Rio de Janeiro, BRAZIL
As new variants of coronavirus travel throughout all 26 states and one federal district of Brazil, many of its 212 million inhabitants seem to be emotionally immune to the average number of daily national obits: over three thousand people.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, 14 million Brazilians have been infected, 12 million have recovered and over 381 thousand have succumbed to the disease. Meanwhile, the government had four ministers of health in 12 months and is led by a president, Jair Bolsonaro, who has disregarded the seriousness of the disease and delayed the purchase of vaccines.
Lockdowns rules vary from city to city, and many describe hundreds of waitlisted patients to COVID-19 intensive care units. Doctors underline an increasing number of hospitalized people in their 30s and 40s, while the elderly lineup for the first or second dose of the vaccine. Still, there are records of seniors leaving home at 2 am to wait in line to get a shot to learn that their assigned location runs out of second doses. There are also complaints of dentists, obstetricians, and teachers among the professionals excluded from the primary list of people to get a vaccine.
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While synagogues are still closed, Jewish schools are open, putting in practice sanitary protocols, as few below the age of 60 are vaccinated. "The pandemic did not impact the Jewish population in terms of deaths compared to the country at large," Rabbi Nilton Bonder, founder of Congregação Judaica do Brasil, a synagogue in Rio de Janeiro, said. "Besides some doctors in the frontline of the situation, the Jews in Brazil usually hold jobs that allow them to work from home. They also thrived in educating themselves about the prevention, have access to good health care, and, like Woody Allen, many are hypochondriacs," he says jokingly.
Rabbi Bonder points out that his synagogue was the first to shut its doors, in March of 2020. At that time, he made emergency plans with the local Chevra Kadisha, expecting an unprecedented number of deaths. In the end, it was unnecessary. "In the first Covid-19 wave, which affected mostly the elder, we saw fewer cases than expected. Grandparents stayed at home and managed to celebrate the holidays via Zoom", he says. "This second wave has been less generous with the younger population." In São Paulo, the cantor Alexander Edelstein, from Congregação Israelita Paulista, agrees. "We had recently sat shiva for a 24-year-old man and another one in his forties", he laments. The state of São Paulo alone has lost 90 thousand lives for the disease.
The rabbi notes that the local Jewish population has shown outpouring support to struggling institutions and social projects, both inside and outside the community. One of them, São Paulo-based" Campaign 1818", benefited 18 thousand low-income families through food donations. In Rio, chef David Hertz, founder of the Gastromotiva movement, was able to donate over a million meals – and counting – to the homeless, supported by donors and volunteers. He leads the campaign #ChegadeFome ("An End to Hunger"), and foresees a tougher situation in 2021. "We have to act as if we are coming out of a war", he says.
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