COVID-19 and (hydroxy)chloroquine: a dispute over scientific truth during Bolsonaro's weekly Facebook live streams

Abstract

As successive studies have shown that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are ineffective in treating COVID-19, this article investigates how the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, disputes the truth around science to convince the population that these drugs can save lives, preserve jobs and restore economic growth. Using Charaudeau's theory [Charaudeau, 2007, 2010} as a methodological framework, as well as understanding that right-wing populism has embodied post-truth communication as a distinctive feature of contemporary politics, we observed Bolsonaro's weekly Facebook live streams — known as ‘lives’ — for 14 weeks, identifying them as a communicative device that offers Bolsonaro the material conditions to interact directly with his public. Finally, we structured our analysis according to the three most common themes — questioning delays due to an insistence on scientific methodology, overvaluation of personal experiences and emphasis on individuals' freedom of choice — to observe the emotional images and discursive scenarios the Brazilian president stages to produce the intended pathemic effects of his discourse: hope and urgency; trust and distrust; freedom and polarization.

Pandemic States of Exception and the Alt-science of Early Treatment for COVID-19 in Brazil

“…It gained micro-sociological traction as mainstream science and its associated policies of social isolation came to be regarded, by both rulers and the populace, as false, uncertain, or impossible. While President Bolsonaro was quick to seize the opportunity to herald early treatment as a readily available, market-based alternative for addressing the pandemic crisis without the need for economically and politically costly lockdown measures (Monari, Santos, and Sacramento, 2020), we argue that its growth occurred mostly organically, through online means.…”

“…As such, it thrives on and contributes to the incapacity of mainstream science and politics to reach stable consensus. We show that early-treatment discourses and practices operated on a fold not just between medical science and populist politics (Casarões and Magalhães, 2021;Monari, Santos, and Sacramento, 2020) but between these and a range of bottom-up, digitally mediated forms of entrepreneurialism and patient activism (Lupton, 2014;Petersen, Schermuly, and Anderson, 2018). Following Chun (2011;2016), Mirowski (2019), and others, we identify deep infrastructural convergences between platformization and neoliberalization and underscore the role of digital media in sustaining contemporary resonances (Connolly, 2005) across the neoliberalconservative force field (Brown, 2019).…”

“…As Lee et al (2021) have noted for antimaskers in the United States, early-treatment advocates are not straightforward science denialists, nor do they use “science in order to corroborate a previous belief system” (Monari, Santos, and Sacramento, 2020: 8). We side with Casarões and Magalhães (2021) in looking at the early-treatment ecosystem by way of an analogy with the political alt-right, as an “alt-science” that emerges from the margins of mainstream science by taking advantage of gaps opened up by political-scientific states of exception.…”

COVID-19, the Global South and the Pandemic’s Development Impact

“…Pontalti Monari et al (2020) argue that the pushback against preventative social isolation measures and the promotion of medically ineffective forms of 'early treatment' were convergent narratives strategically deployed by the federal government under Bolsonaro's leadership to manage a scenario where vaccines were unavailable. By November 2021, almost 60 per cent of the population were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (Globo, 2021).…”

“…By November 2021, almost 60 per cent of the population were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (Globo, 2021). Given the reactionary populist preference for a liberalized economy, one way to avoid restricting economic activities was to support the claim that hydroxychloroquine was an effective 'early treatment' (Pontalti Monari et al, 2020). Brazil's promotion of medically ineffective 'early treatment' has also been discussed as 'medical populism' (Casarões and Magalhães, 2021), a performative political style that responds to public health crises by misleadingly dividing 'the people' against 'the system', in this case their own public health system (Lasco, 2020).…”