RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Riobaldo, the main character in “Grande Sertão: Veredas”, João Guimarães Rosa’s masterwork, would wake up frightened in the early dawn, sensing that some danger was coming. “Life is thankless in its very softness,” he reflects. “But it brings along hope even amid the gall of despair.” This passage from magical fiction nowadays serves to sum up the almost unbreakable resilience of the Brazilian people.
In the current times, the terrible hardship that takes everyone’s sleep away is the invisible virus. It spreads faster and faster and suffocates until it kills, causing an unprecedented tragedy.
This week, Brazil surpassed 300,000 deaths from Covid-19 and, for the first time, the pandemic killed more than 3,000 people in a single day. The national health care system has collapsed and there are virtually no vacancies in ICUs.
Nevertheless, even on the verge of a nervous breakdown because they underestimated the potential damage the enemy could do, and faced with authorities that have trouble agreeing on urgent measures, people have not lost their optimism and faith.
It is this mixture of fear and hope that appears clearly in a survey by the Paraná Research Institute made exclusively for VEJA about the feelings of the population at this time. Conducted between March 12 and 16, with 2,334 interviews in the country, the study shows that the desolation with Brazil’s current situation has never been so flagrant. But, even so, there is a certain hope that leads to believe that the future can be different.
There is a technical tie between those who believe the health situation will improve in the coming months (39.5%) and those who believe the disaster will worsen (41.5%).
There are, in fact, reasons for the feeling that all is not lost. Although delayed, the vaccination schedule should gain traction as of April, when the Ministry of Health will receive at least 47 million more doses. While the scenario doesn’t change, Brazilians spend their days mulling over their fears and insecurities about the present.
In the survey, 80.4% of people say that the pandemic has lasted longer than they imagined, and 73.4% say that the number of deaths is higher than expected. The data show that Brazilians clearly underestimated the dangers of Covid-19, so much so that the fear of losing a loved one to the disease affects 48% of people, a fear much greater than that of being without a job (7.8%).
“We are left without a sense of time, the possibility of making plans, of having projects. The greatest value is to be alive,” says psychologist Maria Helena Pereira Franco, coordinator of a bereavement study and assistance lab at PUC-SP.
The result not only translates into helplessness, but also revolt against the people in charge of managing the crisis. For the first time, 20% of Brazilians attribute the critical scenario of the pandemic to all politicians holding elective positions (the rate was 6% in May 2020, obtained in an equivalent survey).
Jair Bolsonaro’s accountability for the uncontrolled disease also grew. The percentage reached 29.4% against the president, much higher than the 11.2% who blame governors for the health chaos. Bolsonaro managed in a first moment to pass the blame to the governors, but now this does not occur.
“The issue of economic recovery goes on the president’s account. He is the one responsible for employment and income in Brazil, not the governor and the mayor,” says Matias Spektor, professor of international relations at FGV.
The same pandemic that has turned the economy into a scorched earth scenario has directly affected the two extremes of life’s timeline: birth and death. There was a considerable drop in the former and a sharp increase in the latter. Nine months after the pandemic was already installed in Brazil, it was possible to see couples chosing not to have children during this troubled period.
In January, the number of births registered reached the lowest level since 2002, when the historical series of the National Association of Natural Person Registrars (Arpen-Brasil) started. 207,901 births were computed, a number 15% lower than the one registered in the same month last year.
“It will take time for the rhythm of before the pandemic to be resumed. Until then, this drop will represent a rupture in the age pyramid and will impact the labor market and the economically active population”, states Gustavo Fiscarelli, president of Arpen-Brasil.
On the other hand, so many deaths have never been recorded – almost 1.5 million between March last year and February 2021, a sad 31% increase in deaths compared to the historical average for this same period.
Source: Veja