Bolsonaro has insulted much of the world. Now Brazil needs its help.

[Judi Lynn]

A man lights a candle next to a cross symbolizing victims of covid-19 in front of the National Congress in Brasilia. (Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)

By
Terrence McCoy
April 30, 2021 at 5:00 a.m. CDT


RIO DE JANEIRO — Two developing countries, enormous in population and geography, in the grip of devastating coronavirus outbreaks. Hospitals running out of supplies. Patients turned away. A new variant everywhere. Outside help desperately needed.

For India, upended by record infection rates, the world has responded. The White House this week touted the delivery of more than $100 million in supplies. Singapore and Thailand sent oxygen. Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the United Kingdom would do “all it can.”

But for Brazil, which has buried some 140,000 coronavirus victims in the past two months, the international response has been more muted. President Jair Bolsonaro in March called on international organizations to help. A group of state governors asked the United Nations for “humanitarian aid.” The Brazilian ambassador to the European Union begged two weeks ago for help: “It’s a race against time to save many lives in Brazil.”

But the response has largely been a shrug, criticism of Brazil’s missteps — and limited action, so far.
“What’s happening in Brazil is a tragedy that should have been prevented,” one member of the European Parliament told the Brazilian ambassador at a hearing this month. “But this [is a] tragedy that was based on wrong political decisions.”

. . .

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Brazil’s federal government has downplayed the severity of a virus that has maimed this country of 210 million. Bolsonaro has called on people to live their lives normally. Enough have listened — either because of poverty, politics or boredom — to undermine uneven containment measures. More than 400,000 Brazilians have died of covid-19, the worst humanitarian disaster in the nation’s history, and the world’s second-highest toll, behind only the United States.

More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/04/30/brazil-coronavirus-bolsonaro-india-vaccine/