Opinion – Pedro Hallal: Blind flight

In today’s column, I’m going to ask readers to have a little imagination.

For a moment, imagine yourself an airplane pilot.

You are not the airline’s first choice, but you were called urgently. Two previous drivers with good experience were too good by company standards and therefore were fired. A third pilot was called in just because he was very obedient, as well as a friend of the company owner’s friends. Obviously it failed.

You were then called to pilot. By the way, not just riding: riding in a storm.

Your lack of experience may be a problem, but you’re confident. That’s because right before you took over the flight, the agency that controls the airlines forced your company to buy state-of-the-art equipment, even against your boss’s wishes.

You take the flight and start relatively well. It tries to do things according to the manuals, even under pressure from the company owner to deny the protocols.

Your posture starts to generate some turmoil. You can’t stand upsetting your boss for fear of losing your job.

Halfway through, you’re so concerned about pleasing your boss that you’ve forgotten about the safety of your passengers.

And, in addition, it failed to take care of the latest generation equipment recently acquired by the company.

To make matters worse, the equipment suffers a blackout, likely caused by those boycotting the equipment.

Now you need to fly blind. No equipment, no security for passengers and still doing everything to please your boss.

As desperate as it may seem, this is the health situation in Brazil in the midst of the greatest pandemic of our generations. We’ve been flying blind for more than a week because those who should care about public information are taking the time to talk nonsense to please the deniers and their leaders.

The Ministry of Health watches ANVISA technicians from a box being threatened by fanatics after the message given by the leader of the denial. The Ministry of Health, which should protect technicians who are trying to save lives, is taking sides with the virus, against the Brazilian population.

It’s very difficult to know where this is going. Some cling to the fact that we have elections in 2022. But public health cannot wait: with the arrival of the omicron variant, it is even more important for Brazil to stop adopting a denial stance and adequately face the pandemic. Enough of kidding. Enough of kids playing at flying planes in storms.

Brazil urgently needs to understand that fighting the Covid-19 pandemic is more important than politicking. Many countries are facing new outbreaks. Due to the success of the vaccination, Brazil is having more time to prepare: but for that, it is necessary to work seriously, following science, not denial.

How many more Brazilians will need to die for the population to say ENOUGH?