Brazil: Bolsonaro tests code of honor on COVID vaccine that UN demands from leaders | Society

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is one of the world leaders who has decided to travel to New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly next week despite the pandemic. But unlike the vast majority of his counterparts around the world, the Brazilian scorns the effectiveness of vaccines. Bolsonaro, who had covid-19 without serious effects, again proclaimed last Tuesday to his followers that he had not received the injection. The UN requires that everyone invited to the great annual event of world diplomacy be vaccinated, but it will not ask for a certificate. Trust a code of honor, the word of every president.

Neither the far right nor its team have explained how they will resolve the apparent conflict with the regulations imposed on the occasion of the pandemic. Will you be vaccinated even if you did not admit it? Are you going to get vaccinated before you go to New York? What we do know is that Bolsonaro will be the first speaker. As tradition dictates, the speech by the President of Brazil will open the solemn session, a privilege the country has earned due to its unaligned tradition.

“I travel on Sunday, I give the opening speech Tuesday and then I come back,” he proclaimed this Thursday in his weekly address on Facebook, where his speeches are generally adapted to his most unconditional followers.

Despite the fact that throughout the epidemic the president has promoted ineffective drugs and anti-vaccine rhetoric, Brazilians trust injections and are getting vaccinated at a very good rate. 37% of adults received both doses; and 69% already have the first, despite the laziness of the federal government, and not the states, which plagued the start of the campaign.

The pandemic has caused severe damage in Brazil, the second country with the most deaths behind the United States and the eighth in deaths per capita. The coronavirus has claimed the lives of nearly 600,000 people and 10% of the 210 million inhabitants have been infected.

Bolsonaro is not officially vaccinated. The case is controversial among other things because the Head of State imposed several months ago a hundred years of official secrecy concerning his vaccination record. The pressure within the cabinet was so intense that one of his ministers went to be vaccinated in secret. And one of Bolsonaro’s proclamations – “if you get vaccinated you will become a crocodile” – triumphed. Star in thousands of memes and it is the most repeated joke in this pandemic. Many went to be vaccinated disguised as a reptile.

The far-right leader warned on Thursday that he would explain in his speech “the truths of Brazil” but without giving much more details. He only argued that he would mention a court case that has been debated in recent weeks by the Supreme Court and which fully affects the rights of indigenous peoples to claim the lands inhabited by their ancestors and, therefore, the potential to expand the lands. crops that are lucrative for the agricultural sector. Bolsonaro supports the priority given to agricultural production over the rights of indigenous descendants and its effectiveness in protecting the environment and mitigating the climate crisis.

Bolsonaro’s Brazil has become an environmental villain due to increased deforestation in the Amazon and the proliferation of fires to expand pastures.

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