Brazil - vaccine revolt in Sao Paulo

In the night of January 18 the people of the East Zone of Sao Paulo protested and blocked the street with burning barricade, because they were denied the vaccine against yellow fever, which is in danger of epidemics in Brazil and Sao Paulo is one of the main hazard areas.

The government alleges the area is not at risk, and the protesters are misinformed, but the number of dead monkeys – which are also affected by the disease – says otherwise. And the state says they will provide 1 million vaccines, which is not enough for half the population of the state. The people´s rebellion is justified!

Although the Vaccine Revolt – in 1904, Rio de Janeiro – might seem the opposite case, where the people upraised against the forced vaccination campaign made by the semifeudal state using force, authoritarianism and misinformation to oppress the people back then and the absence of the vaccine now, the major issue is the antagonistic contradiction between the people´s interests and the interests of the old State, who cannot deal even with such relatively simple question in a justified way.

The danger of yellow fever is an absurd, a disease that can be avoided by simple sanitation measures, nothing that needs some advanced technology, is a symptom of the crisis of the semifeudal and semicolonial State of bureaucratic capitalism.

The mosquito (Aedes aegypti) that transmits the disease was eradicated once in the beginning of the last century by the campaigns of Oswaldo Cruz, but returned worst a few years later.