Brazil's COVID-19 response

Partisan politics during the COVID-19 pandemic has hindered any efforts of working together with science for the greater good of Brazil. As a Brazilian who values life, I do not know what scares me more: contracting COVID-19, or Bolsonaro's Government trying to belittle the disease, forcing us out of the door to confront it, even when they know that we have not done enough as a country to make it safe for us to do so. Although COVID-19 is showing us all that we still have a long way to go to overcome this crisis, which, at the time of writing, has killed approximately 1000 people a day over the past 3 months, the more disheartening thought is that this government does not seem to care one way or another whether people are dying or not.

The Editorial¹ about Brazil's response to COVID-19 is an eye opener, and hopefully more people will understand why some of us believe that we are headed for a humanitarian disaster. All the president has to do is bring the nation together. I do not know a family who is not hurting in some way because of the COVID-19 crisis. Bolsonaro should praise local authorities and the efforts of Brazilian researchers to contain viral transmission, reduce suffering, and decrease the number of avoidable deaths. He should celebrate frontline health-care workers and endorse the efforts of the Brazilian Congress to relieve the financial hardship. Instead, he presents himself as a messiah to redeem us with use of the so-called miracle drug, chloroquine, in an attempt to huddle with some of his evangelical conservative allies to open our economy.

People feel so crushed, so tired, so sick, and so poor that some of us might go out and take our chances. Yes, as a country, Brazil must come together to give a definitive answer to the “So what?”¹ and clearly say, out with Bolsonaro.