"The time to act against the coronavirus is now." You must have read similar titles in the last two years; only this one was published by Folha on March 10, 2020. Compared to what would come later, the plague was crawling. Still, Yascha Mounk, in a column in the newspaper, alarmed readers to what he already realized was inevitable: Covid-19 would sweep the planet in a short time, with quarantine and social distancing being the only immediate solutions.

On the same day, the headline in Folha spoke of panic in the markets, the stock market plummeting 12%, the price of oil competing for the greatest damage with the then-unknown coronavirus. The world was melting, and, in Miami, Jair Bolsonaro said that "the destructive power of this virus is oversized," one of the many pearls that any self-respecting electoral schedule will have to reproduce to exhaustion this year. Below the highlighted phrase is a call to Italy, then the most affected country after China, which had just adopted a general quarantine.

The page had yet another title for the president: "Bolsonaro pressures Congress and returns to talking about electoral fraud." Crisis, oil, virus? No, the problem would be the fraud that never existed.

The health emergency was severe enough, but I remember that the column scared me. Mounk sounded hysterical and, at the same time, made it clear that the politicians' "keep calm" speech would only delay the adoption of radical measures and, in effect, kill people. Not just in China or Italy, but everywhere. Bolsonaro's Brazil fulfilled the prediction like a few others, and we lost almost 650 thousand to disease and denialism.

In the last week, several Folha columnists raised alarms similarly. On page A2: "There will be a coup," wrote Mariliz Pereira Jorge; "Bolsonaro's coup is military," according to Bruno Boghossian; "Dictatorship with Bolsonaro," is what comes next, according to Ruy Castro; "The coup can go wrong," projected Maria Hermínia Tavares, a ray of hope, as noted by readers, but which starts from the inevitable act rehearsed from day zero by Bolsonarism.

Meanwhile, "the press is talking to the walls," in the description also by Mariliz, a phrase that I discussed with the newsroom in internal criticism. Pessimism, feeling of powerlessness, press reach, considerations about journalism. Can't we stop the coup? You can at least tell the walls that the tables are changing, that it will happen, and that it is prudent for the citizen to prepare his or her soul and pocket for the upcoming tsunami.

As Maria Hermínia recalled, messing up the national dispute will mean messing up all the other elections in October. The vote is not just for the Presidency but for the House, Senate, assemblies, and state governments. Competitors should be asked about winning and not taking. Folha and UOL, for example, wasted the chance to ask the pre-candidates for the government of São Paulo what they will do in the face of the consummation of the coup and the fact that, who knows, they are elected but prevented from taking office by some soldier.

In the same vein, the staff at Faria Lima should be asked if the quarters have already been priced and how far the dollar and interest can go after a breakdown of this magnitude. Could it be that an XP hasn't projected the worst-case scenario yet? If any analyst says that the market does not work with such a hypothesis, just remember that Bolsonaro and his close generals flirt with the thesis daily.

It will also be important for the newspaper to hear from the country's trade partners and international organizations about the much-hyped tropical version of the Capitol invasion. The US has even gotten ahead. In a week, the American consul in Rio until 2021, in an article in O Globo, foresees sanctions on Brazil if the elections are damaged. In the following, the Reuters agency appears with a report on the head of the CIA having told the Bolsonaro government that it is not convenient for the country to contest its own electoral system.

The reader may ponder that admitting the fear of a coup is precisely the game that Bolsonaro and allies want to play. The point, I believe, is that we are past that point. Bolsonaro got lost on the field, but he drags a lot of people with him just because of the circumstances. It can no longer be treated as a risk, but rather as a certainty of harm to institutions and the country. It needs to be contained.

If someone doesn't remember or doesn't know what a coup is, civil or military, it's time to draw and make the size of the problem very clear. It will take work. It will delay Brazil even more. It will cost dearly.

I'm sure Mounk, like the other colleagues who are now alarmed, would very much like, after two years, to reread his text, laugh, and comment something like how much nonsense he wrote. He didn't write any, unfortunately.

José Henrique Mariante
Trained as an engineer and journalist, Mariante has been a reporter, correspondent, editor and editorial secretary at Folha, where he has worked since 1991. He is the ombudsman.