Quarantine life according to this citizen of Brazil:
“First of all, considering that every opinion has a point of view and the readers of this blog probably don’t know Brazil very well, it’s very important to set where I live and our jobs, so your can have a more clear idea of the covid impact:
Well, actually my life is splited in two houses, 1000 km between them, one in São Paulo and another in Vila Velha. Being objective, here are some of their characteristics and some important facts:
1 – Vila Velha – 500 thousand inhabitants; settled in front of the sea with large open areas; tropical climate with rare days of cold; It’s a very local city, with a small and just national Airport;
São Paulo – 12.8 million inhabitants (21 million considering the metropolitan area); settled on a elevation of 700 meters; the climate is subtropical where cold days are very common; it’s a very international city with the biggest Brazilian airport;
2 – I am autonomous lawyer, so I don’t work for anybody and 80% what I do is digital. So, the impact of the quarantine in my job was mainly about the presencial meetings with clients;
Otherwise, wife is a cardiologist doctor who is actually working in two ICU units, in São Paulo and in Vitória (closest city of Vila Velha). The impact in her work was very big, because almost all of the patients spots in the ICU’s now are filled with covid-19.
3 – After USA and India, Brazil is the second in numbers of covid in the world and São Paulo was, at beginning, the central spot of the dissemination of the disease just because of the big movement of people from all of Brazil there, the weather and the big density of people.
Like USA, Brazil is a federation, so each state has its own and particular laws, so the treatment of covid didn’t depend of the federal president and government.
In São Paulo and also in Vila Velha, the governments didn’t determine any total lockdowns, but, of course, there were limitations for business, mainly with the entertainment and schools.
4 – The peak of cases in Brazil were between August and September (with 50k/60k cases per day).
5 – São Paulo is already producing locally the Chinese vaccine called Coronavac and the Federal government is buying the Pfizer one, more expensive and with serious problems of logistics and production capacity.
Well, the politicization of the vaccines in Brazil right now is so serious that President of the county is saying everyday that the federal government is not going to buy any “São Paulo’s” vaccine because it has Chinese origin. But the real fact is that the governor of São Paulo is one of the biggest political competitors of Jair Bolsonaro.
6 – While some responsible state governors are very committed, the Country’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, is accumulating shameful acts, like calling covid the “little flu”, calling the people that are afraid of the disease “f*****s” (“maricas” in Portuguese) and much more.
That’s not the final story, just a little related to this continuous Chaos. So, if you want to know more, I suggest reading these:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-54619730
https://www.nytimes.com/…/brazil-coronavirus-vaccine.html “
Mikl Moose 