'So what?': Bolsonaro shrugs off Brazil's rising coronavirus death toll

[Resurgence]

More than 5,000 Brazilians have lost their lives to the coronavirus – even more people than in China, if its official statistics are to be believed.

But on Tuesday night Brazil’s president shrugged off the news. “So what?” Jair Bolsonaro told reporters when asked about the record 474 deaths that day. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”

Bolsonaro’s 11-word response – the latest in a series of remarks belittling the pandemic – sparked immediate fury. One newspaper, the Estado de Minas, stamped the president’s words on to a black front page beside Brazil’s death toll: 5,017.

“Bolsonaro isn’t just an awful politician and a bad president, he’s a despicable human being,” tweeted Marcelo Freixo, a leftwing opponent.

“My name’s Messiah,” Bolsonaro also told reporters on Tuesday, in reference to his second name, Messias. “But I can’t work miracles.”

A wave of disgust swept over social media as word of the president’s comments spread. 

“A sociopath,” tweeted the musician Nando Moura. 

“What a tragedy,” wrote the journalist Sônia Bridi.

“It’s a mockery. An insult. It is intolerable,” tweeted Mariliz Pereira Jorge, a scriptwriter and commentator.

Another critic superimposed Bolsonaro’s words on to a photograph of the muddy graves into which scores of Brazilian bodies are being deposited each day.

“Bolsonaro wants to turn Brazil into the Republic of So What,” the political commentator Bernardo Mello Franco wrote in his column on Wednesday.

The president’s son Carlos Bolsonaro claimed on Twitter that his father’s comments were being distorted by liberal journalists seeking to destroy his reputation.

Since Brazil confirmed its first coronavirus case on 26 February, Bolsonaro has continually minimized the pandemic, rejecting media “hysteria” over its dangers and suggesting Brazilians could swim in excrement and emerge unscathed.

The Trump-admiring populist has also purposefully undermined social distancing guidelines, mingling with supporters and sacking his health minister on 16 April after he publicly challenged the president’s behavior.

Last week, Bolsonaro’s popular justice minister, Sergio Moro, resigned from government, partly as a result of the president’s anti-scientific stance on Covid-19, according to one person who knows him.

There is no escaping the scale of the tragedy unfolding in Brazil, with daily images of gravediggers in protective suits emerging from some of the worst-hit cities, including Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Recife and Manaus.

As Bolsonaro made his remarks, newspapers and television programs filled with stories about the mothers, fathers, sons and daughters losing their lives to the pandemic.

In Rio, the victims included Ana Maria, a 56-year-old nursing assistant who had worked in one of the city’s biggest public hospitals and was laid to rest on Tuesday by men in white suits.

“She gave everything to her job until the very end,” her daughter Taina told Associated Press.

In Vila Operária, a redbrick favela to the 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 into poor regions, having initially affected middle- and upper-class areas – could wreak havoc on Brazil’s most deprived and vulnerable communities.

“I’m scared,” Josiete Pereira do Carmo, who lost her mother and three uncles, told one local TV network. “We can’t lose anyone else.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/a...death-toll

[CaptButler]

I was watching a live feed of a music performance on YouTube the other day.  It seemed like at least two thirds of the comments were "fora bolsonaro".  I don't know what that means, but I can pretty much guess.  

[soulcity]

There are +200 million people in Brazil and you want to shut down the nation's economy for 5,000 dead?

In the United States we shut down the nation for +100k dead and look at mess that it's created.

People are rioting and looting not just because of George Floyd's killing but also because people were put under house arrest for the crime of being healthy.

[waregim]

In the face of sheer incoompetence the lockdowns became necessary.

The proper method would have been treating this like a chem warfare scenario and providing prople with protective gear, and hand sterilizers (UV-C) and sent everyone back to work, with many making the stuff WPA style.

But who can let a perfectly good disaster go to waste?

[dueda]

..."fora bolsonaro"...

Direct translation would be the imperative form of "out"; meaning "go home" or "get off". Common exclamation of discontent with performance, down South.

[Executive]

Here in the semi-United States, I remember during the 8 years of Obama that the only people who had to wear masks when maybe 3 or 4 different major viruses hit were medical professionals and their patients. At most there were 12,000 deaths from the Swine Flu vs. what is now over 110,000 and rising from Coronavirus in this country.

It's disappointing and very sad....but not surprising how badly the Trump administration has handled COVID-19. What's surprising is how the Cult of Trump are stupid enough to following his example of not wearing masks -- particularly in large gatherings of people. This never should have become political, but it was only a matter of time...

[soulcity]

Trump is the only hope for the free world. Everyone else is just a stinking communist.

[Lipex]

Bolsonaro is an embarrassing fool and a clown just like 'Death Toll Donald'. 115,000 dead in USA and 40,000 dead in Brazil. With these 2 idiots in charge, you will just keep stacking up the bodies.

[dueda]

Maybe a little purge and the cleanliness paranoia aren't so bad. I always liked the idea of global population reduction, like 6 billion deaths in just a year. This planet can't keep up with us.

[Executive]

Trump is the only hope for the free world. Everyone else is just a stinking communist.

The world isn't "free" -- there's a price to pay for everything.   Trump has no hope, and after he loses in November let's hope that he and / or his administration don't do too much additional damage to this country in their last 2 months.   He has crimes to answer for, including money-laundering, bank wire fraud, tax evasion, misappropriation of government funds, and much more.  Donald is lucky that the statute of limitations by at least 16 women accusing him of sexual assault are all long expired, and no doubt much of the other law-breaking he's done over the years.  But whether the Biden administration goes after him in 2021 or not, he has the District Attorney in New York and other states to answer to.....