Brazilian Pandemic daily 1. The Firts Cases

December 8, 2019: The first cases of coronavirus are recorded in a hospital in Wuhan, China, in a hospital. The victims would go to a wholesale animal market, but this is not 100% sure.

When we begin to experience a historic event, such as a worldwide pandemic, it is very difficult to understand that we have undergone a total change in reality or even that our lives are at risk and that the government can fail with citizens in the way that the Brazilian government has failed.

This diary is not about social criticism, nor about a declaration of war against the Brazilian government, this book is an account of an ordinary citizen, without great political influences and with some followers on the internet.

The news above was taken from one of the chronologies set up on health sites here in Brazil, at the time we had no idea what to expect and the official information was a mix between media prejudice and misinformation, such as “it is a Chinese virus” or “It’s a laboratory thing”, in addition to the fact that many Brazilian authorities insisted that Covid-19 would have no impact on Brazil.

And I? An ordinary citizen living in one of the largest cities in Latin America and the world’s financial center? São Paulo in December had no idea what was happening in the rest of the world. To get a sense, I spent the months of December, January, February and March 2019 to 2020 on the street, completely unaware of the health crisis.

That year I spent the New Year’s Eve party at a friend’s house, we were about ten people, counting his two brothers, his wife and older brother, a friend of ours, their mother and a friend of mine, who had no appointment for the date.

The streets of São Paulo were full, when we passed Avenida Paulista the holiday party was in full swing, thousands of people huddled and ran around drinking and having fun, waiting for the artists of that year. The explosion of fireworks happened normally and we also celebrated, despite the sadness that Jair Bolsonaro had been elected and that the next four years, at least, would be under his care.

Until then, with no mention of COVID-19 in the country, our biggest threat was the government and the idea that he could be re-elected for another four years, with one of his sons taking power in 2026 — the forecast, without the pandemic, was that the Bolsonaros would remain in the presidency until 2030.

Our party had little political discussion, I was excited about the writing of my new book “Os Oradores dos Sonhos” and my friend, Gaspar, happy with the growth of his company, an advertising agency. My friend’s family, however, asked me if I was going to immigrate to Canada, and I said no, for now I would stay in Brazil until the dollar dropped.

Ah, if I only knew!

After that party I went home with my friend and we talked about future plans, he had already called me to his agency and I had accepted some projects, that year we would be partners with a company that offered services to big brands, like Bayer, Dow , Burger Kink and Ashanti Gold. We had dreams, we had hope and we had beer!

What else could we want?

We both stopped in the middle of Avenida Paulista, near the entrance to the subway and watched a group of drunk teenagers laughing and stumbling down the street, the typical joy of the beginning of the year was nowhere near what was to come in a few months. There was freedom, there was laughter and no one wore masks, except the social masks that we use on a daily basis.

Gaspar went home on the subway, I decided to go by bus, since on Avenida Paulista there was a drive that left me almost at the door. At that time I still lived in a pension, a building in a poor area with about twenty rooms with a bathroom, whole families shared these rooms, or couples and other people alone. For me it was a kind of shared community, a commune in the broadest sense of the word.

And while Brazilians were enjoying the first days of the new year, on the other side of the world the disease spread with the speed of a hurricane. As far as I remember, in January 2020 the World Health Organization was informed about the SARS-COV-2 virus, without a “popular” name; and published a tweet about elevated pneumonia cases in a city in China.