The horrifying reality of Brazil's coronavirus outbreak

In Brazil's largest and most badly infected city, coronavirus has yet to peak, yet already the healthcare system is crumbling visibly around us. As doctors struggle valiantly to save lives, the country's President, Jair Bolsonaro, seems more focused on another sick patient: his country's economy.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4ottO6-4iA

Brazil this week became the country with the second most infections worldwide after the United States, with more than 330,000 confirmed cases. But Bolsonaro, who once dismissed Covid-19 as a "little flu," has urged businesses to reopen, despite many governors stressing social isolation measures to slow the spread.

In the huge intensive care unit (ICU) of Emilio Ribas Infectious Disease Institute in São Paulo, anger swirls among doctors when asked about their President's comments. "Revolting," says one. "Irrelevant" declares another.

Dr. Jacques Sztajnbok is more restrained. "It's not the flu. It's the worst thing we have ever faced in our professional lives." His eyes slow and narrow, when I ask if he worries about his health. "Yes," he says, twice.

The reasons why are clear inside the overwhelming silence of the ICU. Coronavirus kills behind the veil of a hospital curtain, in a stifling quiet, that is so distant and alien to the global upheaval and noisy political divisions it has inspired. But when it takes a life, it is intimately horrifying.

The first noticeable break in the calm is a flashing red light. The second, a doctor's hair cover, moving up and down just above a privacy screen, as his rigid arms deliver hard, unforgiving chest compressions to a patient.

The patient is in her 40s, and her medical history has meant for days the odds on her survival are bad. But the change, when it comes, is sudden.

Another nurse runs in. In this ICU, the medical staff pause in an outer chamber to gown up and wash, but only moments before racing in. In the corridor outside, a doctor fumbles, clumsily pulling on his gown. These moments have come countless times before in the pandemic but, this day, it gets no easier. This ICU is full, and still the peak in São Paulo is probably two weeks away.

Through the glass, gowned staff jostle tightly together and circle the patient's head; to replace tubes; to shift posture; to switch their position and relieve each other from the exhausting task. Their unforgiving compressions on the patients' sternum are all that keep her alive.

A doctor emerges, sweat on her brow, to pause in the cooler, corridor air. A sliding glass door slams -- a rare noise -- as another rushes in. For 40 minutes, the quietly frenetic focus continues. And then, without audible warning, it suddenly stops. The lines on the heart monitors are flat, permanently.
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I really consider a lucky country but there is a limit to how far we can continue to ride on this luck... We have to put in appropriate measures

Why can't this make front page! The description of the horrifying routine in the ICU is vivid enough to impress anyone that the serious case of Covid-19 is no joke in the least.