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Of: TT
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Photo: Eraldo Peres / AP / TT
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is critical of the covid-19 vaccine. Stock Photography
Brazilian President Jair Bolosnaro mocks the covid-19 vaccine and sabotages the country’s chaotic mass vaccination campaign.
Although Brazil is one of the most affected countries, the vaccine is delayed.
President Jair Bolsonaro suggests that the side effects of the Pfizer and Biontech vaccine can be compared to turning into a crocodile or turning into a bearded woman.
– In the Pfizer contract, it is very clear: “We are not responsible for any side effects.” If you turn into a crocodile, it’s your problem, Bolsonaro said Thursday.
“If you become superhuman, if a woman starts growing a beard or if a man starts speaking in a female voice, then (pharmaceutical companies) will have nothing to do with it,” he added.
“The train has gone”
Brazil has the world’s leading vaccination experts, medical institutions, and vaccine research. Much of the Astra Zeneca vaccine is manufactured in Brazil by the Fiocruz Institute, and the Brazilian state is negotiating the purchase of 210 million doses of that vaccine.
But the president does not seem to have been impressed by the country’s experience.
“Bolsonaro has wasted a lot of time in his denials,” José David Urbaez, of the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases, told AFP.
A vaccination campaign was finally launched on Wednesday, the goal of which is to vaccinate 70 percent of the population in 16 months. However, experts describe the program as chaotic, noting that negotiations with pharmaceutical companies have started too late and that the necessary applications for emergency approvals have not yet been submitted.
The country missed the first train of Pfizer-Biontech and Moderna vaccines, says Luiz Gustavo de Almeida, a microbiologist at the University of São Paulo:
“They will have to wait for the next train, and it will not be until March, April, May 2021. Those who are not at risk will probably not be vaccinated until 2022,” he told AFP.
Sick in july
The right-wing leader has been skeptical of COVID-19 from the start and has consistently called the disease “the little flu.” Bolsonaro himself was infected with the coronavirus in July and announced this week that he has no intention of getting vaccinated.
The president is accused of repeatedly sabotaging Brazil’s mass vaccination program.
His way of poking fun at the potential side effects of the Pfizer-Biontech vaccine, which has already been approved and used in the United States and Britain, among others, may have turned people on a deaf ear. In an opinion poll by Datafolha, the proportion of Brazilians who are ready to get vaccinated against covid-19 has fallen, from 89 percent in August to 73 percent in December.
Brazil has registered the highest number of deaths in the world linked to covid-19, after the United States. To date, more than 185,000 people have died in the country since they were infected with the disease and at least 7 million have been infected.
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