Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro is in a class of his own. He is the only leader left in the world to reject the consensus of scientists and statisticians on the gravity of the coronavirus outbreak.
The far-right firebrand, who was elected in 2018 trading on conspiracy theories and half truths, has dismissed COVID-19 as a “little flu” and remarked that “we all die someday.” He has flouted his own health ministry’s guidance by going on walkabouts to greet supporters and has urged Brazilians to leave isolation and return to work, defying the advice of the World Health Organization.
Now, Brazil’s leader has himself been isolated by an unprecedented alliance of key ministers in his federal government, congressional leaders, and 24 of the country’s 27 governors, who have substantial power in a decentralized structure similar to the U.S. “I can say the governors across Brazil have never been as united as we are now,” João Doria, the center-right governor of São Paulo, who has emerged as a key opposition figure, tells TIME. His southeastern state, which has 46 million residents and a third of Brazil’s GDP, has suffered more than 80 percent of the country’s hospitalizations for Covid-19 and is racing to ameliorate the crisis.
https://time.com/5816243/brazil-jair-bolsonaro-coronavirus-governors/