“Thevirusishere,”Bolsonaro said
aftervisitingshopsone Sunday.
“We’regoingtohaveto face it, but face
itlikeaf---ing man”
BloombergBusinessweek June 29, 2020
Bolsonaro’sofficedidnotrespondtorequestsforcomment
onthisstory.Inawrittenresponsetoquestions,Brazil’sHealth
Ministrysaidit’sactedaggressivelytotestpatientsandadd
intensive-carebeds,protectivegear,andventilatorsacrossthe
country,spendingmorethan11 billionreais($2.1billion)sofar.
MostlocalandstateleadershaveignoredBolsonaro’spushto
endlockdowns.Brazilhasa federalsystem,andgovernorshave
widepowersoverpublichealth.Buthiscontinueddismissalof
thepandemic’sseriousnesshasundermineddistancingmea-
sures,whilemismanagementandcorruptionatalllevelsofgov-
ernmenthavepreventedhelpfromgettingtowhereit’sneeded.
Theconsequencesaresevere.InPará,a vastandunder-
developedstate that neighborsMaranhão, Covid-19has
beenkillingabout 50 outofevery100,000citizens,more
thandoublethenationalaverage.“Isawpeoplegettingto
thehospitalwithfamilymembersalreadydeadinthepas-
sengerseat,peoplegivenCPRonthesidewalksbecausethe
hospitalsarefull,”saysAlbertoBeltrame,thestatehealth
secretary.OnedayinApril,hevisitedthemorgueinthecap-
ital,Belém.“Therewere 120 bodies,scatteredeverywhere.
It’ssomethingyou’dseeina war.”Astheviruscontinuesto
spread,Brazilmaybeturningintothetrueworst-casesce-
nario,a laboratoryforwhathappenswhena deadlyand
little-understoodpathogenspreadswithoutmuchrestriction.
Unlike past plagues, the coronavirus has spread in
substantialpartfromtherichtothepoor,withprosperous
andwell-connectedglobalcities—Milan,London,NewYork—
amongtheearliesthotspotsoutsideChina.ThestoryinBrazil
wassimilar.ThefirstclustersemergedinSãoPaulo,Brazil’s
financialcapital,inearlyMarchaswealthyresidentsreturned
fromoverseastrips.
Oneofthefirstso-calledsuperspreadereventswasthewed-
dingofa socialmediastar,heldata beachsideresortinBahia
stateonMarch7. A 27-year-oldSãoPaulolawyernamedPedro
Pacífico—anInstagrampersonalityhimself,withhundredsof
thousandsoffollowersfora feeddevotedmainlytoliterary
recommendations—was one of the guests. He felt lousy when
he got home but figured he had an exceptionally bad hangover.
When he found out that another guest had been diagnosed
with Covid-19, Pacífico went for a test. He had it, too—as, he
gradually learned, did about 15 of his friends. But at that point,
Pacífico says over a video call, the disease seemed more like a
nuisance than a threat. He isolated at home, suggesting quar-
antine reading to his followers and trading virus stories with
other well-off paulistanos. “It was the novelty of it,” Pacífico
says. “No one saw it coming, or thought it would be so bad.”
On the weekend of the Bahia wedding, Bolsonaro was in
Florida,visitingTrumpatMar-a-LagoinPalmBeach.Thetwo
leaders’entouragestooknorealprecautions,shakinghandsand
hugging as usual. The first person to test positive after return-
ing home was Fabio Wajngarten, Bolsonaro’s communications
chief. As everyone who deals with him knows, Wajngarten is
what Jerry Seinfeld would call a close talker, with a habit of lean-
ing in when he speaks. Five of the eight people who sat at his
table at a Mar-a-Lago dinner tested positive; in all, 30 people
on the trip got sick. One was Alexandre Fernandes, an athletic
44-year-old who’s developing a grain-export terminal in south-
ern Brazil. After four days isolating in his apartment, Fernandes
was so weak he couldn’t walk to the bathroom. He went to the
hospital, where he was placed in intensive care. “I couldn’t pull
the covers up in bed,” he says. At one point doctors thought he
wouldn’t make it: “The nurse had to help me hold the phone so
I could FaceTime with my daughters to say goodbye.”
Even as the virus spread through his inner circle, the pres-
ident was sending contradictory signals. On March 12 he asked
supporters to call off planned rallies to support his govern-
ment—but then turned up at one in Brasília anyway, unmasked
and fist-bumping with attendees. Later that month he urged
state governors to curb their quarantines and claimed that,
even though he’s 65, as a “former athlete” he had nothing to
fearfromCovid-19.“Thevirusis here,”hesaidafterwalking
aroundvisitingshopsoneSunday.“We’regoingtohavetoface
it,butfaceit likeaf---ing man.”
Still, in those early weeks, Brazilians took heart in the
actionsofthehealthminister,a 55-year-olddoctornamedLuiz
HenriqueMandetta.Hespokecalmlytothepressalmostdaily,
presentingthelatestdataandpushinglawmakers to buy ven-
tilators and face masks. Mandetta acknowledged that the virus
was a severe threat that could be contained only through dis-
tancing measures and intensive preparation. He also said that
counting on unproven treatments such as chloroquine—being
heavily promoted at the time by Bolsonaro and his support-
ers, mimicking a similar campaign by Trump—was counter-
productive or even dangerous.
During a visit to the site of a temporary hospital near
Brasília in mid-April, Mandetta stood to one side as the presi-
dent walked into a dense crowd of fans, some of them climb-
ing over each other to get a better look. One woman asked
him to autograph her soccer jersey; after Bolsonaro obliged,
she leaned in and kissed his hand. In a TV interview the next
day, Mandetta said it was “clearly a mistake” that people were
“going into bakeries and markets and putting themselves in
crowded situations.” He didn’t name Bolsonaro, but he didn’t
have to. A few days later he was fired.
Mandetta’s replacement, an oncologist named Nelson Teich,
quit after less than a month. He was replaced by a general—
Bolsonaro is a former army officer and has named soldiers
to several top posts—with no medical experience. With the
national caseload nearing 300,000, the ministry issued guide-
lines allowing doctors in the public-health system to prescribe
chloroquine and its sister drug, hydroxychloroquine, for even51