9 ms·
Brazil's President Bolsonaro tests positive for coronavirus
- rafaelturk 6y agoBrazilian here: Given the insane number of venues and public events that he was attending or hosting I am actually surprised it took this far for him to get the virus.
- pucallpa 6y agoi wonder if he nows thinks is a "little flu"
- ceejayoz 6y agoFor a significant percentage of people, symptoms are mild. It wouldn't be at all surprising for someone like Bolsanaro or Trump to get a mild case and cite that as evidence - "see, I got it, and it wasn't bad at all!"
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoWell Trump actually is perfectly aware of the Covid risks, he is not that stupid. He really just panders to increasingly smaller radical public (and thaw would be his demise), while the moderate republicans kinda more aligned with what Pence does and says. Trump made a wrong bet, and he is going to lose.
- mindslight 6y agoI would say Trump is that stupid, either due to some mental degeneration or perhaps simply never being told "no" in his life. Covid should have made for a shoe-in second term. Give televised speeches reassuring and leading through a tough time, act on the advice of public health experts, and deflect the economic damage as doing the best we can. The wartime president boost. I think he could have even switched to this as late as May and still come out ahead. Instead, he continues to double down on pretending the entire problem doesn't exist.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoIf he was "that" stupid and thought it is just flu he would never close borders with China, he'd never sign that money stimulus bill, he'd never install Covid task force; he would never have done so many things - so he clearly understood that Covid is not flu. But politically agree - he made a huge mistake.
- phoobahr 6y agoOf course he would close borders - he thinks trade wars are easy to win and it’s an easy sell to his racist base. Of course he’d sign The stimulus bill - it made looting the country even easier. Of course he’d have a task force - he’d liquidated those who could bring him to task (and incidentally do the rest of the country some good) and a task force is an opportunity to sell appointments on hand and then dispose of them with little ceremony later. Oh yeah right that task force that isn’t exactly setting policy these days. When you have no shame, no decency and make every decision as a means to win the zero sum game immediately in front of you, well, you don’t have to be smart, you don’t need to have a plan and the most opportunistic scum will leap to your aid as a means to facilitate their own graft. This political mistake is little different than all of his other shitty, petty, and unpardonable catastrophes. Treason big and small.
- mcv 6y agoTrump is stupid, but he is also a germophobe. Bolsonaro is stupid and not a germophobe. Putin, of course, is neither, but quite happy to see the rest of the world in chaos.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoPutin has become one, anecdotally.
- mercer 6y agoWould love elaboration.
- thepangolino 6y agoHe definitely seems to be handling it quite alright. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG0WaCmO56E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG0WaCmO56E
- ceejayoz 6y agoBoris Johnson gave speeches sounding relatively fine a couple days before winding up in the ICU. We'll see.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoThis is so sad. He will now go bragging how it is just a flu, as he said.
- pucallpa 6y agoagreed :(
- EForEndeavour 6y agoSo did Boris Johnson, who announced his positive test on March 27 in a Twitter video which showed him perfectly lucid and without noticeable symptoms [1]. He posted regular video updates, appearing quite healthy in all of them, but his condition suddenly worsened on April 6, a full 10 days after his initial announcement video [2]. This is anecdata, of course, but Bolsonaro is 65, a full 9 years older than Johnson, so he's by no means in the clear. [1] https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1243496858095411200 https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1243496858095411200 [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/timeline-boris-johnson-and-coronavirus https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/timeline-boris...
- SwiftyBug 6y agoBoris Johnson is 9 years younger than Bolsonaro? He sure looks rough.
- verganileonardo 6y agoGiven how Bolsonaro was ignoring the pandemic, I believe that if we used contact tracing, we would probably find that Bolsonaro is the biggest single spreader of COVID-19 in Brazil.
- coliveira 6y agoHe was one of the first to bring COVID-19 to Brazil in a visit to the US in March. So one can truly say that he has spread the virus to millions.
- trhway 6y agowouldn't it mean a 3+ month incubation period? When the government is AWOL, M16 as a tool to "encourage" people to wear masks : https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/13/americas/brazil-rio-favela-coronavirus-care/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/13/americas/brazil-rio-favela-co... "Young dealers, not state medical personnel, are the ones encouraging measures against coronavirus in the favela." It is quite notable that the 3 worst hit countries - US, Brazil, Russia - are lead by the populist regimes, ie. governments using propaganda as the main tool which is naturally not an effective tool against an infectious virus. As the saying goes "these days in Russia when people die it is from pneumonia, and when people recover it is from coronavirus" (in Russia there is a criminal penalty specifically for coronavirus misinformation, which basically means any mismatch with the official info)
- schmichael 6y agoI believe they're referring to his aides that contracted the virus in March, not the President himself.
- brink 6y agoNot to be insensitive, but what's the death rate for healthy individuals in his age range? Next to zero? Italy reported that 99% of those who died from Corona had other health issues.[1] In my county (county, not country) it was reported that 99.4% of our Covid cases have recovered, and that was just the cases that were tracked. Yes, the vulnerable should be taken care of, but legitimately asking - why is there still hysteria over this? [1]: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-tho...
- midrus 6y agoBecause that 1% of people are lives that still matter??? WTF... I can't believe this.
- brink 6y agoOf course they do. So advise the 1% that's at risk to quarantine until we get a vaccine.
- Pxtl 6y agoThey tried that in Sweden and ended up killing a bunch of people.
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoNo one died. Eat shit faggot.
- catalogia 6y agoAssuming an effective vaccine doesn't come anytime soon, which thusfar seems a safe assumption, other countries will have many deaths as well, just spread out more over the coming months/year[s?]. A flattened curve has the same area under it.
- 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- arto 6y agoReuters source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-brazil/brazil-president-bolsonaro-tests-positive-for-coronavirus-idUSKBN2481EK https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-brazil...
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoI'm surprised he even got tested considering he called it the "little flu"
- anonms-coward 6y agoWhat would happen if Bolsanaro doesn't survive? How does succession works in Brazil. Is the next person in line more or less rational than Bolsanaro. Also can it end up leading Brazil further to the right due to sympathy votes? Or will it make people realise his incompetence if something happens to him.
- verganileonardo 6y agoThe vice president would become the president. He is an army general that sounds more reasonable and less frantic - but there is a risk that we will steer towards dictatorship.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- caiobegotti 6y agoThe vice-president takes office. He's a retired Army General as crazy as Bolsonaro regarding social values etc but in multiple times he talked much more reasonably than the actual president about sensitive topics and he seems actually smarter, at least. He almost makes us believe he's better than the president but I think it's just a "vice-president" façade. If he also dies testing positive, then the president of the chamber of deputies takes office. If he dies, the president of the senate takes office. If he dies then the president of the supreme court takes office. I said all that assuming they are males because they are as of today (we had female supreme court presidents in the past though).
- jayrot 6y agoSuper interesting that a member of the supreme court is in line for succession. It's not the worst idea. Say what you want about various members of the SCOTUS and their individual values -- but every single one of them at least has a sense of logic and rationality by nature of their work.
- 6y ago
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoIt is news, but as other have noted it is not surprising given Bolsanaro's public stance. Frankly, I am more surprised US upper echelon seems largely unscathed at the moment.
- jayrot 6y agoTrump gets tested every day. Every person he is in contact with is testing before being given an audience. He knows how it works but it seems like he just DGAF about everyone else.
- mercer 6y agoYeah, Trump strikes me as the kind of person who would protect himself diligently regardless of what his public stance might be. I might be wrong about this, but isn't he also known to be somewhat of a 'clean freak'?
- clairity 6y agoyes, trump's moral compass only points one way, and that's toward himself. it's dismaying that supporters fervently listen to what he says, not what he does.
- techwizrd 6y agoNumerous elected officials and political figures have been infected as a result of going to conventions, Congress, etc.
- abraxas 6y agoI hope he doesn’t make it. The death of this person is likely to be a net positive for the health of the Amazon and thus the planet. I don’t usually wish badly upon people. This is one of the few cases where I do.
- petre 6y agoHe still doesn't deserve to die. There are other more constructive ways to turn it into a net positive like not re-elect him.
- pucallpa 6y agowhile he makes more damage to his people ?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- petre 6y agoHe was elected by 55% of the very same people. His people. Voting is mandatory in Brazil and one gets a fine of 3.51 BRL and has to provide justification if they fail to participate.
- SwiftyBug 6y agoVoting is mandatory but one can nullify their vote, vote blank or just not vote at all (thus, having to pay the fine) which was the case of 30% of the votes in the last presidential election in Brazil. So the actual percentage of people who wanted him as president is much lower than 55%.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- petre 6y agoIt doesn't matter. Null votes don't count. They should have voted for the other guy if they didn't like Bolsonaro. Mandatory voting is just another useless attempt to mask the fact that today's politicians are not actual leaders but rather worthless reality TV personas. Like in Ukraine where people picked an actual actor in an attempt to mock the worthless political class. It's typical Eastern European absurd humour. Adam Curtis' HyperNormalisation documentary explains it quite well. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation
- kick 6y agoThere's no possible way this is going to lead to a good discussion when any sensible person will say "Hope he dies" or similar, which is unfortunate because it's such an interesting thing. My only thought that has much public value is that the timing of the US President's sudden and strange willingness to wear a mask after mocking them for so long looks suspicious under this light.
- clairity 6y agothere's almost no intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness exhibited in any of these covid-related threads, so they should be flagged according to the site guidelines. fear manifests irrationally when control is beyond reach, including wishing the death of someone they don't know other than via press snippets (which is not to say bolsonaro is a saint, but most of us in the US know next to nothing about him except "bad"). driven by fear and the resultant impulse to control, a priori arguments are made for all sorts of interventions, because it's so hard to accept that the most effective, balanced measure is simply to distance a bit from the less-acquainted, and when we can't, wear a mask.
- kick 6y agofear manifests irrationally when control is beyond reach, including wishing the death of someone they don't know other than via press snippets (which is not to say bolsonaro is a saint, but most of us in the US know next to nothing about him except "bad"). This is a terrible viewpoint: it's not difficult at all to find out Bolsonaro's viewpoints and actions. We don't live in the 1950s any longer: politicians broadcast their every move over the network, and through every light you can look at him, Bolsonaro has been terrible for his country; under any sensible light, he's also a terrible human being. Just look at the things he's said, you don't need to restrict what you know to "press snippets."
- clairity 6y agoyes, but that requires some level of interest in, and active search for, information about bolsonaro. how many americans other than folks with connections to brazil (or thereabouts) would that be? relatively few, i'd wager. wishing death without understanding is itself terrible, tyrannical actually. most americans don't have, or wish to seek, the context to make any definitive claims about a stranger, especially concerning death.
- fredley 6y agoHe will probably (according to mortality rates) survive, and prove himself right that he could shrug it off. If he doesn't, it doesn't matter that he was wrong, because he won't be in a position to care.
- loopz 6y agoWhich will be our fate following such leaders.