On a warm evening in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, held his head high and stared into the camera to address an expectant nation.
On a warm evening in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, held his head high and stared into the camera to address an expectant nation.
Coronavirus deaths had just ticked slowly up to 57 as millions tuned in to hear the government’s plans to combat the pandemic beginning to wreak havoc in Europe and the US.
What they got was a potent mix of denial and hostility. The president decried the « hysteria » of the press for spreading fear, dismissing the virus as a « little flu ». The man who came within a whisker of death just two years ago after he was stabbed on the campaign trail mustered a smirk as he claimed he would be immune from any of the disease’s severe symptoms due to his « past as an athlete ».
Two months and 340,000 official cases later, the so-called little flu has claimed the lives of at least 20,000 Brazilians, and probably many more. Over the past few days, the daily death toll has topped 1,000, putting the country among the worst-hit countries.
Brazil is the new centre of the global pandemic, recording higher daily averages than anywhere else in the world. Bodies line up to be buried in rich-red earth mass graves under heavy skies. Hospitals are at breaking point.
But the headache doesn’t end there for Mr Bolsonaro (65), a hard-right former army captain catapulted to power on a populist anti-corruption drive that gained him the nickname « Trump of the Tropics ».
