“Yet, we will step up when the going gets tough. Please find ways to be kind, helpful, loving and sensible at this crucial time in our Planet's life,” pleads an unidentified Brazilian. He meets ridicule in harsh words: “That should ease the World's population explosion! Ignorant, foolish, stupid, arrogant leadership when faced with a crisis...only disaster will result.”

The assertion in Brazil is that the coronavirus is killing far more young people and there’s an answer to the ‘Why?’ It’s got do with a certain type of endemic leadership and the very ‘third-worldedness’ of Brazil – which is in a bracket with India – lacking in resources and infrastructure to treat the vast majority, the poor.

The first Covid-19 hospitalizations in Brazil were of wealthy Brazilians returning from sojourns overseas and already coronavirus infected. Those who could afford air travel and live in five-star splendour in fancy locales in Europe and the United States. These first coronavirus infected got the best of treatment. Most of them recovered and went back to living caviar-lives.

However, Brazil is majority poor and it did not take long for the coronavirus to invade the slums of Sao Polo and other cities. Coronavirus in congested alleys and cubbyhole residences was in close contact virus-friendly environment where age was no barrier. The young caught the virus as easily as the older. And more because the young were the ones who woke up mornings to step outdoors and head for workplaces.

There was no other go because there were many mouths to feed and nobody wanted to lose job. But going to work in buses meant no social distancing. The poor could not afford to stop working and meeting people. Public transport was ideal for coronavirus transmission. It was like love at first sight! A close Indian parallel was when coronavirus found its way into Dharavi in Mumbai.

‘Bombay’ is where Covid-19 is a rampaging presence. It’s also the coronavirus’s crown-jewel of India. And Dharavi is two-and-a-half square kilometres of choc-a-bloc and cheek-by-jowl living in Mumbai/Bombay with almost nil room for social distancing. And like his Brazilian counterpart in the Sao Polo slum, the Dharavian lives on daily bread, which he will get only if he steps out and works for it.

India like Brazil is also cursed by ‘third-worldedness.’ Some would go to the extent of saying, by a similar brand of inept leadership. The refrain in Brazil and the United States is that American President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsanoro are both “ignorant, foolish, stupid, arrogant leadership when faced with a crisis...only disaster will result.”

Bolsanoro says Covid-19 is a gripexinha (a minor flu) and nobody needs to get too roiled. Instead, says this rightwing messiah, let’s go cut some slack for the citizen and cut more Amazon forest, there’s nothing like climate change! Bolsonaro and Trump are born of different mothers but they think like brothers. Trump is also a climate-change naysayer and like Bolsonaro game to cut room for the coronavirus to spread.

Social distancing for Trump is smooching in Times Square. He is least concerned about the coronavirus’ killer instincts and wants to open up every nook and corner of America. More than half the United States is refusing to step outdoors while the rest have thrown caution to the winds and are clogging beaches and churches with neither mask nor any task. Many in the second lot who follow Trump blindly don’t have a prayer while Trump himself is living by a test a day. Vice President Mike Pence, too.

According to western media, 15 per cent of coronavirus deaths in Brazil were of people under age 50. This was not so in Italy and Spain. It is worse in Mexico say these same reports, where one-fourth of the dead are between 25 and 49 years old. The same reports speculate that “nearly half of the dead” in India were “younger than” 60. Analysts say abject poverty, gross inequality and tottering healthcare systems for the deaths in developing countries like Brazil, Mexico and India.

And if the leadership in Brazil and India share anything with the one in United States, say these analysts, it is leadership of a certain mould. Take Bolsonaro, for instance. He’s convinced himself that only the elderly are vulnerable to the coronavirus. So protect them and let the young go gallivant. Bolsonaro calls this “vertical isolation” and asks, “Why close schools.” He is a President calling people to hit the streets and take the axe to the Amazon. Trump, tempered by severe criticism and perhaps aware that he has to win an election, is not being so brazen and blatant, except on China, but everybody knows he’s as unpredictable as the coronavirus. Prime Minister Narendra Modi so far has not done a Bolsonaro on his countrymen but who knows what the future holds? Keep the fingers crossed. (IPA Service)