MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Neither Trump nor Biden are genocidal for how they handled the COVID-19 crisis, Brazil's President says

The CNN quickly labeled Trump as genocidal but not so regarding Biden despite similar achievements against the coronavirus, Bolsonaro argued (PÑic Reuters)

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro said his country had suffered relatively little going through the COVID-19 pandemic and wondered “why don't they call [US President Joseph] Biden genocidal?”

During his late Thursday broadcast, Bolsonaro insisted the world media avoided calling Biden, “genocidal”, despite the number of deaths caused by the coronavirus in that country.

“The death toll in the Trump era, who was accused of being genocidal, was equated in the Joe Biden era, and the press does not call Biden genocidal,” Bolsonaro pointed out.

”In 2021 more people died than in 2020 and President Trump was branded a genocidal by the (...) CNN. Now (2021) more people have died with Joe Biden and nobody calls him genocidal. Neither of them is genocidal,“ he added.

Last year Trump sent more than a million doses of hydroxychloroquine to Brazil where that drug was distributed for an ”early treatment” against the coronavirus, despite the reluctance of the local scientific community. Bolsonaro once again spoke Thursday in favor of that chemical despite the World Health Organization's stance against it.

Brazil has reached 600,077 deaths from COVID-19 Friday, it was reported, while almost 70% of the population (around 148.8 million people) has received a first dose of vaccine in a country which ranks second in the number of deaths from Covid-19, behind the United States, and third in the number of cases, behind the United States and India.

So far, 97.2 million Brazilians (45.5% of the population) has taken the two doses.

In this scenario, some protests were staged in Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro as the 600,000-deaths barrier was being crossed, although Bolsonaro claimed Friday that his was “one of the countries to have suffered the least from the pandemic.”

“England had a 300% increase in the price of gas that in Europe increased 200%,” Bolsonaro claimed before a group of supporters at the Alvorada Palace, where he criticized the social isolation against COVID-19 implemented by governors and mayors.

“Now we are paying the consequences of 'stay at home' that the economic problems will come later,” explained the President who has always opposed those measures against a disease he dubbed “a small flu” which would soon be overcome.

Bolsonaro has also opposed mandatory vaccination and campaigned for the intake of hydroxychloroquine and other “early treatment” drugs distributed nationwide in the form of “Covid Kits.” The President himself has vowed to be the last Brazilian on earth to take the vaccine, saying he already has natural antibodies from the times he has already had COVID-19.

Nonato Souza, from the Nucleus for the Defense of Democracy, said that the group went to Planalto to prevent “this from becoming trivial, 600 thousand is not a number, they are lives that have left.”

In Rio, the protest was organized by the NGO Rio de Paz on Copacabana beach, on whose sands 600 white handkerchiefs were placed. “Most of the blame falls first on the federal government, for the lack of empathy of President Jair Bolsonaro who did not encourage the use of masks,” said Antonio Carlos Costa, head of the NGO.