What’s happening on Brazil?

I don’t really like to talk about non-technical things here, but… sometimes the circumstances push me to do it.

We are facing strange times: covid-19. We, as people, plural. There’s no individuals in this matter, because if only one person takes action, nothing will change. If only one country, again nothing will change. We need union, more than ever.

Then, comes Brazil. People simply believe that “our climate is warmer”, “the pandemic is nothing to worry about”, and “it’s just a small flu” – I’m not talking only about the bizarre declarations of the president, but from the common person. Our approximate numbers (approximate because we’re not testing all cases: I, personally, know three people that had the exact right symptoms for Covid-19 that didn’t receive any testing, and were asked to just “rest at home, and if it becomes worse search a medic”. One of then, as soon as he felt a little better, was visiting his friends and eating food at restaurants) keep skyrocketing, and fake news are appearing here and there that these numbers were fabricated by the enemies of the current government.

So, there are only guidelines – no official laws, no real restrictions. They all have to be decided by local authorities, and all against the president (that, on this day, made some insinuations that he can start a coup if people don’t obey him!) that I really hope doesn’t have all the power he thinks he have.

Now, politicians just reflect the will of the people, and that’s were things start to become really scary: other countries are experimenting the construction of smaller groups on their neighborhoods. Here, we’re experiencing the exact opposite: almost everyday, I hear some fight, screams, or other issues. People are losing their minds, literally: two times my wife or I suffered verbal aggressions from delivery guys when we asked for simple things; I also know of a pregnant woman that had to go to the bank and had to hear yells from the security guard and the workers because she “could not be there” (their internet banking wasn’t working on that day), or because she needed help to carry goods that she bought online (the delivery guys didn’t want to carry to her door). And the president’s response was just “people are scared that they’ll loose their jobs, so they hit their wives, fight with their kids because of it”…

On the other side, every time I have to go to the supermarket, I see groups of people talking, some with masks, some without – or cycling, or running. Once, I saw a HUGE queue – more than 40 people – waiting to enter the supermarket. Of course, they were not respecting the 1-meter distance rule… It makes you feel like an idiot to follow the rules, and also really scared. The roads also became a no-mans’ land (it already was before) – there are less cars, so motorcycle and bicycle workers are not respecting any law at all (again, they didn’t before, but it became much, much worse).

Lots of people are excited with the promise to re-open everything in about 7~6 days. My current company also does have plans to slowly “go back to normal”, and our media is always making prediction on when we’ll hit the max infections (none of then have any scientific basis so far) – but for me, I’ll keep working remotely until I see the situation is under control (but, considering that when they interviewed me I already had plans to be full remote by March, I don’t think it’ll be an issue – but again, I can only hope). Also our media published that Brazil discovered a cure for Covid-19 and was gaining international visibility for it (of course, none of these are true at all), and multiple people still believe on chloroquine, even after most hospitals and research centers gave up its usage because it’s too dangerous…

And… for personal reasons, I need to wait until August to complete my migration to Uruguay. I really hope that, until August, the covid-19 situation could be less out of control (maybe because of the wrong reasons), and I’ll have no trouble on my migration process. But I also hope that Brazil does not fall down into a dictatorship in the meantime…