Front Burner - As Bolsonaro downplays COVID-19, Brazil nears 2 million cases

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

Brazil is nearing two million confirmed cases of COVID-19. The country is second to only the United States in its number of cases and deaths and, recently, Brazil's leader himself tested positive. Despite this, President Jair Bolsonaro continues to downplay the threat of the virus. Today on Front Burner, we're joined by Gustavo Ribiero, a journalist with the Brazilian Report and host of the Explaining Brazil podcast. He'll tell us how COVID-19 overtook Brazil, and why he thinks its president is unlikely to acknowledge the danger.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Josh Bloch. Maybe you've seen this video. It shows the president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, outside his home. In the shot, you can't see the reporters, but you can see their bare hands, holding microphones up to his masked mouth.

Bolsonaro says, it was positive, it was positive. He's talking about his COVID test results. Bolsonaro goes on a bit more, about how he started to feel under the weather a few days prior, and about how he's taking hydroxychloroquine as treatment. Then he says, I'm going to back up a little bit. Give me some space here. He takes a few steps back, removes his mask, and says, see my face? I'm doing well. Thank God. While Brazil is nearing 2 million cases of COVID-19, the country is second to only the

United States in the number of cases and deaths. And all the while, President Bolsonaro has downplayed the disease's severity, calling it the sniffle. If I was to be infected with the virus, I would not have to worry. I wouldn't feel it. It would be like a little flu. He said it was a little flu, and now he has to live with this little flu. Now that Bolsonaro has COVID, he's running the country by video call, practicing the social distancing measures he pressured his states to abandon. But that doesn't mean he's changed course. Today, I'm talking to Gustavo Ribeiro, a journalist with the Brazilian

Report and host of the Explaining Brazil podcast, about why he fears that the situation could get much, much worse. I'm Josh Bloch. This is FrontBurner. Hello, Gustavo. Hi, thanks for having me. I want to ask you, what went through your mind when you watched President Jair Bolsonaro announcing that he had been diagnosed with coronavirus live on television? It was like daytime trash television. He had tipped off reporters on the previous day that he might have the coronavirus.

And then he invited the two networks he likes the most to break the information to the audience. So it was entertainment. It was not a matter of public health. It was not a matter of transparency with citizens. It was a matter of putting up a show. And that is true to form by Bolsonaro. Let's say he's trying to make lemonade out of the coronavirus. He's trying to make this coronavirus infection have the same effect on his political popularity as the stabbing he suffered during the 2018 presidential election had. So Bolsonaro was already one of the top candidates in 2018 and then he was stabbed.

And he nearly died. That had a major positive effect on his campaign for two things. One, other candidates couldn't trash someone who was almost dying on the hospital bed. And two, he got to skip every single debate and he was performing terribly. was performing terribly. So he managed to control the narrative in the most controlled space possible, his social media. And that's what he seems to be trying to do now. One, get the sympathy out of voters. And then two, he's trying to make himself the poster child of every single one of his talking points from the beginning of the pandemic. So when he announced that he had the coronavirus, he immediately touted hydroxychloroquine, saying that he didn't look ill because he was taking the drug. The president of Brazil

continues to treat his COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine and other vitamins. Posting a video of himself taking hydroxychloroquine with a thumbs up and a smile. Hydroxychloroquine. And that is an anti-malarial drug with absolutely no proven efficacy against COVID-19. He has once again said that social isolation is useless because nearly every single Brazilian is going to catch the virus eventually. So why just postpone, just kick the can and let's just face it. had one third of the electorate who back Bolsonaro no matter what, saying that, OK, this is good because he will prove that this is just a sniffles. He will prove that it's just like catching rain. It might be dangerous for some, but for most people, it's nothing. I mean, he certainly does seem to have been quite casual about his response to contracting COVID-19.

He said he felt fine. He took off his mask in front of all those reporters. He's been sued by that, by the Brazilian Association of Press. It plans to launch a legal action saying that the president endangered its journalists in that small news conference. So, I mean, what does that say? Like his response to his own diagnosis, how does that reflect how he has responded to this disease in Brazil at large? He has been 100% consistent.

Don't expect Bolsonaro to pull a Boris Johnson and then moderate after catching the coronavirus. We must stay alert. We must continue to control the virus and save lives. From day one, Bolsonaro has belittled the virus. He was actually ordered by a court to start wearing masks in public. He had gone out without a mask a bunch of times, was wading right into the crowds of mostly unmasked supporters. He recently argued that while it's regrettable people are dying, more will die if lockdowns destroy the economy.

He has been dismissive of people who died. At one point when the death curve was going up and up, he was asked about it and he said, So what? Everybody is going to die. alas, that's part of life. It has been two months since the president last named a true health minister to the country. Now we have an interim minister who is an army general with absolutely no medical background. Well, so can you give me a snapshot right now of the state of coronavirus in Brazil? So right now, for the past month or so, deaths seem to have plateaued at around 1,000 new deaths per day. The problem is data about the coronavirus in Brazil is extremely unreliable. We don't test nearly enough. Data is not standardized. The health ministry has never fulfilled its role of coordinating the monitoring efforts.

So each state has its own method of counting cases, suspected cases. So it's impossible to know. Like you mentioned, Brazil's total tally of cases is nearing 2 million people. We have, at the Brazilian report report analyzed data of civil registries, and we have identified that, for instance, in Rio, in May 2020, the number of total deaths was eight times the average of the past four years. Not all of those deaths are coronavirus, but if you have like eightfold, the correlation is impossible not to do a cause-effect relationship. You know, these numbers are staggering. And I'm wondering if we could actually go back for a bit and you could describe for me the first cases of coronavirus in Brazil.

Where did they come from? So the virus didn't come to Brazil from Asia. It actually came from Italy, from wealthy people that were either on a business trip or on vacation. So the first COVID-19 death in the state of Rio de Janeiro is very telling of that dynamic. of that dynamic. It was a 63-year-old housemate who worked for a wealthy family in an upscale neighborhood in Rio. Officials say she contracted the virus

from her employer, who had been holidaying in Italy and fell ill on the return, but allegedly refused to inform her housekeeper of the risk of contamination. She began showing symptoms on March 16th. While at work, she then took a two-hour taxi back home in a countryside town outside of Rio. And since she was diabetic, she had a history of high blood pressure. She died on the following afternoon. I mean, that illustrates a lot how the coronavirus, instead of being a great equalizer,

it actually makes it more clear how unequal our society is. Right. You know, while others might have been able to stay home, work from home or not work at all, this housekeeper was continuing to go to work and had to go to work. Brazil has an extremely informal economy, which means that millions of people, it's not that they're paycheck to paycheck, but they actually have to earn their living on a daily basis. For those people, it is impossible to stay home because they don't have protection nets. They don't have social security. They don't have anything to rely on. And the government was very slow in reacting to that. The health system is nearing capacity.

The country lacks tests and equipment. And favelas, Brazil's sprawling slums, are hiring their own doctors. It took over a month for the government to draft a plan of a coronavirus emergency salary, around 110 US dollars, which is not a lot, but for millions of people, it is more money than they have ever seen in a full month. It has prevented millions of people from immediately falling below the poverty line. Interestingly, it has given some life to President Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro has been a very unpopular president, but thanks to this coronavirus emergency salary, he has gained the support of

lower income voters. Well, I wonder, given that, given his focus on the economy, how has he responded to these lockdowns imposed at a state level, which presumably would hurt the economy further? He has blamed state governors on that, because in Brazil, we are a federation. So local administrations have a lot of authority. It is on their jurisdiction to impose or not a lockdown. So he has used that to say the federal government has absolutely no responsibility for the economic crisis because the government opposed social isolation and locked those from day one. And if you're unemployed or if your company is approaching bankruptcy, that's because your state governor destroyed your business with his social isolation. The fact that he has undermined

the efficacy of these policies has contributed to the spread of the coronavirus for things to get so bad so quickly in Brazil. It's hard to attribute blame to specific people in crises like these, but I do believe it's safe to say that nobody did more for things to get so bad so quickly than our president. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years.

I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. I know Brazil has quite an impressive track record with how it's handled health crises in the past. And I wonder how Brazil's healthcare system is handling the pressure that's being put on it now by the coronavirus? We have an amazing public healthcare system, despite the fact it is massively underfunded. If you weren't for our universal public healthcare system, things would have collapsed everywhere. We have seen dreadful scenes in Amazon states.

One of Brazil's major issues is its indigenous population being really badly hit by coronavirus. If someone here does get very sick, there's no way of helping them immediately. I only got to see his funeral by video. It was so painful. It's something indescribable to look at your father's funeral on a phone. And the worst, it's not just him there. There are another four people in the same grave. Those are the areas where we don't have hospitals everywhere. We don't have intensive care units everywhere. So people, sometimes they have to get on a boat for hours in order to get treatment. get on a boat for hours in order to get treatment. But then in areas that are more densely populated,

take Sao Paulo, for instance, where I live, public health care network never collapsed. It got close to on a few occasions, but it held together. I understand that the Congress actually passed a bill to provide water and disinfectant and hospital beds to indigenous people. That's for this country's 850,000 indigenous natives. Last week, those efforts were vetoed by Jair Bolsonaro. Yes, he said that lawmakers failed to point out where the money would come from. And the thing is, we are seeing the coronavirus being extremely lethal among native populations. These are populations that on normal circumstances, they already face extreme hardship to get healthcare, to get food and water sometimes, this sort of outbreak.

It is particularly deadly among the elderly. And these are the members of the indigenous communities that are most responsible for transmitting traditions, for transmitting oral history of these people. for transmitting oral history of these people. So it's not only that the population is shrinking very rapidly, but there are also the risks of losing this cultural background for many of these groups. The indigenous leader was on a ventilator when his mother died of COVID-19. We have a very strong spirituality. So she was there

and took my hand and told me that I'll get out of this to take care of my people. Five days later, my father died. And so where things are really bad in Brazil, amongst indigenous communities, and also in the Amazon states, what are we seeing there? I mean, what does that actually look like? Well, the Amazon states were the first ones to collapse, and then we saw burial services just overburdened. The bodies are being buried together in these mass graves. They're left in containers. In many cities, authorities were forced to order mass graves to be dug, bodies to be piled one over the other.

Relatives of those who die say the names of those buried were being put in the wrong coffins. Manaus had an average of 28 to 35 burials per day. Now it's more than 120. In Manaus, which is the Amazon's biggest city, hospitals were using freezers to store bodies because morgues simply couldn't process the sheer amount of dead bodies that they were receiving, things seem to be less critical there right now. But the thing is, the coronavirus now is spreading fast in the interior of the country, and cases are taking up in many areas that were spared in the first wave of the outbreak. So in rural states, and these are where we have fewer intensive care units, fewer hospitals, which forces patients maybe to travel to big urban centers and then

become themselves vectors of the disease. And what worries a lot is that we are reopening everything in most states. So Sao Paulo today on July 13th is opening gyms, bars and restaurants are already open. And we are seeing in Rio, for instance, people just flocking to bars, not respecting social isolation, not wearing a mask. So we're doing everything we're not supposed to. And in the meantime, the coronavirus outbreak isn't showing any sign of slowing down in Brazil yet. Where do you see the situation heading? I believe we could head to a humanitarian crisis, because that's what you get when you have a sanitary emergency that is out of control.

And then you have millions of people out of a job and thousands of companies just going bankrupt. I think it's impossible to be optimistic about Brazil right now. about Brazil right now. And the president does not offer any kind of leadership that would give any hope that the worst can be avoided. It's disheartening to see that it took us 500 years to have a democracy and to see how fragile it is. We have had terrible administrations before Bolsonaro, but I would bet that none of them would act so dismissively of human life as this administration is acting right now. I was surprised to learn that, you know, in the absence of sports being played, that they've been playing rematches of Brazil's, you know, World Cup championships, but also they were playing the 2014 World Cup loss against Germany,

you know, the 7-1 defeat in the semifinals. He's got a goal. It's Brazil 1, Germany 7. And I have never seen a goal less celebrated in my life. What does it say that that is making it onto television right now as well? Well, in Brazil, ever since that dreadful day, when we have this kind of situation, we say politics is giving Brazilians a daily seven to one beating. And that's what we have right now. The coronavirus has given us an even worse beating that Germany gave us in 2014. And that was just football. Now this is serious. Thank you so much for speaking with

me today. My pleasure. I'm sorry, I just couldn't be more uplifting. Before I let you go today, another update on the WE Charity contract scandal. As you know, the ethics commissioner is investigating the liberals' now-canceled $900 million contract with the charity. And yesterday afternoon, Justin Trudeau apologized for not recusing himself from cabinet talks. When it came to this organization, this program, the involvement that I'd had in the past, and that my family has, should have had me remove myself from those discussions. And I'm sorry that I didn't. The prime minister's apology comes after revelations his mother and brother were both paid by the charity. Finance Minister Bill Morneau apologized too. His daughters also have connections to the charity. And Minister Bill Morneau apologized too. His daughters also have connections to the charity,

and he did not recuse himself either. That's all for today. I'm Josh Bloch. Thanks for listening to Frontburner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.