With 129,000 Deaths and Declining GDP, Bolsonaro Says Brazil Beats Pandemic

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – President Jair Bolsonaro said yesterday that Brazil is “virtually beating the coronavirus pandemic“. The statement was made in the city of São Desidério, in Bahia, where he visited works of the West-East Integration Railroad. He failed to mention the fact that Covid-19 has already killed almost 130,000 people in Brazil – the second-worst record in the world.

In his closing speech, Bolsonaro also listed federal government measures in the economic area that, according to him, minimized the pandemic’s negative impact. In the second semester, the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) dropped by 9.7 percent, and the country went into recession.

“We are virtually beating the pandemic. The government did everything to minimize the negative impact, either with the emergency aid, which reached 65 million people in Brazil, or with incentives to micro and small companies, and massively investing in the environment and resources so that governors and mayors would be equipped to assist the health area in attending the potentially infected”, he said.

The credit line mentioned by the President experienced operational issues since its conception and many companies eventually closed their doors because they were unable to secure the resources in time to sustain their activities during the social isolation period. The financial injection only effectively occurred in July.

“We are now starting to see, particularly in the media abroad – which is difficult to see here – that Brazil was one of the countries that suffered the least from the pandemic, given the measures taken by the federal government,” commented the head of the federal executive branch.

Bolsonaro has maintained that Brazil has become a stand-out in the fight against the health crisis caused by Covid-19 while disregarding or downplaying statistics of the disease in the country. Three weeks ago, he attended a ceremony at the Planalto Palace named “Brazil beating Covid”. The event proved to be a platform for the defense of chloroquine.

The President also said that the foreign media have praised Brazil, while not mentioning sources. However, the tone observed in some of the major foreign newspapers has been critical of Brazilian politics.

On August 26th, the president had already employed the same strategy when he stated that, in his opinion, Brazil was among the countries that best fought the coronavirus.

Days earlier, at an event alongside Economy Minister Paulo Guedes, he made a similar statement. “While almost everything was closed, we did not stop, working and seeking means for jobs not to be closed. And our proposals were exceptional. In my opinion, I didn’t see anyone in the world who better tackled this issue than our government”.

With over 129,000 deaths by Covid-19, Brazil is second only to the United States in absolute figures. There are over four million recorded cases of the disease, the third-highest number in the world, behind only the US and India.

Source: UOL