I don’t know if it’s because I finally got my first Covid shot — maybe hope is a side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine — but for the first time in this long pandemic, I feel that President Jair Bolsonaro may not succeed in destroying us all.
Yes, he’s trying hard: We have registered over 560,000 deaths so far — the second highest toll in the world after the United States’ — and the Delta variant is on its way. From the beginning, the president sabotaged attempts to curb the transmission of the virus, sponsored ineffective treatments, helped to disseminate fake news and allowed, through his negligence, another variant of the virus to spread.
But even Mr. Bolsonaro couldn’t crack Brazilians’ unbreakable love of vaccines. Despite everything — deaths, economic disaster, untold suffering — we haven’t succumbed to despair. Instead, we remain among the world’s most passionate enthusiasts for inoculation.
It hasn’t always been this way. Last December, almost one-fourth of Brazilians planned to refuse to take the vaccine. Back then, the president was saying that he was “not going to get vaccinated, period,” and that citizens would have to sign a liability waiver to get their shots. Mr. Bolsonaro also exaggerated the side effects of vaccines, suggesting that Pfizer’s vaccine might turn people into crocodiles. But as soon as our national vaccination campaign began, in late January, the hesitancy started to dissipate. The more people got the vaccine, the more others wanted to get it as well.
It happened almost naturally, as if people had simply returned to their senses. First, there was the viral sensation of “Vacina Butantan,” a hypnotic remix by a funk musician named MC Fioti celebrating inoculation. Filmed inside one of Brazil’s top biomedical research institutes — complete with dancing staff — it soon racked up 13 million views on YouTube. When Rio de Janeiro started, on Feb. 1, to vaccinate those aged 99 and over, there was widespread delight: The vaccine was on its way. Soon came the long lines of cars, stretching as far as the eye could see, as people eagerly waited for their turn.
Mr. Bolsonaro’s efforts to deter vaccination were coming unstuck. Then, in March, things got worse for him. A Supreme Court judge tossed out several corruption cases against former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Mr. Bolsonaro’s greatest rival, restoring his political rights and clearing the way for a presidential run next year. In his first speech afterward, Mr. Silva condemned the government’s mishandling of the pandemic and urged people to get vaccinated.
Hours later, like magic, Mr. Bolsonaro appeared in public wearing a mask and saying that he had always supported vaccination. By the end of the month, the number of Brazilians who refused to be vaccinated had plummeted to 9 percent. By July, that had dropped to 5 percent, putting the country among the most vaccine-happy nations in the world.
You can see the enthusiasm for vaccination in the uptake rates, too. The elderly population in Brazil, one of the first groups targeted for vaccination, has been impressively well inoculated: 87.5 percent of those older than 65 have been fully vaccinated — a greater proportion than in the United States, where vaccines are much more readily available.
In fact, I noticed the other day that I don’t personally know anyone who is not going to take the shot, even among those who voted for Mr. Bolsonaro and still defend him, and those who were initially hesitant. It’s not just in my social circle: Mr. Bolsonaro’s eldest son — who I definitely do not know — recently received the first shot himself. A few months ago, the president’s chief of staff was caught on camera admitting that he “secretly” got his jab. In another emblematic example of Brazilians’ yearning for vaccination, a fugitive from justice, instead of heading for the hills, got into a vaccination line — but was arrested before he succeeded. (I feel for him!)
This doesn’t mean that the rest of our trajectory in this pandemic is any less tragic: We continue to record close to a thousand Covid-19 deaths a day. The country still struggles to adhere to some of the most basic measures to curb the transmission of the virus, like social distancing and proper use of masks, and outright fails with some others, like mass testing and contact tracing. Most of all, though, we simply don’t have enough vaccines to match our eagerness for a jab.
Let’s not forget — ever — the fact that Brazil’s Ministry of Health ignored 101 emails from Pfizer offering vaccines, according to the parliamentary inquiry into the government’s handling of the pandemic. The ministry also turned down 42.5 million doses from Covax, the World Health Organization’s vaccine-sharing initiative, while the government tried to push ahead with obscure, potentially corrupt vaccine deals.
As a result, while our health care system could have been easily vaccinating more than two million people every day, some cities keep running out of doses. The rollout is still painfully slow; six months later, only 21 percent of the population is fully immunized. Our neighbors Chile and Uruguay are doing much better, with 65 percent.
But the hope is unequivocal. After all, it seems that not even one of the worst leaders in the world — with his mad plans, his incompetence and his fake news — was capable of shaking Brazilians’ confidence in vaccines and our public health care system.
We might even survive to see him lose his job.
Vanessa Barbara is the editor of the literary website A Hortaliça, the author of two novels and two nonfiction books in Portuguese and a contributing Opinion writer.