I received the Ad26.COV2.S vaccine from Janssen on the day a year had passed after the death of Covid’s first victim in Brazil, cleaning lady Rosana Urbano, 57. After her, 275,000 Brazilians died, and many more will die.
The feeling after vaccination is not a feeling of relief or joy. We’re all confined to the tumbeiro called Brazil, whose businessman is a soul trader, Jair Bolsonaro, and a helmsman is an emaciated general, Eduardo Pazuello.
Around us, the most vulnerable and neglected continue to die like flies, indifferent to the ship’s crew and their captain. It is evident that Bolsonaro will neither change route nor reach the mortality rate of Africans enslaved in transatlantic merchant ships, which is estimated to be at least 10%.
Would Brazil change if it achieved so much? Was there a riot on board? It is terrifying to think that it may not revisit the tradition of the land that was born, grew and survived without reacting on the basis of Native American and African American suffering.
The perception that less than 2% of fully vaccinated Brazilians have received the two doses of Coronavac or CoviShield only underscores the certainty of the usual privilege. Working at home, on the beach or in the mountains, being able to maintain the same income, not having to enter the tumbeiros of the Rio BRT, etc.
It was fortunate to be recruited into the clinical trial of a vaccine that many Americans will only benefit from in the coming months. Janssen, a subsidiary of pharmaceuticals company Johnson & Johnson, does not seek transparency in Brazil, as pointed out in a recent report, but the federal government is negotiating with her to buy millions of doses.
It would be great if you could. The Janssen vaccine would be a gift here as it has good potency (66%), requires usual refrigeration (unlike the Pfizer and Moderna product), and allows for a single dose (while Fiocruz and butantane require two doses).
The retrospective of the Bolsonaro and Pazuello fighters in this area leaves no room for optimism. After so much sabotage and denial, so much comings and goings with guaranteed shares, not even the announcement of 10 million cans of Sputnik V by June deserves credit – and that would be enough for just 5 million people.
The U.S. government prepurchased $ 100 million of the Janssen vaccine for delivery through June and announced an additional $ 100 million. The two waves will be enough for more than half of the 330 million people in a country that has already vaccinated more than 64 million.
As of a week ago, only 3.9 million units of Ad26.COV2.S had actually left J&J warehouses, and another 16 million cans will be distributed there by the end of March. It is unlikely that Janssen will be able to enter into additional delivery commitments before the end of the year.
American President Joe Biden appears to be the greatest statesman in the world compared to Donald Trump. Cultivate the image by saying that no one will be safe from Covid until all of the inhabitants of the planet are, but he does not give up immunizers’ estimated doses.
If you are not doing it for the benefit of poor countries, then why donate vaccines to a nation like Brazil that were delivered to a pariah president who had the funds to buy them and did not because he did not wanted? ?
Do not rely on compassion and decency from outside or from the plateau. If it depends on them, the Tumbeiro will continue to throw bodies into the sea, much to the despair of those trapped in the basement and in the Fedentin.
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