
Bolsonaro fires health minister, calls to reopen economy - pseudolus
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-brazil/bolsonaro-fires-health-minister-calls-to-reopen-economy-idUSKBN21Y338
======
virtualritz
That reminds me of another headline from last month that was right up the
Monty Python alley too: ”Turkmenistan Has Banned Use Of The Word
‘Coronavirus’”

As a friend who’s a standup comedian said in response to reading that:
“Brilliant, why didn’t our government think of this? We wouldn’t have all
these problems.”

[1] [https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
updates/2020/0...](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
updates/2020/03/31/824611607/turkmenistan-has-banned-use-of-the-word-
coronavirus)

~~~
belltaco
That's literally the case with 'climate change' being banned from government
discussions and reports in the federal govt in the US and in various states.

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/08/trump-...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/08/trump-
administration-climate-change-ban-usda)

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/03/09/florida-
bans...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/03/09/florida-bans-saying-
climate-change)

------
frozenlettuce
The Brazilian supreme court already decided that state governors and city
mayors can impose regional lockdowns. Most cities are already with restrictive
measures and this event is not going to change that.

------
romwell
Good luck to all Brazilians. They'll need it.

~~~
sebastianconcpt
Heat is providing a lot of natural defense. Things are already going _way_
better than predicted.

~~~
soneca
One of worst Brazilian states is one of the hottest (Ceará).

~~~
sebastianconcpt
You affirmation does not umake the reality of thermal sensitivity in this
virus [1].

There are other factors involved in producing a higher mortality, like
comorbidity and demographics.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25855727](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25855727)

~~~
sudoaza
Temperature might or might not help [1] and even if it does it may not be
enough. Daily confirmed cases are still rising but effects of the quarantine
should be visible soon since i think we are reaching the 3 weeks mark.

[1]
[https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3079831/coro...](https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3079831/coronavirus-
can-survive-long-exposure-high-temperature-threat)

------
soneca
It is hard to predict the future, but despite the former Health minister
indeed have being fired for clashing with Bolsonaro views, there is not much
indication that the policy will in fact change now.

It became a ego dispute in the last days, but original rumors that the role
would be occupied by someone without health expertise that would follow
Bolsonaro orders to the letter were wrong. The new minister is also a doctor
who hinted that lockdown is necessary before.

I believe Bolsonaro leadership is a disaster and more people will die because
of his actions and speeches. I just don't think today's announcement will
change much. It will not get worse.

The governors here don't have that much autonomy as in the US, but they have
enough to define what will indeed happen in the streets. This won't change
with the new minister.

~~~
gtirloni
After having undermined most of the efforts of his own health minister,
Bolsonaro can't do much worse, I agree.

------
ashtonkem
Bolsonaro believes that he’s personally immune because he’s an “athlete”.

Wish I was kidding.

~~~
sebastianconcpt
Isn't that recover of viral diseases which we don't have vaccines for are a
function of immune system's response?

~~~
grolimpio
It's not that simple in cases where our immune system can also act as the
villain [1][2].

We sure can act like irrational animals and play the natural selection card
(and leave people to die an excruciating death), but I personally prefer to
slow down the almost inevitable [3], so our health system has more time to
cope with the situation as well as they can.

[1] [https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2020/04/07/8280914...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2020/04/07/828091467/why-some-covid-19-patients-crash-the-bodys-immune-
system-might-be-to-blame)

[2]
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/11/science/how-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/11/science/how-
coronavirus-hijacks-your-cells.html)

[3]
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-13/coronavir...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-13/coronavirus-
could-infect-two-thirds-of-globe-researcher-says)

------
x3n0ph3n3
I know we're talking about people's lives, but maybe the world needs to see a
country get it devastatingly wrong.

~~~
mikepurvis
Already happening in Sweden: [https://nationalpost.com/news/world/covid-19-as-
swedens-deat...](https://nationalpost.com/news/world/covid-19-as-swedens-
death-toll-mounts-epidemiologists-urge-leaders-to-ignore-their-own-public-
health-agency)

~~~
mchusma
I don't understand the Sweden example. Their daily % increase in deaths is
well below California. I don't know if there is a difference in counting
deaths but Sweden seems to be doing ok relative to other countries. I have
heard that they are effectively shut down voluntarily, so government action
was not needed but the effect has been the same. Maybe a Swede can weigh in.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_C...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_California)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Sweden)

~~~
anon84598
Sweden isn't performing a lot of tests for one:

[https://www.thelocal.se/20200414/understanding-swedens-
figur...](https://www.thelocal.se/20200414/understanding-swedens-figures-on-
the-coronavirus)

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Why do they need to perform a lot of tests if their strategy isn't dependent
on testing?

~~~
ashtonkem
Because if there’s a giant spike of currently asymptomatic carriers, you’d
want to know.

~~~
LIV2
If they at least did testing + contact tracing (like NZ) they probably could
have saved a tonne of lives even without locking down

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Every developed country did testing and contact tracing, even the ones
popularly seen as doing nothing. That was why leaders were saying it wouldn't
be a problem in February; they didn't expect a magic cure, they expected their
testing and contact tracing to handle it.

------
aaomidi
Workers having to die so their masters can add another zero to their bank
accounts.

------
save_ferris
The parallels between the current US and Brazilian administrations are hard to
ignore. That said, I really hope Trump and Fauci are able to see this crisis
out together. Bolsonaro’s decision today could kill thousands, no doubt.

------
sudoaza
He's a total madman. Trump is a shithead but he'll read the situation or be
advised by someone, jump ships and blame it on the chinese or something. This
guy went 100% on this and is not turning back, to the level of taking people
to the streets to force business owners to open, walking on the streets to
chat with followers (while he's suspected positive covid) and calling for
fasting and prayers as a solution. BTW Religious services were defined as
"essential" so they can still be carried on. Much of his base is from a
fanatic/fringe christian faith so maybe that's were that comes from.

What worries me is that now Brazil is in a stand off, the military that
surround him, vice-president included, have cutted him off power and congress
is starting to look into an impeachment. But even if they do, and do away with
Bolsonaro, then the military that ran with him will have the power, will
finally declare the lockdown and anything can happen next, they'll be lucky if
they have elections after that. Police abuse during lockdown grew a lot in
other latin countries, i expect at least the same to happen there, who knows
to which level.

------
sergiotapia
Finally - let people go back to their lives. How's Sweden doing these days?

------
htk
Bolsonaro has no negotiation skills, and is (frankly) bad at mostly
everything, but he's got a good finance minister who's saying that the country
just can't stop creating value, but what is the right balance?

Mandetta, the previous health minister, had no flexibility in his views, he
wanted to follow the WHO blindly, without weighing anything else.

Maybe the new guy has the flexibility and the brains to find a better balance
of views, and to create a strategy on top of it.

~~~
ashtonkem
It’s not the job of the health minister to consider the economy. If they’re
thinking about that, they’re being an awful health minister.

It’s the job of the executive to balance between the different paths
recommended by different advisors, and chart a path that has the correct
balance of trade offs.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
It's the job of the health minister to give his boss useful policy options to
choose from and that requires some level of understanding and accommodating
the other variables that the boss has to consider. That means that the health
minister has to consider the economy and the economy minister has to consider
public health.

I don't know much about this guy but if he was as bad at balancing the
variables he had to consider as the GP suggests then I can see why he was
removed.

~~~
grolimpio
The former health minister was considering the economy and had speaked public
a few times about it. He recommendations were based in the fact that the
government couldn't simply switch from a horizontal isolation to a non planned
vertical isolation. He main responsibility (at least the short term one) was
to not overload the hospitals and put the health professionals in risk, and at
least that he has achieved.

On the other hand, the president wants a "vertical" isolation without a plan,
he simply wants to "reopen the economy" (whatever it means). Remembering that
he has largely underplayed the issue, calling it "just a little flu" (probably
it would be better translated to: "just a cold").

Brazil doesn't have enough tests to make good decisions about which areas
should be in a horizontal isolation or to be instead in a vertical one.

The former health minister was clear that all the information coming from his
office should be backed by science (and this alone was bugging the president a
lot for some reason). This also meant that he, as the health minister,
couldn't go public and say that a specific medication was effective to treat
the covid-19 just because some tests worked in vitro (any doctor or scientist
knows that this alone doesn't mean that it'll work efficiently in vivo).

The president behaviour was the opposite, many times he went public to say
that a drug tested in vitro was enough to have the horizontal isolation lifted
out. And as a consequence or his irresponsible pronouncements, many of his
followers ran to the drug stores to buy certain medications, leaving people
that really need them for other diseases without medication.

So the main issue turned out to be the fact that the former health minister
was becoming popular because of his common sense, and everyone knows that in
the eyes of a populist, "there can be only one".

------
aphroz
Honest question: Did we see any anormal mortality in any country caused by the
covid-19? Countrywide there seems to be less death than usual on the period
January-March in Europe.

Edit: And here goes my karma. I will need to do some PR to catch up with this
:)

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Europe's seen abnormally high mortality rates starting at the end of March.
Someone sent me this graph, although unfortunately I didn't keep track of the
source:

[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-nq9Tcrho5QQ/XpjnH7DgeRI/A...](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-nq9Tcrho5QQ/XpjnH7DgeRI/AAAAAAAABUg/F0OE1eMwAQI3vZw6-_Ece_Zye4UtjTWbQCK8BGAsYHg/s0/2020-04-16.png)

~~~
aphroz
We need to compare year to year, mortality is higher in January - March any
year.

~~~
2019-nCoV
It still exceeds average seasonal mortality rates, see
[https://www.euromomo.eu](https://www.euromomo.eu)

~~~
aphroz
But, is it significant compared to 2016 ?

~~~
jhwang5
Why are you glossing over the fact that the numbers were DESPITE having done a
global lockdown? If we didn’t do a lockdown, it’d be way higher.

~~~
aphroz
How are we sure about this? We cannot anymore but are we sure that the
lockdown will lower the global mortality? Why are we not acting rationally
anymore? Are we sure that fear did not take over and now we just do as
everybody because nobody ever got fired for choosing the lockdown?

