It wasn't really Bolsonaro destroying them but those wanting to make a productive use of the land, much like other men have done the world over for aeons. The argument goes the rest of the world can plant their own trees and/or pay towards the maintenance of the Amazon rainforest as a world reserve / lung / whatever. It's not particularly bonkers.
His approach was as misguided as Trump's or BoJo's: denial, stupid theories, prioritising the economy... The adoption and execution of disparate sanitary policies isn't at federal but at state and municipal level though, so the owners of the disaster are state governors and city mayors primarily.
As an example, I had all my employees in one state vaccinated in Jan 2001 (healthcare = priority 1) while the ones in another started getting vaccinated in May with the general public (public healthcare in Feb, but if you were private healthcare you weren't priority, even if there was no market for me to sort it out privately).
That sort of shit isn't on Bolsonaro. In fact, what you can accuse him of is not trodding all over Brazil's institutional order and forcing one unified will on the entire country at a time of need. The sort of thing fascists actually love doing.
I’m brazilian. Anyone in Brazil, naturals or residents, could take the vaccine from January onwards through public healthcare, despite Bolsonaro. The first vaccine to be available in Brazil was the chinese CoronaVac, which Bolsonaro publicly attacked many times and actually tried to halt negotiations with the chinese (only reason the deal was made was because of São Paulo’s governor and Instituto Butantan). Not to mention the conspiracy theories and fake news widespread through his electoral mass that made far more difficult to control the spreading of the disease. One last thing is that Brazil for the last 20 years had a model vaccination program with its public healthcare system (SUS) and was therefore very well prepared for vaccine application throughout the country.
With Bolsonaro we had to endure:
1 - A fall from grace in international diplomacy (Brazil used to be a mediator between the world powers, always on the side of the needy, and is right now a pariah)
2 - The emptying of culture funds, the appointed culture minister a crazy gun-wielding talentless actor that hadn’t worked in the industry for more than 20 years.
3 - The shameful emptying of funds for science
4 - Corruption scandals on the public health department (overbilling of vaccines)
5 - Corruption scandals on the education ministry (funds being released in exchanges of gold inside bibles!)
6 - Emptying of the public education funds (the national exams have been pure trouble for the last 4 years)
7 - Populism that spent way more than the government could have spent and inflation through the roof
8 - A population that’s now in a permanent state of collective cognitive disfunction, through fake news and conspiracy theories being spread by robots through the internet and messaging apps. Families torn apart from his lies.
9 - A 500 billion reais blunt on the energy department
10 - An increase of more than 5 times the number of firearms available in the country (mostly in the hands of organized crime)
11 - The rise of militiaman to the governmental high office.
12 - Distrust on the judiciary system
13 - Validation of prejudiced ideas for the common people
get out of here!
