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What should be a moment of celebration for any leader of a country, the arrival of vaccines that can put a stop to the worst health crisis of the century, in Brazil was experienced as a
political war
that had a clear defeat: President
Jair Bolsonaro
.
Brazil began to symbolically vaccinate on Sunday, but the one who appeared in the photo was not the president, but his main political enemy, the governor of the state of São Paulo,
João Doria
.
The umpteenth chapter of the 'vaccine war' began last Sunday afternoon, with the television broadcast of a meeting of the regulatory agency that was going to give its approval to the emergency use of the two vaccines that had requested it: that of
Oxford / AstraZeneca
and that of the Chinese laboratory
Sinovac
.
The live broadcast of a tedious technical meeting, as if it were a
reality show
, illustrates the extent to which the lack of clear political leadership has degraded the management of the pandemic in Brazil.
When the technicians finally gave the green light to the two vaccines, another show began: in a matter of minutes, the governor of São Paulo appeared in a hospital with a nurse who was going to give the first vaccine.
After the applause and excitement, the darts:
"It is a lesson for those who flirt with death and authoritarianism."
It was a political marketing masterpiece.
After months of tug of war.
Doria managed to snatch the photo from the government, he had managed to be the first to vaccinate in Brazil.
Bolsonaro was silent on a historic day for the country.
The dispute between Bolsonaro and Doria has been going on for a long time.
The two have their sights set on the
2022 elections
and their rivalry increased during the pandemic.
Doria stood up as a defender of the social isolation measures that Bolsonaro ridiculed and then bet heavily on the vaccine.
Faced with the inaction of the federal government, he decided to go it alone and months ago he signed an agreement with Sinovac.
The vaccine was tested in Brazil on thousands of volunteers and in November the first doses began to arrive.
The objective was to buy time, to start vaccinating as soon as there was authorization.
Bolsonaro, for his part, after much internal pressure, ended up signing an agreement with the Oxford vaccine and AstraZeneca and dedicated himself to putting the "Doria vaccine" on the wheel.
He said he would "never" buy Chinese vaccines and hailed the death of a volunteer as a success, which forced the suspension of clinical trials.
It was quickly known that it had been a suicide and that there was no relation to the Sinovac vaccine.
Doria opted for the vaccine to present himself to the country as the responsible manager that managed to stop the pandemic, and did not skimp on artificial image operations that gave him a presidential air, covering with the Brazilian flag the first shipments that came down from the plane from China.
2021 began and São Paulo already had
six million doses
on Brazilian soil.
The central government, none.
At the last minute, seeing Doria take the lead, Bolsonaro tried to charter a plane to bring in two million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine made in India.
It took a delicate diplomatic intervention to convince the Indian government.
At first, Prime Minister Narendra Modi accepted, but backed off when Bolsonaro announced the importation with great fanfare, causing unrest in the Indian public.
In the end, the Brazilian government plane, which was already ready to fly to Mumbai, stayed in Brazil and was used to carry oxygen cylinders to the city of Manaus, whose hospitals have been totally collapsed for days.
Bolsonaro was running out of his own vaccines
.
Only "those of Doria" remained.
After denying the "Chinese vaccine" for months, Bolsonaro desperately tried to cling to it.
In the end, the vaccines obtained by São Paulo became part of the National Immunization Plan of the Ministry of Health, which this Monday began to distribute them throughout Brazil.
"The vaccine is from Brazil, it is not from any governor,"
Bolsonaro said Monday.
He said it with a small mouth, as if knowing that what he has to do now is to defend something he does not believe in.
Bolsonaro and his people continue to spread blatant half-truths and lies about the vaccine on social media and advocate for "early treatment" for Covid-19 patients with chloroquine and other proven useless drugs.
Anything goes as long as Doria doesn't hang up the medal.
This whole political war led to a hasty start to vaccination.
A few days ago, the Minister of Health, the military general Eduardo Pazuello, was asked what day the vaccination would begin in Brazil.
"On D-day and H-hour
,
" he
replied without blushing.
When D-day arrived, the ministry still did not know how to distribute the vaccines, whether proportionally based on the number of inhabitants or prioritizing the regions with the highest incidence of cases.
In the midst of the chaos, another mad race began, that of the local authorities wanting to appear next to the first immunized.
Rio de Janeiro announced that the first vaccine would be placed at the foot of the Christ the Redeemer statue when it was not even known if the plane with the doses would arrive in time for the photo.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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