9 ms·

Any HNers in Brazil? How are things going in your area?

by bwb 6y ago

diegoholiveira 6y ago
"""
- spyremeown 6y ago
  Same as him. Our state is doing quite OK. Early quarantine and 1st world measures to stop spreading. Other states, not so much. Brazil is big and different, it's not all the same melting pot. edit: The president is an ass, though. F* fascist idiot.
tarsiswt 6y ago
Things are looking pretty grim. The president insists on downplaying the disease and keep making appearances on anti-democratic rallies -- against recommendations from his own health ministry, mind you. Many brazillians have somewhat nostalgic feelings towards the military dictatorship and I feel like that has gotten worse. Everything is just highly polarized and the pandemic is discussed mostly in terms of politics. Maybe that's just the bubble I'm in but I can't help the feeling that the worst is yet to come.
- ufo 6y ago
  > against recommendations from his own health ministry, Not anymore, now that Bolsonaro has fired two (!) health ministers and put a worthless yes-man in charge. And we thought it was bad enough when he fired the first health minister to put a yes-man in his place. It turned out that the first yes-man wasn't spineless enough for Bolsonaro so he also got fired.
  - marcosdumay 6y ago
    > and put a worthless yes-man in charge Wait, when did he put somebody in charge? I though the position was empty.
    - ufo 6y ago
      Gen. Pazuello, who has been in charge since Teich resigned, has now been officially elevated to "interim minister". It isn't supposed to be a permanent position though so it would also be valid to say that the position is still vacant. https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2020/06/03/ha-quase-vinte-dias-no-cargo-pazuello-e-oficializado-ministro-interino-da-saude.ghtml https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2020/06/03/ha-quase-vi...
caiobegotti 6y ago
I typed about 3 paragraphs trying to explain it a bit but honestly I had to delete it because I don't think here is a safe arena and I am pretty sure would I would get downvoted heavily as I think a good chunk of the HN crowd sometimes lean too much towards denialism about the coronavirus. My gmail address is my username in case anyone is curious about my take on how things are going in Brazil. All I can say now is that winter is approaching and southern Brazil usually has dry flu seasons, so any "pretty good" report is to be taken with a gigantic grain of salt.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  > a good chunk of the HN crowd sometimes lean too much towards denialism about the coronavirus I don't think that's true at all, I've never seen anything like that downvoted here. HN seems to be a generally well-educated, scientifically-minded crowd. Please post, por favor!
  - j4yav 6y ago
    I was called a denialist on Twitter because I thought my local government did a reasonable job in a serious situation with the information available at the time, and prevented a lot of deaths. This was shocking to the person who was convinced that the government was secretly trying to kill hundreds of thousands of people by using 5G to beam viruses into people through radio. So, I guess it all depends on what denialism means these days.
  - jiofih 6y ago
    I’ve seen it many many times. Considering the wealth gap, there is probably a correlation between MBA-types who are in the startup world in Brazil and know about HN, and being right-leaning.
  - cm2187 6y ago
    I would even say it is rather the opposite. I have seen a lot of doomers and FUD pushers here, who pretended until very recently that the disease was much worse than the health officials were claiming, that anyone who thought the death rate was well within 1% was a conspiracy theorist, etc. There is a large educated crowd here who will believe CNN or the NYT over infectious disease specialists.
lbrito 6y ago
Brazilian living in Brazil here. This news is not surprising at all. I'm going to avoid adjectives so that my comment doesn't get downvoted into oblivion by government fanboys, but let's just say that it is safe to assume that the Brazilian federal government does not believe science should be the main weapon in the fight against Covid. Brazil is one of the few countries that denies the pandemic[1]. The others are Turkmenistan, Belarus and Nicaragua. Fun fact: neither of those are really democracies (whether Brazil still is a democracy, it is increasingly debatable). The Brazilian president has scoffed covid as "a little flu"[2]. He is also against social distancing/lockdown measures, claiming they don't work[3]. Needless to say, he doesn't provide any scientific evidence of that -- he knows full well his supporters need nothing more than his word to believe in anything. State governors are basically on their own since the beginning of the pandemic -- a lot of states implemented lockdowns/social distancing, but with limited effect since Bolsonaro routinely goes on national TV to downplay those measures and basically call them a hoax. The situation now is that people are fed up with the long, ineffective (because they were always superficial, half-baked) social distancing and lockdowns, and the state governments are beginning to reopen right when the death toll is accelerating. So basically we're screwed. Deaths will accelerate like crazy now that a lot of places are reopening and the federal government will do anything it can to hold onto its alternate reality where everything is fine. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/974dc9d2-77c1-4381-adcd-2f755333a36b https://www.ft.com/content/974dc9d2-77c1-4381-adcd-2f755333a... [2] https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/06/a-little-flu-brazil-s-bolsonaro-playing-down-coronavirus-crisis https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/06/a-little-flu-brazil-s-bo... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/04/while-brazils-president-fights-social-distancing-its-public-health-system-is-fighting-pandemic/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/04/while-bra...
- kaybe 6y ago
  > Needless to say, he doesn't provide any scientific evidence of that -- he knows full well his supporters need nothing more than his word to believe in anything. I want to live in a world where this is actually viable everywhere, where we can trust our leaders to confer with experts and change their opinion if the situation changes. (Living in Germany, I do trust Angela Merkel that much, for example. I want that for everyone.)
throwawaybrazil 6y ago
I live in one of the hard-hit areas (northeast). It's not good, but also not nearly as bad as portrayed by TV/media. Poorer people are having the toughest time. Once in a while I get in my car and drive around, and things seem pretty normal. Most days look like a saturday in terms of traffic, people outside, etc. My parent live in one of the capitals in the south and one of them is working directly on the "frontlines". They had one covid-related death in the past 30 days and most of the reserved hospital beds are empty. Their city took stronger measures much earlier and their poverty rate is the lowest in the country. Other than school and some other business, life there is normal. (throwaway for I try to to avoid identifying information associated with my username/handle)
arcticfox 6y ago
My wife is Brazilian, and we were in both Manaus (Amazonas) and Minas Gerais in March as lockdowns were being rolled out. Manaus: the consensus in the general population seemed to be that the city was (1) too remote for COVID to arrive (2) heat and sun would stifle it and (3) their endemic diseases (malaria, dengue etc) were worse anyways so who cares? People seemed to mostly ignore the first lockdown measures. Now, maybe ~30% of the people we know personally in the city have had COVID. Overall, it seems like there is a lot of death but we stopped following closely because it was too painful. Minas Gerais: impressive lockdown in March. Small cities in the interior quarantined immediately, screening checkpoints with nurses everywhere. I have no idea how things turned out there but my guess is pretty well. Return to USA: we bailed out of Brazil as soon as we could due to the lockdowns. The only sign in the Houston airport that COVID existed at that point was a small sign warning travelers from Wuhan to self-quarantine. Embarrassing.
- cm2187 6y ago
  You could add to the list a very different demography than western countries or china. The % of the population over 60 is half what it is in the US. Age being by far the primary driver for the severity of the disease, it is not unereasonable to expect that Brazil will be hit less hard than western countries.
  - Kaze404 6y ago
    Brazil isn't a western country?
    - elygre 6y ago
      Often not. But we make up for it by making Australia part of the western world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world
      - Kaze404 6y ago
        Lol. The notion of a "western workd" was dumb enough before I knew that, now it's just hilarious. Thanks for the link.
andreleite77 6y ago
I live in the biggest city in Brazil, São Paulo. On one side, we have a significant number of deaths (8,2k in 36K of all country), but the local government was capable of building campaign hospitals and now we have near 80% of the occupation of hospital beds. So the situation is controlled, I can say. But the mental toll to deal with this president is very high! I thought a lot before posting here because this government has a lot of fanboys/fangirls that use war tactics to hide things. The first posts here were of people trying to show that things are ok and numbers are being publicized, what is a lie. These same people will come back here to downvote any comment that exposes the real situation. They do this in news portals, social media, WhatsApp, etc. It is disgusting and tiring.
rmsaksida 6y ago
An important aspect of the Coronavirus situation in Brazil that commentators haven't highlighted enough is Brazilian federalism. Brazil is a federal republic, although our federalism isn't as solid as the American counterpart (the federal government tends to be much stronger in Brazil). However, with Bolsonaro's weak response to the crisis, the Brazilian Supreme Court officially recognised the power of state and municipal governments to decree quarantines and lockdowns and to organise their COVID-19 strategies independently. As a result, things look very different depending on which state and city you're looking at. Some places have been hit hard, others are doing well. I live in the interior of Minas Gerais, a state that's comparable to Texas in area and to Florida in population size. The mayor of my town locked down the city relatively early (late March). It didn't last long, with local businesses pressuring for it to reopen and low coronavirus incidence, but I think it helped. A more recent decree has made masks mandatory. So far the numbers look OK - there has been a single COVID-19 death (~80k population). Other Brazilian states have not been so lucky. I can say with confidence that it would have helped tremendously if the federal government had taken this seriously from the beginning, and organised a nation-wide plan to handle the crisis. It is inconceivable to me that anyone would disagree. We were well aware of the situation in other countries - there was no reason to assume things would have played out differently in Brazil. While Brazil hasn't been as hard hit as other countries if you consider population size, no one has dealt with the problem as irresponsibly as we have. Tens of thousands of deaths could have been avoided. It is a real tragedy.
Kaze404 6y ago
I have honestly no idea. Haven't left the house in 3 months, except for a week or so where I visited my girlfriend without ever coming in contact with anyone (except for maybe the cab driver). I was pleased when I saw everyone wearing masks, but it seems other than that no one's really doing anything.

Any HNers in Brazil? How are things going in your area?

by bwb 6y ago

Any HNers in Brazil? How are things going in your area?

diegoholiveira 6y ago

"""

spyremeown 6y ago
Same as him. Our state is doing quite OK. Early quarantine and 1st world measures to stop spreading. Other states, not so much. Brazil is big and different, it's not all the same melting pot. edit: The president is an ass, though. F* fascist idiot.

tarsiswt 6y ago

Things are looking pretty grim. The president insists on downplaying the disease and keep making appearances on anti-democratic rallies -- against recommendations from his own health ministry, mind you. Many brazillians have somewhat nostalgic feelings towards the military dictatorship and I feel like that has gotten worse. Everything is just highly polarized and the pandemic is discussed mostly in terms of politics. Maybe that's just the bubble I'm in but I can't help the feeling that the worst is yet to come.

ufo 6y ago
> against recommendations from his own health ministry, Not anymore, now that Bolsonaro has fired two (!) health ministers and put a worthless yes-man in charge. And we thought it was bad enough when he fired the first health minister to put a yes-man in his place. It turned out that the first yes-man wasn't spineless enough for Bolsonaro so he also got fired.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  > and put a worthless yes-man in charge Wait, when did he put somebody in charge? I though the position was empty.
  - ufo 6y ago
    Gen. Pazuello, who has been in charge since Teich resigned, has now been officially elevated to "interim minister". It isn't supposed to be a permanent position though so it would also be valid to say that the position is still vacant. https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2020/06/03/ha-quase-vinte-dias-no-cargo-pazuello-e-oficializado-ministro-interino-da-saude.ghtml https://g1.globo.com/politica/noticia/2020/06/03/ha-quase-vi...

caiobegotti 6y ago

I typed about 3 paragraphs trying to explain it a bit but honestly I had to delete it because I don't think here is a safe arena and I am pretty sure would I would get downvoted heavily as I think a good chunk of the HN crowd sometimes lean too much towards denialism about the coronavirus. My gmail address is my username in case anyone is curious about my take on how things are going in Brazil. All I can say now is that winter is approaching and southern Brazil usually has dry flu seasons, so any "pretty good" report is to be taken with a gigantic grain of salt.

crazygringo 6y ago
> a good chunk of the HN crowd sometimes lean too much towards denialism about the coronavirus I don't think that's true at all, I've never seen anything like that downvoted here. HN seems to be a generally well-educated, scientifically-minded crowd. Please post, por favor!
- j4yav 6y ago
  I was called a denialist on Twitter because I thought my local government did a reasonable job in a serious situation with the information available at the time, and prevented a lot of deaths. This was shocking to the person who was convinced that the government was secretly trying to kill hundreds of thousands of people by using 5G to beam viruses into people through radio. So, I guess it all depends on what denialism means these days.
- jiofih 6y ago
  I’ve seen it many many times. Considering the wealth gap, there is probably a correlation between MBA-types who are in the startup world in Brazil and know about HN, and being right-leaning.
- cm2187 6y ago
  I would even say it is rather the opposite. I have seen a lot of doomers and FUD pushers here, who pretended until very recently that the disease was much worse than the health officials were claiming, that anyone who thought the death rate was well within 1% was a conspiracy theorist, etc. There is a large educated crowd here who will believe CNN or the NYT over infectious disease specialists.

lbrito 6y ago

Brazilian living in Brazil here. This news is not surprising at all. I'm going to avoid adjectives so that my comment doesn't get downvoted into oblivion by government fanboys, but let's just say that it is safe to assume that the Brazilian federal government does not believe science should be the main weapon in the fight against Covid. Brazil is one of the few countries that denies the pandemic[1]. The others are Turkmenistan, Belarus and Nicaragua. Fun fact: neither of those are really democracies (whether Brazil still is a democracy, it is increasingly debatable). The Brazilian president has scoffed covid as "a little flu"[2]. He is also against social distancing/lockdown measures, claiming they don't work[3]. Needless to say, he doesn't provide any scientific evidence of that -- he knows full well his supporters need nothing more than his word to believe in anything. State governors are basically on their own since the beginning of the pandemic -- a lot of states implemented lockdowns/social distancing, but with limited effect since Bolsonaro routinely goes on national TV to downplay those measures and basically call them a hoax. The situation now is that people are fed up with the long, ineffective (because they were always superficial, half-baked) social distancing and lockdowns, and the state governments are beginning to reopen right when the death toll is accelerating. So basically we're screwed. Deaths will accelerate like crazy now that a lot of places are reopening and the federal government will do anything it can to hold onto its alternate reality where everything is fine. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/974dc9d2-77c1-4381-adcd-2f755333a36b https://www.ft.com/content/974dc9d2-77c1-4381-adcd-2f755333a... [2] https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/06/a-little-flu-brazil-s-bolsonaro-playing-down-coronavirus-crisis https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/06/a-little-flu-brazil-s-bo... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/04/while-brazils-president-fights-social-distancing-its-public-health-system-is-fighting-pandemic/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/04/while-bra...

kaybe 6y ago
> Needless to say, he doesn't provide any scientific evidence of that -- he knows full well his supporters need nothing more than his word to believe in anything. I want to live in a world where this is actually viable everywhere, where we can trust our leaders to confer with experts and change their opinion if the situation changes. (Living in Germany, I do trust Angela Merkel that much, for example. I want that for everyone.)

throwawaybrazil 6y ago

I live in one of the hard-hit areas (northeast). It's not good, but also not nearly as bad as portrayed by TV/media. Poorer people are having the toughest time. Once in a while I get in my car and drive around, and things seem pretty normal. Most days look like a saturday in terms of traffic, people outside, etc. My parent live in one of the capitals in the south and one of them is working directly on the "frontlines". They had one covid-related death in the past 30 days and most of the reserved hospital beds are empty. Their city took stronger measures much earlier and their poverty rate is the lowest in the country. Other than school and some other business, life there is normal. (throwaway for I try to to avoid identifying information associated with my username/handle)

arcticfox 6y ago

My wife is Brazilian, and we were in both Manaus (Amazonas) and Minas Gerais in March as lockdowns were being rolled out. Manaus: the consensus in the general population seemed to be that the city was (1) too remote for COVID to arrive (2) heat and sun would stifle it and (3) their endemic diseases (malaria, dengue etc) were worse anyways so who cares? People seemed to mostly ignore the first lockdown measures. Now, maybe ~30% of the people we know personally in the city have had COVID. Overall, it seems like there is a lot of death but we stopped following closely because it was too painful. Minas Gerais: impressive lockdown in March. Small cities in the interior quarantined immediately, screening checkpoints with nurses everywhere. I have no idea how things turned out there but my guess is pretty well. Return to USA: we bailed out of Brazil as soon as we could due to the lockdowns. The only sign in the Houston airport that COVID existed at that point was a small sign warning travelers from Wuhan to self-quarantine. Embarrassing.

cm2187 6y ago
You could add to the list a very different demography than western countries or china. The % of the population over 60 is half what it is in the US. Age being by far the primary driver for the severity of the disease, it is not unereasonable to expect that Brazil will be hit less hard than western countries.
- Kaze404 6y ago
  Brazil isn't a western country?
  - elygre 6y ago
    Often not. But we make up for it by making Australia part of the western world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world
    - Kaze404 6y ago
      Lol. The notion of a "western workd" was dumb enough before I knew that, now it's just hilarious. Thanks for the link.

andreleite77 6y ago

I live in the biggest city in Brazil, São Paulo. On one side, we have a significant number of deaths (8,2k in 36K of all country), but the local government was capable of building campaign hospitals and now we have near 80% of the occupation of hospital beds. So the situation is controlled, I can say. But the mental toll to deal with this president is very high! I thought a lot before posting here because this government has a lot of fanboys/fangirls that use war tactics to hide things. The first posts here were of people trying to show that things are ok and numbers are being publicized, what is a lie. These same people will come back here to downvote any comment that exposes the real situation. They do this in news portals, social media, WhatsApp, etc. It is disgusting and tiring.

rmsaksida 6y ago

An important aspect of the Coronavirus situation in Brazil that commentators haven't highlighted enough is Brazilian federalism. Brazil is a federal republic, although our federalism isn't as solid as the American counterpart (the federal government tends to be much stronger in Brazil). However, with Bolsonaro's weak response to the crisis, the Brazilian Supreme Court officially recognised the power of state and municipal governments to decree quarantines and lockdowns and to organise their COVID-19 strategies independently. As a result, things look very different depending on which state and city you're looking at. Some places have been hit hard, others are doing well. I live in the interior of Minas Gerais, a state that's comparable to Texas in area and to Florida in population size. The mayor of my town locked down the city relatively early (late March). It didn't last long, with local businesses pressuring for it to reopen and low coronavirus incidence, but I think it helped. A more recent decree has made masks mandatory. So far the numbers look OK - there has been a single COVID-19 death (~80k population). Other Brazilian states have not been so lucky. I can say with confidence that it would have helped tremendously if the federal government had taken this seriously from the beginning, and organised a nation-wide plan to handle the crisis. It is inconceivable to me that anyone would disagree. We were well aware of the situation in other countries - there was no reason to assume things would have played out differently in Brazil. While Brazil hasn't been as hard hit as other countries if you consider population size, no one has dealt with the problem as irresponsibly as we have. Tens of thousands of deaths could have been avoided. It is a real tragedy.

Kaze404 6y ago

I have honestly no idea. Haven't left the house in 3 months, except for a week or so where I visited my girlfriend without ever coming in contact with anyone (except for maybe the cab driver). I was pleased when I saw everyone wearing masks, but it seems other than that no one's really doing anything.