RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The pale and downcast look – with somewhat teary eyes – in a national TV broadcast on Thursday evening, March 12th – just after a live broadcast on Facebook wearing a mask – was the harbinger of an unprecedented Friday 13th in the presidential suite: the first positive test for the coronavirus infection of President Jair Bolsonaro.
The information is from the ‘Esplanada’ column of the ‘O Dia’ newspaper, by journalist Leandro Mazzini. He is awaiting the result of the counter test this Friday, March 13th, to confirm this contamination.
There is tension in the air. Despite displaying calm on TV, and asking people to avoid the streets (a clear cancellation of the call for pro-government demonstrations on Sunday), Bolsonaro failed to conceal the evidence of health care. He wore a mask in the morning and did not come out of the Alvorada Palace, his official residence.
Whether Bolsonaro will disclose the result – whether positive or not – is a personal matter, but this also concerns a situation of national sovereignty. Passing on a picture of an infected President to the population could spark general anxiety and even disturb the stock market indices, which have been fluctuating sharply for a week now, with circuit-breakers as a routine.
Bolsonaro will call the presidential branch – all high-ranking military officers – to the Planalto Palace to decide what to say. While the nation stands by.
The same source in the column reports that even the commander of the presidential plane that returned from the United States would be contaminated.
Trump Factor
A curious piece of news is circulating on the Brazilian presidential committee. Much is said of the embarrassment it would have been if the government’s communications secretary, Fábio Wajngarten, with a confirmed infection, had contaminated US President Donald Trump. But the talk here in Brasília is something else.
The full senior government officials are careful to avoid pointing out a fact: much of the delegation has been contaminated in Florida, and worse, at the Mar a Lago resort owned by Trump.
Based on this premise, there is a risk that Trump is contaminated, and he has passed the virus on personal contact.
The fact is that Trump, challenged by the American press, is unconventional and claims he has no need for testing. It’s odd, to say the least, for those who have blamed Europe for the chaos in health surveillance. Trump would not admit he was the cause of this Friday 13th’s plague.