Tomas Castanheira
Brazil set new COVID-19 records for a single day on Wednesday, reporting 70,869 new cases and 1,554 deaths. With this, the country simultaneously surpassed the milestones of 2.5 million cases and 90,000 total deaths from the disease.
These figures expose one of the worst scenarios of the global pandemic. Although in absolute numbers Brazil still lags behind the United States, Wednesday’s numbers surpassed those of any other country in the world.
In the midst of these catastrophic conditions, the Brazilian political establishment is promoting a campaign to reopen schools across the country as soon as possible, threatening to escalate the already soaring levels of COVID-19 infections.
Entrance of a public school in São Paulo [Credit: Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo]
The schools represent a key step for a total reactivation of the Brazilian economy, which demands that workers leave their children while they are at their jobs generating profits for the ruling elite.
The brutal irrationality of this proposal was recently expressed in a commercial produced by the Union of Private Educational Establishments of Rio de Janeiro (Sinepe-RJ). Attacking science and normalizing COVID deaths, it stated:
“Months have passed, we’ve learned to live with the virus. COVID will never totally leave, what ends is fear… We understood that science is the vaccine, studies have only caused confusion. Locking everyone up at home is not science. To confine is to ignore, to subtract life, to weaken, to mess with emotions. Children need to get back together, play, rebuild bonds, friendships, see their friends again.”
Although it was quickly taken off the air, after a rain of criticism by health experts, its conceptions are fully aligned with the discussions being held at the top level of the state. It is impossible not to associate them with the sociopathic positions defended by extreme-right President Jair Bolsonaro.
About a month ago, when he announced to millions of Brazilians that he had contracted the new coronavirus, Bolsonaro once again insisted that the entire population should contract the virus and called for the immediate reopening of schools.
At that moment, he was looking for a candidate for the Ministry of Education (MEC). Renato Feder, one of those interviewed, declared later to Estadão that the president’s central concern was to have someone capable of promoting a plan for the resumption of classes throughout the country.
The minister appointed by Bolsonaro, the evangelical preacher Milton Ribeiro, was promptly praised by national private education associations as a figure capable of advancing “the safe resumption of on-site academic activities.”
Schools are already reopening
The reopening of schools in Brazil is progressing in the same way as they were closed, without general planning, with local governments making arbitrary decisions.
However, if in the movement to close schools at the beginning of the pandemic, governors and mayors appeared as opponents of the homicidal policy of Bolsonaro, now in promoting the reopenings, they reveal the total inconsistency of their opposition.
Public school classroom in São Paulo [Credit: Secretaria da Educação do Estado de São Paulo]
Following the lead given by the Ministry of Education in early July, when it presented a national protocol for the resumption of classes, the state and municipal governments have approved their own protocols, which despite not setting dates, prepare the ground for reopenings at any time.
Eleven states, plus the Federal District, have already scheduled the reopening of their schools. The dates set are based on completely fabricated arguments of a supposed “stabilization” of the epidemic.
In São Paulo, the state most affected by the pandemic, an average of almost 2,000 deaths per week was commemorated by right-wing governor João Doria of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) as a “plateau” in the spread of the disease and the time for “normalization.” Since then, he has manipulated data and the criteria of his reopening plan to allow a return to school in early September.
A number of other governments are already pushing for the resumption of classes in private schools as a spearhead to open the way for public schools, which educate 80 percent of Brazilian students with much more precarious infrastructure.
The first capital to permit the reopening of private schools was Manaus, in Amazonas, on July 6. According to the Union of Private Educational Establishments of the State of Amazonas (Sinepe-AM), 70 percent of the units reopened, bringing about 88,000 students inside classrooms.
This week, the Amazonian governor Wilson Lima of the reactionary Christian Social Party moved up the date for the return of public schools throughout the state to August 10. The government’s irresponsibility with the pandemic was already graphically demonstrated in April, when the scenes of thousands being buried in mass graves in Manaus shocked the whole world.
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