Brazilians are starting to defy isolation, egged on by Bolsonaro

RIO DE JANEIRO — Divina Baldomero awoke, looked out the window at Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach under a cloudless sky and decided to take her first stroll in 40 days.

The 75-year-old restaurant owner, like most Brazilians, had been adhering to her governor’s call to stay home to contain the spread of the coronavirus. But on this day she decided to ignore that, urged on by the view of President Jair Bolsonaro that the shutdown is wrongheaded, will wreck the economy and that anyway, the virus isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

“At first I thought [the shutdown] was viable. Later, I came to think we will have more economic difficulties, with the poverty there is. There should be a different way so we can be free of this,” said Baldomero, speaking Wednesday in front of the shuttered Copacabana Palace hotel. Her legs, virtually unused for more than a month, began trembling after seven minutes of standing.

Egged on by Bolsonaro, who has routinely scoffed at both the virus and stay-at-home policies, Brazilians are heeding his call for revolt. Support for isolation is faltering, particularly among the wealthy, and more people are milling and mixing. From the sun-worshipers to the Instagram influencers and pro-Bolsonaro protesters, denial is spreading and quarantine is coming apart. But, unlike other countries looking to ease restrictions, Latin America’s largest nation is still weeks from the peak in its viral curve.