Fernando Alcoforado*
In a meeting with governors, the Minister of Health, Eduardo Pazuello, announced yesterday in a meeting with governors that the federal government would buy 46 million doses of the Coronavac vaccine. Today, Jair Bolsonaro stated that the Brazilian government will not buy doses of CoronaVac, a vaccine developed by the Chinese laboratory Sinovac in partnership with the Butantan Institute and which has the government of São Paulo, led by political rival João Doria, as the main guarantor in the Brazil.
Before the meeting with governors, the Ministry of Health even sent a letter to the Butatan Institute, dated Monday (19), to confirm the intention to purchase the vaccines. In this letter, Pazuello said: I inform the intention to acquire 46 million doses of the referred vaccine (Butatan Vaccine – Sinovac / Covid-19), at an estimated price of US$ 10.30 (ten dollars and thirty cents) per dose, following the vaccine specifications and delivery schedule.
Bolsonaro’s statement disapproves yesterday’s announcement by the Minister of Health and, at the end of today, said that he had the protocol of intentions canceled and emphasized that “I do not give up my authority”. Contradictorily, the Bolsonaro government signed the purchase of the Oxford vaccine without authorization from Anvisa. On August 6, Bolsonaro signed an MP (Provisional Measure) that frees R$ 1.9 billion for the production, purchase and distribution of 100 million doses of the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford in partnership with the Astrazeneca laboratory, which, in Brazil, research on this immunizer is led by Fiocruz.
You can see that Bolsonaro’s opposition to Coronavac results from the fact that it is sponsored by Governor João Dória, whom he identifies as his competitor in the 2022 presidential elections, thus politicizing the vaccine issue. In the same way that he opposed the social distance measures defended by the governors and rendered the Ministry of Health inoperative, making it difficult to fight the new Coronavirus in Brazil, contributing to the death of more than 150 thousand Brazilians and almost 3 million infected by the virus, Bolsonaro opposes the mandatory vaccination of the population and, also, the Coronavac vaccine.
Two facts are evident. On the one hand, Bolsonaro acts as a great ally in the spread of the virus in Brazil, while João Doria hastily seeks to promote mass vaccination in São Paulo and, also, in Brazil, to promote himself politically, by launching a vaccine, Coronavac, whose efficacy has not yet been proven It is important to note that the Coronavac vaccine, like other research vaccines in the world, has not yet demonstrated its safety and effectiveness in combating the new Coronavirus. According to Ken Frazier, CEO of the world’s leading vaccine producer, pharmaceutical Merck & Co., in an interview with Harvard Business School, published on the website <https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/merck-ceo-ken-frazier-speaks-about-a-covid-cure-racism-and-why-leaders-need-to-walk-the-talk>, the fastest vaccine ever brought to the market was Merck’s mumps medicine that took about four years. Merck’s Ebola vaccine took five and a half years and only this month was approved in Europe. The tuberculosis vaccine took 13 years, for rotavirus 15 years and for chicken 28 years.
Frazier explained that the process of developing a vaccine is time-consuming because it requires rigorous scientific evaluation. In the case of Covid 19, he said that we don’t even understand the virus itself or how the virus affects the immune system. Frazier says that no one is sure whether any of these vaccine programs will be effective. What worries him most is that the public is so anxious, so desperate to return to normality, that it is pushing the pharmaceutical industry to move things faster and faster. He says there are many examples of vaccines in the past that boosted the immune system but did not provide protection. And, unfortunately, there are some cases where it not only gave no protection but helped the virus invade the cell because the vaccine was incomplete in terms of its immunogenic properties. We have to be very careful, said Frazier. Ultimately, Frazier says that if you are going to use a vaccine in billions of people, you better know what that vaccine does.
Ken Frazier says that when it is said that there will be a vaccine by the end of 2020, for example, as is the case with João Doria, he thinks that they do a serious disservice to the public. He argues that one should not rush the vaccine until we have a rigorous science. He says that we saw in the past, for example, with swine flu, that this vaccine did more harm than good. We don’t have a great record of introducing vaccines quickly in the middle of a pandemic. We need to keep that in mind, Frazier said. He claims that there are seven and a half billion people on the planet right now. And we have never had a vaccine that has been used in a population of that size.
From the above, Bolsonaro’s behavior regarding the issue of the new Coronavirus in Brazil is irresponsible, as well as all those, such as João Doria, who in a hurry want to vaccinate the population without the necessary proof of the effectiveness of the vaccine that would require a long time.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 80, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).
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