The Daily - What Went Wrong in Brazil

Episode Date: July 2, 2020

Brazil has a long, distinguished history of successfully navigating public health crises. But in recent weeks, it has emerged as one of the world’s most severe coronavirus hot spots, second only to the United States. What went wrong? Guest: Ernesto Londoño, The Times’s Brazil bureau chiefFor more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: Here’s an overview of what you need to know about the coronavirus in Brazil.The country’s pioneering responses to past health crises, including AIDS and Zika, won global praise.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. Brazil has a long and distinguished history of navigating public health crises. Until now. Ernesto Landano. On what went wrong with the coronavirus.

It's Thursday, July 2nd. Okay, Ernesto, as we're talking, Brazil is second only to the U.S. in cases of COVID-19. Where do we need to start to understand how we got here? Well, Michael, while we're seeing kind of the first concerns about coronavirus rippling beyond China, it was the farthest thing from Brazilian spines. You know, it's the peak of summer in the southern hemisphere. And especially in February, people are in party mode. You know, all across Brazil in the big cities, people are celebrating carnival, which turns into this like weeks long celebration. You know, the beaches are thronged, there's block parties on the street where everybody's dancing and, you know, there's a lot of people kissing strangers.

Everybody is sort of a sweaty mess. There's a lot of heavy drinking. And, you know, just about the time when people are starting to sort of nurse their post-carnival hangover in late February, the first case is diagnosed in Sao Paulo, in Brazil's largest city. And the first case involves a man who had traveled home from Italy. And I don't think there were panic alarms that went off initially, but that quickly changed in early March. And it changed as a result of an extraordinary trip. in early March.

And it changed as a result of an extraordinary trip. The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, traveled with a large entourage to Florida, where he dined in Mar-a-Lago with President Trump. He's doing a fantastic job, great job. Brazil loves him, and the USA loves him. And as they come back from that trip, a number of people who have been part of that delegation start testing positive.

The latest sign of the spread of the virus is it is reaching and threatening the most powerful offices in the world. There are new virus concerns stemming from the meeting President Trump had with a delegation from Brazil in Florida. This video shows Mr. Trump last weekend at Mar-a-Lago next to a man who has since tested positive for the virus. He is the press secretary for Brazil's president.

We now know that a dozen Brazilians who were there have tested positive for the virus. So Brazil really becomes sort of consumed because their leadership, the people running the country, all of a sudden started falling sick. But even as, you know, the virus is clearly within the halls of power, the president is not expressing any alarm, quite the contrary. My obligation as head of state is to anticipate problems,

to bring the truth to the Brazilian people. But this truth should not incite panic. President Bolsonaro starts calling this virus, you know, something that the media was obsessed with in order to bring down his popularity numbers. He called it a fantasy. He said this is a measly cold. He said, even if I were to get this virus because I have an athlete's background, I would shake it off, you know, within days. This is nothing to worry about, and this is not something that justifies shutting the country down for. And on the other hand, you had mayors and governors saying, actually, we have to listen to the scientists.

We have to shut down businesses. We have to keep people home. We have to act now if we want to save lives. But it was really hard to enforce when you had the president trying to persuade Brazilians that this was all a mistake and that they shouldn't be listening to these local leaders. So what this did was it really polarized Brazilian society. You had people who are very loyal to the president essentially taking his side and sort of feeling empowered not to be quarantined, not to have to stay at feeling empowered not to be quarantined, not to have to stay at home, not to have to give up their jobs.

But on the other hand, you had a lot of people who despised the president and who became very worried. So by late March, you know, something really striking started happening across the country in big cities. People started protesting by banging pots from their windows. It was the only way that people who were actually taking this virus seriously and were worried about it could make their voices heard. So, you know, every night, like clockwork at about 8.30 p.m., I would hear from my window people banging pots and screaming, out with Bolsonaro, out with Bolsonaro. And it was a really striking sound.

It almost sounded primal. It was like these voices piercing through the night and voices that kind of conveyed a degree of despair and anguish. of despair and anguish. So that's when we start seeing that much of the country was not feeling safe in Bolsonaro's hands at a moment of crisis.

And did this approach from the president, from Bolsonaro, did it surprise you? Well, I think we've learned not to be terribly surprised by anything that Bolsonaro does. As you might remember, he's a far-right populist leader who has been very divisive ever since he was elected in 2018. But it was very surprising that Brazil would be caught flat-footed in a healthcare crisis of this magnitude.

And the reason for that is that the country has, in the past, risen to the challenge of very serious healthcare challenges and deployed its pretty robust and very sophisticated public healthcare service to go after really complicated problems with very innovative solutions. I'll give you a couple of examples. You know, back in the 90s, when the first HIV medicines were on the market and were allowing people to live healthy and productive lives, these drugs were very expensive for people in poor countries. And Brazil took a pretty maverick approach to this. Brazil essentially challenged

the drug companies and said, we think that this is a matter of human rights and people should have access to life-saving medicine, you know, without having to fill your pockets for years on end. So that argument was so powerful, it led to drug manufacturers to make concessions. And that led to these drugs becoming cheaper and more widely available. And Brazil scored a pretty significant victory on the world stage by taking what was a pretty bold stance at the time. More recently, Brazil had to contend with the Zika crisis, you know, which led to babies being born with deformities that were very, very difficult to manage.

And once again, it threw everything it had in the way of scientific expertise. And, you know, one of the most interesting solutions that Brazil came up with was genetically modified mosquitoes. And the plan was that by creating a genetically altered breed of mosquitoes, they would be preventing the dangerous types of mosquitoes from reproducing. And in doing so, sort of gradually stamp out Zika from areas where people were catching it. So, you know, in recent decades, Brazil has been regarded as a really top tier player when it came to standing up to really complicated health care challenges and to rising to the challenge, even for a country that has enormous problems. You know,

lots of people live in poverty, lots of people don't have access to clean water. But when it came to saving lives, Brazil has a proven track record of acting in a bold and decisive way. But this year, we've seen something very different. We'll be right back. So Ernesto, what explains why Brazil's leader would take this essentially denialist approach to the pandemic, especially in light of Brazil's very long history of so aggressively confronting public health crises. Bolsonaro was elected as a typical populist who took the reins of a country that had been reeling from a really brutal economic recession and was only starting to sort of sputter back

to life on his watch. So I think for him and his followers, the idea of an economic unraveling on his watch, considering how polarizing a figure he is, was just ruinous. You know, I think he felt that if businesses shut down and jobs disappeared in very significant numbers, his base of support would crumble. And I think another element that might inform Bolsonaro's behavior is he's somebody who has always looked up to President Trump for cues on how he should respond to things. And President Trump was also taking the approach that this virus was not that big a deal, that this was going to disappear by itself. appear by itself. So, you know, there's a striking similarity in how these two embattled leaders are selling this crisis to their basis and to the broader audience that listens to them. Right. And in both cases, and it sounds like especially for Bolsonaro, a strong economy is

the basis for his staying in office, for being a leader, and a strong economy and a very strong reaction to this pandemic are almost by definition incompatible. So in his mind, the greatest threat to his power is an economy that starts to sputter and stop, not a virus that may infect and start to kill the people of Brazil. That's right. But there's another element at play here. President Bolsonaro has been consumed by political scandals pretty much from the beginning of his administration.

And in recent months, he's begun to face some legislative and criminal investigations that have called into question his ability to serve out his term. One of these involves an investigation into a money laundering scheme that one of his sons is a target for. And the president is also now being investigated by the Supreme Court over his efforts to switch a police chief in what his former justice minister thought was an abuse of power and an effort to shield his family members and allies from corruption investigations. So as the virus really starts taking hold in the country, you're left with a president who's also in a really politically

precarious situation and who is clinging onto his hopes for a strong economy, an economy that won't go off the rails because he sees that as the key to his political survival. So given all that, Ernesto, how does Bolsonaro's approach here play out inside Brazil's public health system? What does it look like? Well, you have this extraordinary split-screen reality. On the one hand, you had the health minister going on television every night during press conferences. Nothing will influence this answer more than how Brazilian society will behave in the next month, in the next few days. You know, preaching the merits of social distancing, saying quarantines are the only tried and tested tool we can throw at this virus right now.

People who can stay at home should stay at home. Business shutdowns make perfect sense. So you essentially had a health minister who was adhering to the conventional wisdom and the scientific consensus on what countries should be doing. On the other hand, you had the president leaving the palace and joining pro-government demonstrations. You had him shaking hands. He certainly wasn't wearing a mask at that point. And the only thing he's really expressing interest in as sort of a cure for the virus is the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which he goes as far as ordering the armed

forces to mass produce, even though there's really no scientific consensus that this is a good idea. And there's some signals that it could actually be dangerous for coronavirus patients. So it became this unsustainable rift, you know, where people were asking the health minister, you know, how on earth should we expect Brazilians to listen to what you're asking them to do when they're seeing their president take the exact opposite approach. And it reaches a breaking point in mid-April. The health minister, in the midst of a rising epidemic that is starting to spiral out of control, gets fired. Huh.

We're here, me, Gabardo, my executive secretary. gets fired. You know, and on his way out, he delivered a pretty blistering indictment of the president's handling of this. And he essentially said, I stayed in as long as I could to try to keep Brazil on a responsible path, to try to sort of work within the margins of my authorities, but I can no longer serve under this president

because we are too far apart when it comes to our vision and our values on this. Thank you very much, thank you very much, the health ministry team. So with the first health minister getting tossed out, the president appoints a new minister who's a physician who had very little name recognition

and had never sort of run a large bureaucracy. He often looks like he has deer in the headlights look. Brazilians start making fun of him in memes online. It just never felt like he was getting any traction or laying out a vision. And just short of completing a month on the job, he convenes a press conference and says, A life is made of choices, and today I chose to leave.

I tell you that I did the best of me in these days I had here, in this period. This is as far as I can go. It's not easy to be in front of a ministry like this in such a difficult period. It doesn't really give a clear explanation for why he's leaving, but it's pretty clear that he, too, just couldn't live with being the face of this response. It was being led by the president. So this is definitively not going well. You're turning through two health ministers in the middle of a deadly pandemic.

Yeah, and the numbers are just spiraling. Brazil now has the most cases of coronavirus in South America, with more than 5,800 confirmed COVID-19 cases and growing. A new study out over the last couple of days showing that Brazil might have eight times more cases than have so far been recorded. Brazil has officially reported about 4,500 deaths, but the true number are believed to be much higher

due to the lack of testing. Topping 90,000 confirmed cases and with more than 6,000 deaths. 100,000 with more than 6,000 deaths. 100,000 with more than 7,000 deaths. Brazil now has more confirmed coronavirus deaths than China. You know, at this point... Well, as the number of coronavirus cases goes up in Brazil, so does the threat to communities in the Amazon region.

You start seeing real strain in some states. Already, the biggest city, Manaus, has seen its health system collapse. Amazon region. You start seeing real strain in some states. Already the biggest city, Manaus, has seen its health system collapse. Up in the Amazon, for example, a grey digger started digging mass graves because people were dying so quickly that officials were completely overwhelmed at hospitals and funeral homes. In Rio de Janeiro, hundreds of men, women and children stood on a line to get food and water. So...

Health systems across the country are struggling. You know, across the country in some cities, panic really starts setting in. But experts don't expect Brazil to reach the peak for a few weeks yet. And at the national level, you know, the health ministry is without a minister. And instead of appointing another expert in the field, the president leaves the ministry in the hands of an active duty army general who was an expert in logistics but had no real track record when it came to medicine.

And one of the first things the ministry does when it is essentially run by this Army General is endorse this anti-malaria pill, hydroxychloroquine, and say that healthcare professionals in the country should give it to all coronavirus patients who want it at any stage of contagion. So on his third try, he finally found a health minister willing to take that position. Absolutely. And he had a general on the job, and the general had to take orders from the president. And has Bolsonaro backtracked at all as these infection numbers have surged, as the death toll has risen? Or has he stayed with this same approach as he started with? There have been times when he has acknowledged that this is

a very significant problem and this is a crisis. But he has been very consistent in saying that it is crucial to save the economy and to put economic recovery ahead of fighting the virus. At one point when there had been sort of a milestone in the death toll, somebody asked him outside the palace what he thought. And he said, so what? What do you want me to do? My name might be Messiah, which was a reference to his middle name, but I'm not here to perform miracles.

Earlier this month, Bolsonaro said, I regret the loss of life, but at the end of the day, this is everybody's destiny. Everybody eventually dies, is what he's saying. Yes. So he hasn't really backtracked. And I think, you know, in the long run, what some political experts think is that he is betting on the possibility that when the real economic pain is felt, you know, six months, a year down the road, when it becomes clear just how big of a beating Brazilians took, that Brazilians may take out their wrath on the governors and the mayors who imposed these quarantines. governors and the mayors who imposed these quarantines, and that the president may be able to sort of carve out a role for himself as the person who consistently wanted to save jobs, wanted to keep the economy on track. And I think it's too early to tell whether,

as a political strategy, that may pay dividends down the road. Ernesto, I'm curious if you think that given Brazil's history of beating back public health crises, that under different leadership, not a president like Bolsonaro who is skeptical of the science and who explicitly puts economics over public health, that Brazil would be in a very different place right now? Well, I think it bears watching what other countries in the region have done. And there's cases where governments had very decisive and well thought out responses that are wrestling with very high numbers. So there's something kind of mystifying about where this virus strikes with wrath, even in the face of a decisive and sophisticated response. I think one common theme we're seeing that certainly applies to Brazil is, you know, countries with very stark inequality have had a harder time reining the virus in. You have to think about kind of the way Brazilian cities are laid out. You have many Brazilians living in impoverished, teeming communities

where people are sort of stacked up together, where they live numerous families to a small dwelling. And this virus has underscored the privilege some Brazilians have in adhering to conventional social distancing norms. And the extent to which for many Brazilians, for millions of them, it's just not a possibility. to which for many Brazilians, for millions of them, it's just not a possibility. But there's no question that Brazil had the expertise, had a track record of responding to healthcare challenges in a really decisive way. And it never really mounted a response that was coherent or sophisticated. It's been mired in this political fight that has prevented it from

having a plan that makes sense to people, a plan it can explain to its population. At the end of the day, without a clear national policy, without a political consensus, and without effective enforcement mechanisms for some of these quarantines and lockdowns, there was no reigning in the virus. But pretty much everybody I spoke to who has spent years working in healthcare policy in Brazil said, you know, we were equipped and ready and trained to rise to the challenge. There was so much we could have done in the precious early days of the epidemic to strike back, to prepare, and to save lives.

Ernesto, thank you very much. We appreciate it. My pleasure, Michael. and the number of deaths has surpassed 60,000, confirming Brazil's outbreak as the second worst in the world after the United States. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. So I want to make very clear, we cannot go ahead at this point in time with indoor dining in New York City. Look, even a week ago, honestly, I was hopeful we could. But the news we have gotten from around the country gets worse and worse all the time. As U.S. infections continue to break records, New York City delayed a plan to resume indoor dining. Miami Beach reinstated a curfew to keep residents from congregating at night.

And California shut down bars and indoor dining in 19 counties. During a news conference on Wednesday, California's governor, Gavin Newsom, said that he knew the decision would be disappointing. And I deeply respect people's liberty, their desire to go back to the way things once were, but I cannot impress upon you more our actions have an impact on other people. As of Wednesday night, the U.S. death toll from the virus neared 128,000.

And... A new national security law imposed on Hong Kong by China was put to the test on Wednesday as thousands of protesters took to the streets there demanding greater freedom and independence from China. The law, which went into effect on Tuesday, forbids a wide variety of activities, including chanting slogans and carrying banners that China considers seditious. At times citing the new law, police arrested about 370 people, including a 15-year-old girl waving a flag calling for Hong Kong's independence. The Daily is made by Theo Balcom, Andy Mills, Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lindsay Garrison,

Annie Brown, Claire Tennisgetter, Paige Cowan, Michael Simon-Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Wendy Doerr, Chris Wood, Jessica Chung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Lee Young, Jonathan Wolfe, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Mark George, Luke Vanderploeg, Adiza Egan, Kelly Prime, Julia Longoria, Thank you. Mike Benoit, Bianca Gaver, Aastha Chaturvedi, and Rochelle Banja. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Michaela Bouchard, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Nora Keller, and Liz Morricone. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro.

See you on Monday after the holiday.