Opinion – Vinicius Torres Freire: Bolsonero, now Herod, doesn’t even pretend to govern anymore and ruins pile up

Ten days ago, little is known about the pace of the epidemic in the country. Ignorance has increased because of hacker attacks on Ministry of Health websites, which have so far not had a satisfactory fix. At this time when the world is busy with what to do with the serious threat of the omicron, we are a little more in the dark than usual. More on this later.

These computer thugs also attacked other government websites, such as those of the federal police. Criminal riots become routine; the fallen sites remain in ruins for an unacceptable time. Institutional security is a careless mess. It is commanded by Augusto Heleno, minister of the Institutional Security Cabinet, a general friend of the dictatorship and torture, and Jair Bolsonaro’s partner in coup campaigns.

Bolsonaro is less and less concerned with giving the impression that he governs. The federal budget at the moment is chopped up by the regents of the center and their favored ones, shredded in parish works and other millionaire funds for the reelection of these people. The government of Bolsonaro has no capacity to guide the budget law, when it does not participate in the raid and the looting. This type, who now occupies the seat of President of the Republic, almost only managed to arrange a readjustment for the police, his “base”. Bolsonaro is nothing but the worst councilor in the history of Brazil.

Bolsonaro asked the center for money to give the police a salary increase. Always Nero, Bolsonero, now he is also Herod. Campaign to harm the vaccination of children. Crashing in the polls, he struggles and spits out the rest of his poison in order to keep in the corral that 13% of the electorate that “always trusts” what he says (Datafolha data) and another amount of votes, the minimum not to be discarded in the electoral race. That is, he campaigns for his sect or nearly so.

What are the measures to contain a rebound of the epidemic, to avoid a possible invasion of the omicron? We don’t really know what’s going on, because of that depredation caused by hackers and because, in short, there was never even a national system of information and planning, of coordinated combat against Covid. Nor do we test or screen for disease properly.

As surges and peals are at first local, we can try to see there and here if the omicron is already doing damage. The number of hospitalized in ICUs in the city of São Paulo increases slightly. It had dropped to 111 ten days ago, it went back to 144 — yes, there were already more than 1,200 at the height of the epidemic, in April. The number of new internees across the state also rose again. It may be mere casual fluctuation. It could be something else.

When are we going to learn that we still need to take all the necessary precautions (mask, testing, ventilation, hygiene, vaccine, avoid crowding) and look at the data obsessively? Consider what is happening in Europe and the USA, with several closings of public activities and a very high number of deaths.

By biological luck, because of the size of the disgrace here (a lot of infection) and the late but quick vaccination, the delta did much less damage in Brazil than in the rich world. That may be the case with the omicron, but we just don’t know. Looks like it’s highly transmissible. In addition, there is a lot of research and discussion about the animal. Let’s wait to find out in practice, in the toss of death?

At the end of the year, there will be gatherings of families, friends, co-workers, larger gatherings, many irresponsible people, and a lot of travel. If the omicron is loose in São Paulo, it will spread throughout the country, including places in the North and Northeast with a low rate of vaccination.

Let’s play at Mega da Virada? In the Mega of Death