Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, the World’s Most Powerful Coronavirus Denier, Just Fired the Health Minister Who Disagreed With Him
Brazilians “don’t know if they should listen to the health minister or if they should listen to the president,” said Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta in an interview with TV Globo on Sunday, referring to far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, one of the world’s leading coronavirus deniers.
Mandetta had repeatedly advocated a science-based approach that includes social-distancing measures and quarantines, as well as shutting down much of Brazil. The positions weren’t in accord with Bolsonaro’s. On the same day Mandetta said that the worst is yet to come and that the coronavirus peak should hit in May and June, Bolsonaro told religious leaders, “It seems like this issue of the virus is starting to go away.”
Bolsonaro has gone out of his way to make highly publicized visits to supermarkets and bakeries, shaking hands and taking selfies without gloves or a mask. “Due to my history as an athlete, if I was infected by the virus, I wouldn’t have to worry,” said the 65-year-old Bolsonaro in a nationally televised address late last month. He has repeatedly referred to Covid-19 as “a little cold.”
Bolsonaro’s health minister has become the most prominent public voice to contradict the president’s full-throated denialism, but Mandetta speaks for an overwhelming majority of governors and health experts, as well as the public. In a recent survey, 76 percent of respondents approved of the health minister’s handling of the crisis, compared to 39 percent for Bolsonaro.
Bolsonaro, however, found a tidy solution to this problem: Fire the health minister. Bolsonaro chafed at having to share the spotlight with a subordinate who openly disagreed with his statements and had repeatedly threatened to remove the minister from his role. On Thursday, Mandetta was out.
It’s not clear that Bolsonaro’s new health minister will be any better for the far-right president. On Thursday afternoon, Bolsonaro replaced Mandetta with Nelson Teich, an oncologist and health care executive who apparently also does not share the president’s vision of how to handle the crisis. In recently published articles, Teich has endorsed wide-scale social isolation measures and lamented the polarized nature of the debate. Teich wrote, “It is as if there is a group focused on people and health and another on the market, companies and money, but this divided, antagonistic and perhaps radical approach is not the one that will most help society to get through this problem.”
Teich, however, also knows that the way to Bolsonaro’s heart is flattery, and the incoming health minister has not come up short in this regard. In an essay published on April 2, Teich wrote, “Fortunately, despite all the problems, the handling [of the coronavirus crisis] has been perfect so far.”
