Four out of ten Brazilian municipalities have no sewage service, according to IBGE

About 39.7% of Brazilian municipalities do not have sewage service, according to the National Survey of Basic Sanitation (PNSB), released by IBGE.

Despite the growth in the supply of these sewage services, which practically doubled in the last thirty years in the Northeast region of Brazil, from 26.1% in 1989 to 52.7% and from 12.9% to 43% of municipalities in the Midwest region, the provision of basic sanitation services in Brazil is still far from an acceptable level.

According to the Trata Brasil Institute, a survey based on data released by the National Sanitation Information System (SNIS - base 2018), shows that advances in this area are insufficient for Brazil to fulfill national and international commitments in treated water, collection, and treatment of water sewers.

With two months of deflation and growth in the number of unemployed, Brazil under Bolsonaro`s government is heading for an economic scenario even more serious than the current one

The Broad National Consumer Price Index (IPCA), considered the official indicator of inflation in Brazil, fell 0.38% in May. This is the second consecutive decline in the index, which recorded a 0.31% decrease in April, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

Still, according to IBGE, the services sector dropped 11.7% in April, compared to March. The results of the Monthly Service Survey, released today (17) by the IBGE, show that, in these three months of retraction, the sector accumulates a loss of 18.7%. Unemployment grew more than 10% in May alone.

According to José Paulo Kupfer, the "deflation of the IPCA in May deepens the deflation of April. Consumption of goods and, above all, services, down. Unemployment, loss of income, fear of contagion, and the 'precautionary savings', affect the activity, and keeps inflation below the floor."

Many economists are point out that with two consecutive months of deflation, the basic interest rate defined by the Brazilian Central Bank increases in real terms for the State's creditors. In this way, it ends up promoting a rent which, while benefiting a wealthy minority of the population, accelerates the country's economic recession further.

As Brazil moves quickly to scare the number of 50,000 killed by COVID-19, Brazilian companies continue to fail and breaking down and unemployment still rising. In this dramatic scenario, the Bolsonaro government meeting that went public shows only authoritarian delusions and bravado. The coronavirus crisis was not even mentioned in this meeting, which wasn't made any proposals to take Brazil out of the crisis.

Besides that, according to research conducted by the Page Group, more than 10 million Brazilians have already had reduced working hours and wages or have their contract suspended during the coronavirus pandemic. This made the country a leader in wage reduction in Latin America. In Brazil, 11.8% indicated the reduction in salary as a measure to face the crisis, while in Latin America it is adopted by 7.1%. The reduction in working hours, in turn, represents 7.8% of the responses against 4.2% in the region.

The scenario in which Brazil is heading should be marked by a deep drop in revenue, as a result of the slowdown in economic activity, high unemployment, and serious political crisis.

Carlos Wizard resigns from the Ministry of Health after defending “recount” of deaths by COVID-19; decision came after the billionaire's companies began to suffer a boycott of Brazilians

Billionaire Carlos Wizard will no longer take over the Secretariat at the Brazilian Ministry of Health. According to the G1 website, "in recent weeks, Wizard had been participating in meetings on the coronavirus pandemic. He was not nominated in the Federal Official Gazette and, therefore, also did not receive public money".

Carlos Wizard not only announced the recount of the deaths but also stated that the number presented by the Ministry of Health was unrealistic. After that, the ministry took the information from the official website. This caused a huge reaction in the country, including a strong campaign to boycott all brands linked to the billionaire Wizard, who, after losing money, decided to leave do government with even been officially hired.

After all, Wizard also says if any of his statements could have offended victims.

The development of this case indicates that it is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to support Bolsonaro's proto-fascist necropolitics. In this case, it became evident that for Wizard, as well as for other entrepreneurs, before Bolsonaro's support comes their business, and a boycott is everything a businessman doesn't want.

Carlos Wizard, the new secretary of the Brazilian Ministry of Health defends the recounts of the number of deaths caused by the new coronavirus; without any scientific evidence, he said the numbers were "fanciful or manipulated"

Carlos Wizard, upon assuming the position of the new secretary of Science, Technology and Strategic Inputs of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, said that he will work to review the numbers of the coronavirus in the country.

Wizard, who is known for having founded a network of English schools in Brazil, has no experience in the health sector (the current interim Minister of Health in Brazil also has no experience in the area, he is a general in the Brazilian army ).

Many fear that Wizard intends to establish a kind of Ministry of Truth in Brazil, dedicated only to "retelling" the more than 34 thousand deaths by COVID-19. It seems like Wizard wants Covid-19 deaths to simply and magically disappear. In addition, billionaire Wizard also advocates the use of chloroquine to prevent COVID-19.

Last night the Ministry of Health of Brazil has stopped releasing a total of confirmed Covid-19 cases & deaths and the government site is "under maintenance" since then. The president Jair Bolsonaro said that the government is adapting itself "for better precision". 

This was viewed as an act of censorship. According to the John Hopkins website, Brazil has 614,941 cases and 34,021 deaths. 

While Brazil reaches half a million cases of COVID-19, with almost thirty thousand deaths, the country remains without a health minister and the president Bolsonaro rides a horse amid a demonstration as if nothing had happened

According to a survey carried out by the independent health data platform Functional Health Techo, the next July 6th will be the peak of contamination by COVID-19 in Brazil. On that date, the country will reach 1.78 million people with the coronavirus. This number, however, does not account for the cases of people recovered or who died.

According to the figures released by the state's health departments, Brazil currently has 514,992 cases of the new coronavirus (Sars-CoV-2), with 29,341 deaths, thus passing France in the number of deaths.

In the midst of this unprecedented health crisis, Brazil remains without a Minister of Health, a portfolio that is currently occupied temporarily by a military man who is not a doctor and has no experience in the area of public health. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, on the other hand, rode out on horseback to participate in a demonstration by supporters in Brasília.

Without a mask, Bolsonaro also greeted people crowded over the protective fence in the act in defense of his government. Thousands of people, many without protection (mask), gathered in front of the government headquarters.

COVID-19: João Dória, governor of São Paulo, the richest and most populous state of Brazil, decides to relax the quarantine starting June 1st

The resumption of some economic activities in the state of São Paulo as of June 1st, according to Governor João Dória, will be done gradually. Every 15 days the situation will be analyzed, in case of an increase in cases, new determinations on restrictions must be announced. Wearing masks and social detachment remains mandatory. Doria ruled out a lockdown in the coming weeks.

Dória was one of the main critics of the posture of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who defends the return of economic activities. With the decision, Dória gave up pressure from part of the State's economic and political power. The measure to relax the quarantine in the context of deaths by COVID-19, which is still increasing in several regions of the State of São Paulo and in several other Brazilian states, is, above all, a political decision.

With that, Dória intends to demonstrate that his administration was more efficient in combating the coronavirus crisis and in the deadline for the reopening of the economy than Jair Bolsonaro's presidency. With this, he intends to meet the demands of the Brazilian right and extreme right, which defend the total opening of the economy. Dória's plan is to position herself as a more technical administrator than Bolsonaro. However, despite all the discourse of respecting science, Dória is taking such measures for mainly political reasons.

São Paulo does not do enough tests to know exactly how the State is facing COVID-19, despite the nearly 4 million tests that would have been released. Doria, therefore, will reopen São Paulo in the winter, at a time when the State is also facing an increase in the number of H1N1 cases.

Crisis: Brazil closes more than one million formal jobs in April and March 2020, according to Caged

Information released today by the New General Register of Employed and Unemployed (Caged), of the Minsitério do Trabalho do Brasil, points to a drastic drop in the number of hires in the country was the main responsible for the negative balance of formal jobs in the first four months of 2020 in Brazil. 1,1 million formal jobs were closed in Brazil in March and April 2020, according to figures from the General Register of Jobs and Unemployed (Caged) released today by the Ministry of Economy.

In April of 2019, Caged had a positive balance of 129,601 formal jobs, resulting from 1,374,628 admissions and 1,245,071 dismissals. In the same month in 2020, there were 598,596 hires and the number of dismissals reached 1,459,099, generating a negative result of 860,503 vacancies closed.

According to the newspaper O Globo, this result is, "by far, the worst data for job creation in Brazil since 1992, when the Caged historical series began. Before, the worst data had been recorded in 1992, when the country closed 142 thousand jobs in those two months".

These frightening figures show the impact of the pandemic, the current and profound national political crisis, and the complete lack of direction of the federal government, which has been going for two weeks without a Health Minister in the midst of a health crisis without precedent. Thus, the Brazilian labor market suffers one of the strongest strokes in the country's history.

The Brazilian financial market shows how much it is a segment that is completely detached from the reality of the country by simply disregarding the disastrous conduct of Bolsonaro's government in the fight against COVID-19 and the country's unprecedented political crisis

The disclosure of the video of the ministerial meeting in which President Jair Bolsonaro and several of his ministers committed, according to several jurists, crimes, including defending the arrest of ministers of the Supreme Court, was positively received by the Brazilian financial market.

As I had already written here, on August 27, 2019, by "betting on a possible liberal agenda of the then-the financial market was one of the biggest supporters of Jair Bolsonaro's candidacy".  

After the election, the Brazilian financial market has completely disregarded the fact that Bolsonaro's "government was largely unable to organize and lead the political debate around a reformist agenda. In fact, the statements of Bolsonaro and Guedes did more harm than good in assisting the approval work of the Social Security Reform. The main architect of this reform was the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Rodrigo Maia, who at various times collided with Bolsonaro and even Paulo Guedes".

This assessment, completely mistaken in my view, continues today amid the chaos caused by COVID-19 and the political catastrophe of the crises that surround the current government, which no longer hides its anti-democratic intentions. The market continues to understand that the fact that Economy Minister Paulo Guedes is considered a strong name in the government is a positive thing. The problem is that Guedes, who is a liberal with an agenda considered outdated even by liberal economists like Monica de Bolle, will be forced now to adopt policies that he has been opposed to for a lifetime.

Several financial market analysts believe the Environment Minister's calling for environmental deregulation while public distracted by COVID and Guedes saying that the suspension of server readjustments is "grenade in the enemy's pocket", during this meeting, are the representation of liberal values!

This represents how ideological the assessment that a large part of the Brazilian financial market makes of the current government, which obviously undermines immensely a pragmatic analysis of what is really happening to the Brazilian economy.

Of the meeting that was released by the courts, only the attacks on China by members of the government, including the president himself, concern part of the Brazilian financial market.

Celso de Mello decides to release video of the ministerial meeting of the government of Jair Bolsonaro

Minister Celso de Mello, of the Supreme Federal Court, decided to release the video of the ministerial meeting on April 22, which was quoted by former judge Sérgio Moro in his testimony to the Federal Police.

The content of the meeting is already available on the STF website, but the Supreme Court website is unstable, perhaps due to the huge traffic to access the content of the explosive determination.

Deforestation in the Amazon, in April 2020, is the highest in the last 10 years; number of COVID-19 cases grows among Indigenous peoples

The deforestation area in the Amazon rainforest increased by 171% in April 2020 compared to the same month in 2019. Of this area, one-third of the entire area is concentrated in the state of Pará.

According to Anfavea (National Association of Motor Vehicle Manufacturers), crawler tractors, the main instrument of deforestation in the Amazon, between January and April 2020 set a sales record for the last 5 years. Therefore, deforestation continues to enrich various sectors of the Brazilian economy, who work illegally or take advantage of the current government's lack of supervision to destroy the forest and earn money from it. Some of the tractors used in deforestation can cost up to one million reais.

Jair Bolsonaro's government, since its beginning in 2019, has been trying to hinder the destruction of machines learned during Ibama operations (Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources).

In total, in April 2020, 529 km² were deforested. The data are from Imazon's Deforestation Alert System (SAD). Ten municipalities were responsible for more than half of deforestation in the Amazon in April. Altamira and São Félix do Xingu, in Pará, and Apuí, in Amazonas, are at the top of that list.

Indigenous people

At least 23 Indigenous people died as a result of Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus. Several associations and representatives of the original peoples have, since the arrival of the virus in the country, been warning about the degree of vulnerability of Indigenous communities across the country.

The destruction of the forest also affects the Yanomami and Raposa Serra do Sol Indigenous Lands, in the Amazon. They are among the most deforested and also appear among the most vulnerable to Covid-19, according to a survey by ISA (Instituto Socioambiental).

Jair Bolsonaro's government deepens chaos by acting against social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil

Almost every Sunday, Brasilia becomes the stage of even more crazy manifestations of support for the Bolsonaro government. Every Sunday, these demonstrations and the president follow the same script, are inconsequential and irresponsible for not respecting social distance and attacking democracy. Meanwhile, Brazil surpassed the 16 thousand dead by COVID-19 yesterday.

In the middle of it all, according to IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), unemployment increased in 12 Brazilian states in the first quarter of 2020.

To make matters worse, practically every Pro-Bolsonaro demonstration a journalist is attacked by the crowd who defends, among other things, the return of the Dictatorship, the end of social isolation and the widespread use of chloroquine in the fight against COVID-19, which is discouraged by experts and has already resulted in the resignation of two ministers of Health in Brazil.

According to Oliver Stuenkel, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV) in São Paulo, Pro-Bolsonaro protesters gathering yesterday in Brazilia "in front of the presidential palace do not amount to more than a handful of far-right crazies".

In addition, other members of the government, such as Economy Minister Paulo Guedes, say absurd things like the promise that Brazil would do 40 million monthly tests for COVID-19, which obviously has not happened so far and everything indicates that it will not happen. Guedes said this at the beginning of April and so far nothing.

The latest scandal is now a complaint, published by Folha de S. Paulo, according to which Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of Jair Bolsonaro, would have been warned in advance about a federal police operation against Fabrício Queiroz and that involved the president and his family. After the request of the PGR (Attorney General's Office), businessman Paulo Marinho, who reported the leak, will testify.

The son of Bolsonaro and future senator of the Republic Flávio Bolsonaro was informed of the existence of the investigation between the first and second rounds of the 2018 presidential elections that elected Jair Bolsonaro.