely ridiculed and decried as irresponsible in equal measure by critics, seems to be driven by fears of how the economic side effects of mitigation measures will affect his political prospects.
“President Bolsonaro has had a total obsession with his reelection from his first day in office,” said former Ambassador Paulo Roberto de Almeida, who until last year led the Brazilian Foreign Ministry’s IPRI think tank.
In an ironic twist, the president’s reluctance to back the coronavirus guidelines issued by his own health minister, physician Luiz Henrique Mandetta, may have worsened the economic damage.
“It caused many difficulties in the field of health,” Mr. de Almeida said. “So there were shocks following the recommendations of the Health Ministry, which in turn had an economic impact.”
In another striking parallel with the U.S., Dr. Mandetta has emerged as Brazil’s equivalent of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Dr. Mandetta’s daily briefings, heavy on science and infection-avoiding advice, have become popular among ordinary Brazilians but have sparked tensions with the president. Mr. Bolsonaro recently remarked that his health minister at times “lacked humility.”
But what looks at times like self-sabotage on Mr. Bolsonaro’s part could also be an exercise in positioning, allowing him down the road to shift away blame for the inevitable economic fallout, said Jornal do Brasil Editor Clovis Saint-Clair, the author of one of the few book-length profiles of the 65-year-old president.
“For better or worse, the population is heeding the health ministry’s appeal for social distancing,” Mr. Saint-Clair said. “[But this] will give him a chance to say it’s not his problem — that it was state and local governments that were in favor of social distancing.”
Whatever Mr. Bolsonaro’s rationale, his comments have drawn harsh condemnation from dozens of professional medical associations and a rebuke from the government-run National Health Council, which labeled them an “affront” that put “thousands of lives at risk.”
But there are some, including some physicians, who empathize with Mr. Bolsonaro and appreciate his overall approach. Maria Luiza Moretti, an infectious disease physician at the University of Campinas Hospital, acknowledged the pressure and crosscurrents Mr. Bolsonaro is facing.
“I understand the president’s position,” she said. “People aren’t working; companies aren’t producing, selling. In the short term, there’s a limit to how much time we can keep that up.”
A former president of the Sao Paulo State Infectious Disease Society, Dr. Moretti and her team have been preparing for the coronavirus onslaught since January. As such, she noted, she was not sure what to make of Mr. Bolsonaro’s endorsement of hydroxychloroquine as a possible cure for COVID-19.
“We don’t have scientific data anywhere in the world that would justify the routine use” of the drug, she said.
Still, Mr. Bolsonaro has ordered Brazilian military labs to churn out 1 million doses of the anti-malaria drug, and Ms. Moretti conceded it might “encourage” patients with otherwise limited treatment options.
Truly needed, though, is authoritative information and an end to the government infighting, which further befuddles a spooked population, she said.
Beating the establishment
Mr. de Almeida and Mr. Saint-Clair were not hopeful that such calls would be heeded or that rumors about the imminent dismissal of Dr. Mandetta and other key Cabinet members would be quelled anytime soon.
Mr. Bolsonaro, again like Mr. Trump, won election by defeating the establishment powers in Brazil’s political system, with a political base that does not depend on support in Brasilia. The next general elections are not scheduled until October 2022.
“He sees all others as adversaries, competitors — [even] his own ministers,” Mr. de Almeida said. He added that Mr. Bolsonaro was increasingly under the spell of his adult sons — particularly Eduardo, a congressman, and Flavio, a senator — and his social media “hate Cabinet.”
“The most potent force in his life are his sons,” said Mr. Saint-Clair, “who in turn are being counseled by extreme right-wing groups.”
None of this sits particularly well with voters, and opinion polls suggest that Mr. Bolsonaro has lost the middle-class backing that propelled him to power in late 2018.
“Rational Bolsonaro supporters have been shocked by his attitude,” Mr. de Almeida said.
Those who hope that the “Trump of the Tropics” will imitate his American original and accept that Brazil, too, will have to do whatever it takes to curb the coronavirus should not hold their breaths.
“Bolsonaro has this bipolar characteristic,” Mr. de Almeida said, “that makes him heed reasonable recommendations one day and return to a position of denial the next.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.