Bolsonaro may have killed and stolen at the same time

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in an appearance last week.UESLEI MARCELINO / Reuters

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• Manaus raises questions about herd immunity

Until last week, Brazilians knew that Jair Bolsonaro had executed a plan to spread the coronavirus and thus ensure "herd immunity", supposedly in the name of the economy. This part of the plan, revealed by EL PAÍS, is widely documented. On Friday, the horror took on even greater proportions. Two testimonies in the Parliamentary Commission investigating the government's actions during the pandemic denounced a plot to overbill the purchase of the Indian vaccine Covaxin in a contract of 325 million dollars, which prioritized a controversial immunization in 2021, having ruled out others much more solid in 2020. Bolsonaro would know of the scam, allegedly orchestrated by the leader of the Government in the Chamber of Deputies, Ricardo Barros, a character linked to other cases of corruption.

Since then, every mother, every father, every son and daughter, sister and brother have been engulfed in the nightmare that their loved ones might have died so that the pockets of a few were filled with public money. The complaint by deputy Luis Miranda, who is even a Bolsonarista, and his brother, Luis Ricardo Miranda, an official who coordinates the import division of the Ministry of Health, has inoculated the population with the suspicion that Bolsonaro's attacks on vaccines from Pfizer and other laboratories would have the objective of benefiting India in order to enrich themselves illicitly. In this case, corruption would have reached the unspeakable, by delaying vaccination. According to a study by epidemiologist Pedro Hallal, more than 400 could have been avoided.000 deaths if the Bolsonaro government had applied prevention measures. The delay in vaccination alone would have killed 95,000 lives. That the axis of the new complaints is the controversial Indian vaccine, by Narendra Modi, Bolsonaro's companion in extermination, further aggravates the scenario.

Ricardo Barros, designated as coordinator of the plot, gives the dimension of the abyss of Brazil: he has been a strategic figure of the allied base of almost all governments since the end of the civic-military dictatorship: Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Lula, Dilma Rousseff , Michel Temer and now Bolsonaro. Michel Temer appointed him Minister of Health, and Barros was one of the most violent enemies of the public system. That such a creature is the leader of the Government is absolute proof that Bolsonaro's anti-corruption flag is another of his great lies.

It is easy to die in Brazil.

For those who survive, it is very difficult to live.

If Bolsonaro remains in power, having demonstrably carried out an extermination project and is now suspected of stealing lives for money, what will be left of the country?

The

is only the first act of justice.

And it has to happen now.

Translation by Meritxell Almarza.