Those were the stark comments of Brazilian cardiologist Dr. Ludhmila Abrahao Hajjar, who this past weekend met with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who was considering her for the post of the country’s Health Minister. She rejected the offer, telling the media: “My plans follow a line that’s different from the current government.” Brazil has vaccinated too few people, and the result has been “catastrophic,” Hajjar said in a recent interview. She also told the media that she had received death threats and been attacked at her hotel when Bolsonaro had her under consideration. When she protested about this to Bolsonaro, he glibly told her to stop complaining, that that was part of the job.
Dr. Hajjar is right. Brazil this weekend surpassed India in number of COVID infections, becoming the second-worst-hit country in the world after the U.S. At the same, yet another strain has emerged in several regions of Brazil, the Ministry of Science and Technology’s National Laboratory for Scientific Computing (LNCC) said on March 12. The doubly-contagious P.1 strain that emerged in northern Brazil’s state of Amazonas in November 2020 has brought the country’s health system to the point of utter collapse, with the help of the aggressively defiant do-nothing approach of President Jair Bolsonaro. The characteristics of the new strain are not yet known.
