Mandetta's administration leaves everything as it was before.

First of all, three points need to be made: 1) The almost ex-minister Mandetta (I'm writing this when his departure from the ministry was a matter of hours) is guided, in most matters, by medical and scientific criteria, rejecting Bolsonaro's criminal denialism; 2) In this text I do not intend to address Mandetta's political trajectory. His support for the coup against Dilma Rousseff, his fight against the SUS (Brazilian public healthcare system) in parliament, his support for the PEC (constitutional amendment) that froze spending on health and education, and his lobbying for private health plans are for another occasion; 3) Certainly, his replacement will be a step backward, since either a hardcore flat-earther or someone who accepts not confronting Bolsonaro's genocidal theses in public is coming.  

Even though I am a layman, I will focus only on his management at the head of the Ministry of Health, specifically in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. For this, I rely solely on the facts. The first interview given by Mandetta, as soon as Covid-19 crossed borders and continents and took hold in Brazil, seems, in essence, like a videotape of the last one I watched, this Wednesday, April 15th.

Far from the easy and frivolous rhetoric of pointing the finger at exclusive culprits, reality shows that the dramatic panorama announced by the minister at the very beginning of the pandemic and reaffirmed by him throughout its course remains unchanged.

Today, as at the beginning of March, there are still not enough masks for people to use; today, as at the beginning of the pandemic, healthcare professionals, who risk their lives to save ours, continue to suffer from a lack of personal protective equipment, such as N95 masks, gowns, goggles, caps, gloves, and even hand sanitizer; today, as since the discovery of the first cases in Brazil, few have access to tests to find out if they are infected or not, which makes Brazil the country with the largest population that tests the least for coronavirus in the world; today we are very close to the collapse of the healthcare systems, which was announced in February, due to the few ICU beds and ventilators we have available.

Of course, the factors that contributed to us reaching this almost desperate situation are many. They range from the neoliberal media campaign against everything public to the underfunding of the SUS (Brazilian public healthcare system); from the actions of private healthcare lobbyists in political and power spaces to the freezing of social spending; from the dissemination of the exclusionary ideology of the market to the election of leaders committed to its interests.

And, given the logic and dynamics of the Unified Health System (SUS), based on the shared management of the three levels of government, mayors and governors cannot shirk their share of responsibility. However, Mandetta's time at the Ministry of Health, in terms of concrete and achievable accomplishments, left much to be desired, as the minister lacked leadership and political will to drive efforts towards perfectly attainable goals.

I won't even mention the ventilators, which, admittedly, involve more complex problems, but that in no way absolves the government of responsibility for its planning and foresight failures.

Let's take a simple example: is it acceptable for a country that manufactures sophisticated aircraft to have problems with shortages of masks, gloves, and all other PPE?

A pool of micro-enterprises, even backyard operations, could have handled that. And what about testing? Despite the difficulty of exporting it, does it make sense that we are at the bottom of the world rankings in this area?

It gives the impression that Mandetta is good at interviews, but not at rolling up his sleeves and getting things done.