The Brazilian Senate has recommended that the Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro, face homicidal charges because of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Brazil has been hit especially hard by COVID, with almost 600,000 total deaths. The number of cases has only been on a steep incline since June 2020, going from almost 900,000 total cases to 22 million total cases. Government action towards combating COVID-19 in Brazil has been ineffective; Bolsonaro failed to call for a national lockdown and instead tried to reach a state of herd immunity. He also promoted the usage of ineffective drugs for “early treatment” by spending millions of dollars on creating these medications when no scientific proof existed to show their effectiveness. Additionally, the COVID-19 vaccine is highly controversial in Brazil, with only 50% of the population being vaccinated and Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga encouraging teens to not get vaccinated, calling it dangerous and unnecessary. The evidence is clear: Bolsonaro massively mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic. But Bolsonaro isn’t the only leader responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths: Donald Trump is too.
Prior to the development of the vaccine and the inauguration of President Biden, the U.S. was overtaken by the dangerous wave that is the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, Trump was traveling around the country to play golf.
Trump first publicly acknowledged the virus on January 22, 2020, saying that “[they] have it totally under control.” On February 2, Trump said that “[they] pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” Trump then made private comments to journalist Bob Woodward on February 7, saying that the coronavirus was more dangerous than the flu. A few weeks later, Trump tweeted that the pandemic was under control and began to push the belief that the virus would disappear in the warmer weather. He was wrong: by December 19, 2020, there were 313,759 total U.S. deaths from COVID-19.
Similar to Bolsonaro’s advocacy for early treatment experimental drugs, Trump pushed the usage of hydroxychloroquine, a drug that had no proof of being effective, to treat COVID-19 patients. He retweeted graphics that stated that hydroxychloroquine was 100% effective as a drug used to ward off the virus. Meanwhile, the FDA actually warned people not to use the drug, as it can cause problems with heart rhythms. At a task force meeting in March 2020, Dr. Fauci, the Director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, responded “no” to a question that asked whether hydroxychloroquine was an effective drug against COVID-19. In response, Trump said: “I’m a big fan, and we’ll see what happens. I feel good about it. That’s all it is, just a feeling, you know.”
Masks, on the other hand, have been proven to effectively protect against COVID-19. But on April 3, 2020, Trump said that he probably wouldn’t be wearing a mask because the CDC had said it was “voluntary.” He also mocked Biden for publicly wearing masks and once told a reporter to take off his mask when speaking.
Every time doctors recommended a way to protect the country from COVID-19, Trump seemed to do the exact opposite. He ignored the advice given to him by Dr. Fauci and the CDC, started a nationwide distrust of both doctors and science itself, and spread false information about an ineffective drug. Trump was well aware of the deadliness of the coronavirus but chose not to warn the public. It is very likely that many of the deaths due to COVID-19 were preventable, therefore, just as Bolsonaro is being accused of committing a crime against humanity, Donald Trump should be too.
