BRAZILIANS who have made their home in Scotland can only watch in horror as president Jair Bolsonaro continues to make light of the coronavirus crisis while his country’s death toll skyrockets.
Pati MacPherson, who is raising two children with her husband, Murray, in the Scottish Borders, says the impact of the pandemic has been devastating.
She learned last week that the woman who was like a mother to her had died as a result of Covid, caught while she nursed someone else with the disease.
News of the death of Luisa Patatas has also caused shockwaves in Brazil where she was a popular professor of Portuguese.
MacPherson, who had known the 54-year-old since she was a young teenager and was one of her students, has been left reeling at her death and is angry at Bolsonaro’s failure to curb the spread of the virus.
On Wednesday the toll reached a record 1840 fatalities, taking the official number of deaths to nearly 260,000. The spread appears out of control in some areas, causing a humanitarian crisis as hospitals run out of beds, ventilators and even oxygen with bodies kept in refrigerated containers until they can be buried.
A leading scientist has now declared the Brazilian president as the “pandemic’s global public enemy No 1” because the tragedy unfolding in the country is causing an international risk as well as a domestic catastrophe.
Bolsonaro has so far promoted unproven remedies, sabotaged social distancing, mocked face masks and said his government would not be responsible if the Pfizer vaccine turned people into crocodiles or made women grow beards.
“Brazil is an open-air laboratory for the virus to proliferate and eventually create more lethal mutations,” warned Duke University neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis, who is tracking the crisis.
“This is about the world. It’s global. The policies that he is failing to put into practice jeopardise the fight against the pandemic in the entire planet.”
A concerning variant that originated in Brazil has already breached borders. Six cases have been detected in the UK of the variant first spotted in Manaus, the biggest city in the Brazilian Amazon which was hit by a complete healthcare breakdown in January when infections surged.
MacPherson who lost another friend aged just 34 to Covid before Christmas, said she felt a mix of anger and sadness at what was happening.
“It is chaotic,” she said. “The virus has spread widely and there is no proper assistance. Luisa died so fast. She had just finished her PhD, she was a very clever woman and she was taking care of herself but she was looking after a family member and ended up getting it.
“It is very hard. When I had my daughter Amora she came here to help me as I did not have a family member who could come. Amora is very sad because Luisa was her godmother. Everybody loved her.”
MacPherson said many people were losing friends and relatives.
“The trouble is we have a president who doesn’t care at all. I feel a mix of anger and sadness because everything that is happening now is because people voted for him so this is just a reflection of how failed our society is. But it is the people who always pay and mostly the poor people because the rich will always have ways to go to private hospitals.
“This is why most of the people who are dying are young, black, native or from another minority.”
Camila Rossi who lives in Edinburgh is also worrying about the situation in Brazil.
Many of her family have caught Covid but the most ill was her baby niece who lost a lot of weight.
“It was very stressful,” said Rossi. “There was nothing I could do except wait for news but thankfully she is okay now, although it took a while.”
Originally from Salvador, Rossi moved to Edinburgh three years ago from Italy.
She said the governor of her former region, Bahia, had imposed a lockdown because of the worsening crisis but as it was only for a short period she did not think it would be effective.
“He went on TV, kind of like how Nicola [Sturgeon] does, but he ended up getting emotional and crying and saying the hospitals just can’t deal with the amount of people any more so he was just asking, like begging, people to not go out, stay home, use the masks and social distance,” said Rossi who has not seen her family for over a year.
“I have been vaccinated because I work in social care but I can’t go and see them even if the restrictions are lifted because it is so out of control in Brazil there is still a chance I could bring something back with me. Not knowing when I can see them again is hard.”
Like MacPherson, Rossi is concerned about Bolsonaro’s handling of the crisis.
“He has been promoting parties and says black people should just get it. The states were trying to buy vaccines because the federal government was not doing it but he blocked them. A lot of people are very worried about his decisions and lack of action,” said Rossi.
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