The Brazilian Politics Thread

I'm about to say something phenomenally weird, but... can I just bring to attention how incredibly lucky Brazil has been, in the face of the coronavirus, to have such a horrible setup of a country?

Right now, there are 234 confirmed cases of the virus, most of them in São Paulo, as well as around 2 thousand suspected. Consider the size of the country itself, and look back at that number. We have less suspected cases than some countries of similar wealth have confirmed ones.

Mind you, not by lack of trying by certain parties, who shortly after being a suspected case went around in a parade, shaking people's hands and being generally stupid regarding the virus and their possible status as a vector for spreading the disease.

And ultimately, that falls to a lot of luck and a shit-ton more of bad national development. Primarily, because the whole known as Brazil is really two or three different countries: the south-southeast states, the strip of cities that follow the coastline up the north, and everybody inland from those two groups. That last group sees very little influx of people from the other two, while the second group saw their big spike of people end just shortly before the disease arrived in Brazil. And the main group, the south-southeast one, is really a huge amount of small to medium-sized cities, and a few large city centers, including Rio and São Paulo, and those population centers are where the disease has been seen the most, primarily the two big cities, since one is a huge trade/business center, and the other is the primary turism spot in the country.

Not only that, but the virus arrived here immediately after carnaval. One week earlier, it would have caught the festivities in full swing and have dissipated to every corner of the main part of the country. As it is, the virus arrived after everyone was already home, and only really picked up steam at the part of the year where vacations ended and school/work started, i.e. the moment of the year where people travel the least, and since things haven't yet gotten into full swing, it's rather simple to stop for the sake of quarantining everybody.

So ultimately, Brazil lucked the fuck out on this coronavirus thing, and mostly because, due to centuries of bad developmental decisions, centralization in a few cities over the entire rest of the country, and an underwhelming transit system in-between everything, we are far less developed and interconnected than we should be for a country this size, so spread was minimized. Italy, far smaller, is also more evenly spread-out than Brazil. So's France. The virus spread more easily in those countries. Here, most small cities I'm aware of have closed things off more as a preventive measure than as part of an actual quarantine.

Give it some weeks of preventive action by individual organizations (who have, admittedly, been doing a better job than I expected them to) and a general lack of panic, Brazil might weather this thing out far less affected than other countries, despite our president's efforts.

That is an amazing pagetopper

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Mar 16th 2020 at 10:57:24 AM

Interesting point. Indeed, we were incredibly lucky that, during the Carnival, the virus was still mostly restricted to Asian countries.

Meanwhile, I've lived to see our "beloved" governor of Rio preparing two hospitals (admittedly, with just a capacity of 300), telling people to stay away from public spaces and suggesting that interstate buses stop circulating. Because he's at odds with Bolsonaro, so any insanity from the latter is answered accordingly. Just saw it on TV; I'll post a link when possible.

Brazil has just had it's first death to Coronavirus (Link in PT-BR)

It was a 62-year old diabetic man.

Slightly less reputable sources have mentioned that the man was present at the parade where Bolsonaro went about hugging and handshaking people, but I wouldn't trust that information too much just yet.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Mar 18th 2020 at 11:14:31 AM

Granted, given Bolsonaro's actions on the coronavirus - downplaying the threat as "hysteria" and encouraging his supporters to go to public protests - I wouldn't be surprised if in the next few days and weeks you'll see a huge uptick of COVID-19.

We'd see it regardless I think, he will just make it worse.

A friend of mine works in some hospitals in the SP area (namely Albert Einstein Hospital, which has seven people interned for Coronavirus), and he has said the policy in pretty much all of them is not to test anyone (even if that person is undeniably showing symptoms) unless the person is in a risk group, so as to cloak the numbers and not overwhelm the hospitals. That is anecdotal, but my friend has no reason to lie, if he's correct and if this is a widespread policy in hospitals, the crisis is undeniably far worse than we imagine and the numbers are just being cloaked to look less bad.

Speaking of things going from bad to worse, The Government has authorized business to slash people's pays in half to avoid losses because, y'know, it's big business who'll suffer the most with this.

The government doing this kind of BS to mask numbers is not exclusive to us, it mostly a result of decades of underinvestment on public health biting us really hard in the ass. But sure enough, by "us" I mostly mean "those who can't afford decent health insurance and weren't the ones in charge of decisions".

But well, the result of all that crap is more people joining the ranks of previous Bozo voters who now see the crap we're being plunged into: the "panelaços" yesterday and the day before that weren't for nothing, I hope. Btw, how were things where you guys live? I've heard SP was awesome, with projectors and all.

Nothing of the sort where I live.

Edited by HailMuffins on Mar 19th 2020 at 11:17:16 AM

Lot of noise here yesterday, although no flashing lights. We're not that fancy.

Shitty thing about the businesses, though. One of the few times I'm actually glad I'm my own boss.

Anecdotal evidence should be taken with a grain of salt. But if this is happening in Brazil's hospitals...that's really bad. This means cases are being overlooked, meaning they'll be causing more untraceable community spread. This will spike the curve, not flatten it.

Yeah, the fact this is purely anecdotal is why I didn't really post it on the Coronavirus thread, but I felt it deserved to be at least mentioned here. It is definitely concerning for me (again, my friend has no reason to lie to me).

Also on the "paneçaços" there were only car horns and pan hitting here, no fireworks or fancier stuff. My friend was quite shocked to see it happening in Morumbi, at the heart of the already highly conservative São Paulo.

Personally, I just found it hypocrisy coming from many of the same people who did the same for Dilma in 2015 and gleefully voted for Bolsonaro but hey, better late than never.

My cousin is a general clinician in SP, I could ask him later about the testing policy.

So far no confirmed case in the SP police but there is probably a few Mikes with the disease already.

The command still considering to deliver sanitation kits to the patrols and forbid large reunio s inside police areas.

Edited by AngelusNox on Mar 20th 2020 at 10:04:10 AM

You guys watching this bullshit?

I suspect I am not. What are you talking about?

This one:

I presume this is in reference to Bolsonaro testing the boundaries to see if he could get a temporary measure to slash all pay to workers during the time they spend at home due to the crisis, instead telling companies to have those workers take from-home courses and call it "improving the workforce's capabilities". He tried that out yesterday and had to immediately scale it back. Might have tried something else today, I'm not watching the news too closely.

Or maybe about Olavo de Carvalho talking about how "there haven't been any proven deaths from Coronavirus, because thye haven't autopsied every organ in people who died in China". That was a prticular nugget of loveliness as well.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Mar 24th 2020 at 8:42:30 AM

Oh no, this is so much worse.

What. What.

TL;DW "The sensationalized media caused an unnecessary panic despite our best efforts to contain the virus, but they came around eventually. Don't worry, the virus will pass over soon. Also the virus is only really dangerous to old people, so why are we bothering to close schools again? Also because I'm a chad I'm not even worried about dying to the virus, at worst it will just be a minor cold and then I'll be fine"

Yeah I get wanting the population to not panic, but this is a joke.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Mar 24th 2020 at 7:50:10 AM

This isn't even not wanting the population to panic. This is passing himself as a strongman while telling everybody to go back to their normal lives, uncaring about the damage this will cause and being concerned only about maintaining the economy and the well-being of the market.

Fuck Bolsonaro.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Mar 24th 2020 at 8:49:24 AM

No, this is Bolsonaro following the footsteps of his crush Donald Trump.

Seriously, I have a 4 years old cousin and she has more sense than that guy does.

Edited by HailMuffins on Mar 24th 2020 at 8:54:23 AM

The part I found most ridiculous is the one where he says he's not worried about dying to the virus because of his past as an athlete.

Like, I'm pretty sure that's not how that works? It's either him trying to sound tough or he's just hilariously ignorant, most likely both.

It's him being a monster, is what it is.

Every politically uneducated family in the country is going to listen to him, and follow his advice, and go out there because the president told them to, and that might undo a good chunk of the preventive measures that have been keeping things relatively tame in Brazil concerning the pandemic.

And Bolsonaro and his friends will get their economy going again for a few days, which will be the only thing they'll care about.

Hopefully the pilling of bodies will speak louder.

Bright side, response has been negative thus far.

Edited by HailMuffins on Mar 24th 2020 at 8:59:41 AM

I've been really grim on this for a while now. Bolsonaro's actions have ranged from monstrously callous to actively genocidal. Downplaying the threat even while standing in front of it (and quite possibly being infected himself) is just scratching the surface, he has also had the edict that will set worker's right back to the 1950's and result in hundreds (if not thousands) destitute in this terrible time. It was a classic tactic: he put something absurd in the text (the suspension of salaries for four months) so he can back down and people will disregard everything else horrible on the document (i.e basically putting unions out to pasture and giving the employers freedom to wreak havoc with the workers).

He has also been consistently trying to slash welfare budgets for the Northeast and blocking medical equipment for the region. The Supreme Court has managed to block the former, but not the latter.

This government wants us dead, is the only explanation.

It's evil, plain and simple, and I grow weary of it and how his approval ratings are still so high (35% as of the latest research).