RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro affirmed this Thursday, April 1, that if he decides to get the Covid-19 vaccine, he will be the “last Brazilian” to do so, because it is his duty to “set an example” and put himself last in line.
“I already had coronavirus. After the last Brazilian is vaccinated and if there is a vaccine left over, I will decide whether to get vaccinated or not. That is the example a chief has to give. Just like in the barracks where the commander is the last in line,” Bolsonaro declared in his weekly live broadcast on Facebook.
The right-wing leader, one of the most skeptical rulers in the face of the seriousness of the pandemic, always opposed the obligatory nature of the vaccine, as intended by a sector of Congress and the Supreme Court, and was a staunch critic of some immunizers that in the end, he ended up buying due to lack of supply.
Bolsonaro celebrated the approval by the National Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa) of the emergency use of the vaccine from the Belgian laboratory Janssen, European arm of the U.S. multinational Johnson & Johnson, and reiterated the goal of vaccinating one million people per day in April.
Brazil, the second country in absolute numbers most affected by Covid-19, with more than 325,000 deaths and 12.8 million confirmed cases in thirteen months, with a daily record of deaths and contagions in the last few days, has distributed 34 million doses and applied 18 million, according to numbers given by Bolsonaro himself.
EARLY TREATMENT
The president supported the decision of the Federal Council of Medicine (CFM), which regulates the practice of the medical profession in the country, to “respect the autonomy of the physician” to prescribe early treatment to patients with covid symptoms, as he himself has defended, even with remedies without scientific proof.
In that sense, Bolsonaro added this Thursday a new drug to his extensive list of remedies he defends to treat the disease.
“Proxalutamide has already arrived at Anvisa, which is a drug that is jointly developed with the United States. It’s not just ours, okay? It is in conjunction with U.S. researchers, and thus we will have, sooner or later, an effective remedy to combat covid,” Bolsonaro anticipated.
The head of state said he respects those who want to include prisoners among the priority groups for vaccination, but, in his opinion, he considered that security personnel, SUS (National Health System) workers, lottery houses, relief agencies, and teachers “should be ahead”.
In his program, Bolsonaro once again criticized the “superpowers” granted by the Supreme Court a year ago, so that governors and mayors would be the managers in the face of the pandemic, taking away powers from the federal Executive, which, according to the president, is limited to “sending money” to the states.
And, in this sense, he did not miss the opportunity to attack the most severe measures of confinement, social isolation, and closure of commercial and non-essential activities adopted regionally, including restrictions of movement and curfews.
“My Brazilian Army will not go out to the streets to apprehend people or not let them work”, he asserted.
CHANGES IN MINISTRIES
Regarding the recent changes in his Cabinet and in the Armed Forces leadership, he qualified as “a huge speculation of the press” to be “politicizing” his decision, mainly with General Fernando’s replacement Azevedo e Silva from the Ministry of Defense by General Wálter Braga Netto.
“Both generals are of the highest rank in the Army and therefore cannot be affiliated to a political party. When the PT (opposition Workers’ Party) appointed civilians, leftists, as ministers or former guerrillas in important Defense Secretariats during their governments, nobody said anything,” he pointed out.