SAO PAULO – Simone Guimarães, a 52-year-old retired teacher from Rio de Janeiro, has been profoundly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, having lost her husband, sister, two brothers-in-law, and her grandchild’s godfather to the virus. The tragedy also claimed the lives of several friends and neighbors.

On Saturday, Guimarães awoke to the news that Brazil’s Supreme Court had ordered the preemptive arrest of former President Jair Bolsonaro. Accused of plotting to flee the country just days before starting a 27-year prison sentence, Bolsonaro was convicted of attempting a coup following his defeat in the 2022 presidential election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

“This feels like a small step toward justice,” Guimarães expressed. “At some point, impunity must come to an end, and with him, we’ve suffered a great deal.”

Social media platforms buzzed with tributes on Saturday, as users remembered those lost to the pandemic. This wave of remembrance was similar to September, when the Supreme Court convicted Bolsonaro, despite the case being unrelated to his administration’s handling of COVID-19.

Guimarães closely followed every development in Bolsonaro’s trial. She recalled being at a hospital with her sister in 2021, when Bolsonaro, then the president, mocked patients struggling to breathe.

“I had my forehead against my sister’s. She said, ‘I can’t breathe,’” Guimarães recalled. Her sister later died. “I can’t even bring myself to say his name.”

She now feels indirectly vindicated, like many other Brazilians who lost relatives to the disease. They say Bolsonaro’s conviction and imprisonment cleansed their souls without delivering justice for their grief.

“I’m very afraid that this conviction for crimes related to the coup will lessen the convictions for other crimes committed during the pandemic,” said Diego Orsi, a 41-year-old translator in Sao Paulo, the nation’s largest city. “I feel a bit like the Nuremberg trials had convicted the Nazis for invading Poland, and not for genocide.”

Growing up and then apart

Orsi grew up alongside his cousin, Henrique Cavalari. They were like brothers. In old family photos, the two appear together blowing out birthday candles.

As teenagers, Cavalari introduced Orsi to rock bands. Politically, however, they drifted apart. Orsi considers himself progressive while Cavalari backed Bolsonaro.

“My uncle always leaned right, and my cousin grew up with that mindset,” Orsi said. “During the pandemic, he became convinced there was nothing to worry about, that social distancing restricted freedom and the priority should be protecting the economy.”

Cavalari ran a motorcycle repair shop and was a staunch Bolsonaro supporter. He couldn’t afford to close his shop and the far-right leader’s rhetoric resonated with the mechanics, who attended his rallies even during the deadliest months of the pandemic.

In June 2021, thousands of the president’s supporters rode motorcycles through Sao Paulo with Bolsonaro. That same month, Cavalari died from COVID-19 complications. He was 41.

Orsi wasn’t 100% sure if Cavalari was at the motorcycle rally, but said his cousin attended previous similar events.

“He was newly married, paying rent on his business. He needed the money,” Orsi said, recalling he couldn’t visit Cavalari in the hospital intensive care unit because only immediate family was allowed. “But I was told one of the last things he said was to warn his parents to take care, that the disease was serious.”

Orsi’s family remains divided, much like the rest of Brazil, and he believes Bolsonaro’s conviction will not change public opinion or reconcile other families.

Feeling grief and vindication

Bolsonaro denied wrongdoing during his trial. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected an appeal from his legal team, though another may come this week. Before his arrest Saturday, he had been under house arrest since August.

“I would have preferred that he was arrested for allowing 700,000 Brazilians to die, many deaths that could have been avoided, perhaps by speeding up the vaccine rollout,” Orsi told The Associated Press. “But since he is being tried and convicted for other crimes, it cleanses our soul. It gives us a sense that justice has been served.”

There have been more than 700,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19 in Brazil since 2020, the world’s second-highest toll after the United States.

In 2021, epidemiologists at the Federal University of Pelotas estimated 4 in 5 of those deaths could have been avoided if the Bolsonaro administration had supported containment measures and accelerated vaccine purchases.

Bolsonaro’s government ignored repeated pleas to sign additional vaccine contracts. He publicly questioned the reliability of shots and mocked contract terms, once suggesting Pfizer recipients would have no legal recourse if they “turned into alligators.” Brazil faced vaccine shortages and doses were released in phases by age and health risk.

Cavalari died just weeks before he would have been eligible for his first dose, Orsi said.

The same happened to the father of Fábio de Maria, a 45-year-old teacher in Sao Paulo.

“When he was admitted to the hospital, he was about 15 days away from being eligible for his first shot,” de Maria said. “That delay was fatal for him and many others.”

His father died in May 2021 at age 65. De Maria blames Bolsonaro and other officials he believes were complicit, but he said the former president’s conviction doesn’t bring justice.

“Many people feel vindicated, and I don’t blame them. Bolsonaro provoked a lot of anger in many people, including me,” he said. “But I don’t believe there has been justice for those who died of COVID-19, because that is not why Bolsonaro was convicted.”

Reaching a political turning point

The pandemic marked a change in course for Bolsonaro’s popularity. During the 2022 campaign, which he lost to Lula, television ads replayed footage of Bolsonaro mocking patients struggling to breathe, which is a common COVID-19 symptom, and highlighted comments widely seen as dismissive of victims and their families.

“Bolsonaro lost because of his denialist stance during the pandemic. The margin was very narrow,” said Eduardo Scolese, politics editor at the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper during Bolsonaro’s term and author of “1461 Dias na Trincheira” (”1461 Days in the Trenches”).

The federal government was expected to coordinate Brazil’s early response, Scolese said, but Bolsonaro consistently downplayed the crisis.

“No one knew how long it would last. Experts called for distancing, while he joined crowds,” Scolese said.

Bolsonaro loses control

As the Brazilian leader resisted public health measures, state and local governments imposed their own. The dispute reached the Supreme Court, which ruled states and municipalities could enact distancing, quarantines and other sanitary rules.

“That’s when Bolsonaro lost control. He began to believe everyone was against him, especially the Supreme Court,” Scolese said.

In October 2021, a Senate committee recommended charging Bolsonaro for actions and omissions during the pandemic, including charlatanism, inciting crime, misuse of public funds and crimes against humanity.

The case sat dormant until September, when Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino ordered police to expand the investigation. The case remains underway and sealed.

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Eléonore Hughes reported from Rio de Janeiro.

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