Analysis: Many Rulers Have Faced Coronavirus Pandemic with Empty Populist Rhetoric

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The announcement of Donald and Melania Trump’s Covid-19 diagnosis comes just two months after the US president declared that the virus would vanish on its own, despite the spread of infections in his country. “One day, as if by a miracle, it will disappear”, he stated.

Just like the President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, Trump was infected with the disease whose impact he has challenged on several occasions. Another leader affected was the president of Belarus, Aleksander Lukashenko, who had recommended drinking vodka, playing hockey, going to a sauna and farming with a tractor as a prescription to fight Covid-19.

Not wearing masks, or trying to achieve the so-called herd immunity, as proposed by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, are just a few of the main measures which surrounded the most controversial leaders in the fight against the coronavirus. Some leaders continue to challenge the severity of Covid-19 and propose controversial solutions:

Donald Trump (USA)

On January 22nd, two days after the first infection was reported in the US, Donald Trump stated that everything was under control. “This is a person who came from China. We have her under control. She’ll be fine”, he promised. Despite the fact that the spread of the pandemic has proved that some leaders underestimated the impact of the disease, Trump continued to defend this position until Friday, when he posted on Twitter that he would need to be quarantined.

The president was reluctant to wear a mask despite the almost 7.3 million infections recorded in his country. He even suggested new methods to kill the pathogen, such as injecting “disinfectant” into patients to “clean their lungs” or expose them to ultraviolet light. Journalist Bob Woodward disclosed in his book “Rage” that the president confessed in March that he was withholding the severity of the situation. “I always wanted to downplay this. I still prefer to do this, because I don’t want to create panic,” he told Woodward on March 19th.

Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil)

In March, the president of Brazil disregarded all of the World Health Organization’s medical guidelines and greeted and even hugged admirers during an event with over 8,000 people in Brasília. The President referred to the virus -which has killed over a million people in the world- as “a minor flu,” accused left-wing parties of causing the pandemic, and advocated hydroxychloroquine, a drug with no proven efficacy in fighting Covid-19, as a treatment.

Even when testing positive for Covid-19 in July, the President insisted on considering the attention given to the pandemic in Brazil to be excessive, despite its 4.85 million positive cases and 144,680 deaths ranking it as the second-most affected country in the world.

Aleksandr Lukashenko (Belarus)

The management of the pandemic in Belarus, with almost 90,000 infections and 900 deaths, is among the complaints that fuel protests against President Aleksandr Lukashenko. In April, he jokingly replied to a journalist who reprimanded him for his measures against the coronavirus. “Do you see the virus flying around here? Neither do I,” he said.

At the time he recommended drinking vodka and playing hockey as a preventive method, rather than quarantining. The measures he proposed to fight the pandemic also included going to a sauna and running a tractor through field crops. In addition, he challenged the WHO guidelines by maintaining events with large audiences. Shortly after, he presented himself as a survivor of the virus. “Today you stand before a person who has managed to survive the coronavirus,” he boasted.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Mexico)

In March, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked the media not to exaggerate the severity of the virus, because it was detrimental to the economy. “They want me to show up wearing a mask, but we’re not at this stage and I won’t do it,” he insisted. “Why should I alarm people?” repeated the president.

Even in July, with the pandemic in full force, he again denied the relevance of wearing the accessory when people could keep a physical distance from one another. “The pandemic is losing momentum little by little,” he said. Criticism emerged when López Obrador recommended citizens protect themselves from the virus with charms and “portraits of the virgin” and other saints.

Boris Johnson (United Kingdom)

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) after being diagnosed with Covid-19 last April. At that time, nursing homes for the elderly were complaining that Johnson had left them to their own fate early in the epidemic. Criticism for the delay in conducting widespread tests added to the complaints over the moderation in his first action strategy against the coronavirus which he pursued, advised by his scientific cabinet, the so-called herd immunity. After overcoming the disease, Johnson radically changed the management of the crisis.

John Magufuli (Tanzania)

Known as the African Bolsonaro or Trump, John Magulfi is repeatedly criticized for misinforming Tanzania about the Covid-19 crisis. In addition to the lack of data on both infections and deaths, the leader appeals to God and herbal baths to fight the disease, fights any confinement measure and even announces that he had sent samples of a papaya and a goat to be analyzed and that they tested positive, in a new attempt to cast doubt on Covid-19 and its true impact.

Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov (Turkmenistan)

The government of Turkmenistan, a country bordering Iran – one of the first nations to detect infected people from China – has eradicated the word coronavirus from the Berdimuhamedov administration, while independent media report that the authorities are concealing the pandemic and arresting anyone who speaks publicly about the crisis or wears a mask.

Source: El País