Jair Bolsonaro's Positive Test Will Only Escalate His Coronavirus Culture War
As far-right Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro finished announcing on Tuesday that he had tested positive for coronavirus, he backed away from a small group of reporters and removed the mask covering his face.
“Look at my face,” Bolsonaro said. “There is no need to panic.”
And with that, it was clear that one of the world’s chief coronavirus skeptics – a man who’s inaction and ineptitude have helped foster the planet’s second-worst Covid-19 outbreak – would not change course. Not even his own infection could inspire empathy for the more than 65,000 Brazilians who have already succumbed to the disease.
Any such hope was always faint, bordering on impossible. Bolsonaro is not an empathetic man, and he does not change tune. The desperate calls for him to act like a normal president, like someone he isn’t and has never been, are as futile as the similar pleas directed at US President Donald Trump, the man on whom Bolsonaro has modelled himself, his administration, andhis response to the pandemic.
Confusion, chaos and violence – be it from the state’s actions or, in the case of the pandemic, its total lack thereof – are central to the Bolsonarismo movement. So the president’s positive test will do little to slow the spread of the virus. Rather, his reaction seems likely only to make the situation worse on every front, as he and his supporters bunker down and the response becomes more politicised and chaotic than it already was.
The Brazilian leader has spent the last four months downplaying the virus at every turn, dismissing it as a media conspiracy and a “little flu,” forcing dissenters, including two health ministers, out of his government, and publicly feuding with governors and other public officials who advocated an aggressive response as Covid-19 spread across the country.
He did not change his tune when nearly two dozen members of the Brazilian government tested positive for the virus after he headed a contingent...
