A new survey gathered posts mentioning the word vaccine on Bolsonaro family social networks. With the data, it is possible to observe the changes in the positions of the president of his children about the immunizer during the Covid-19 pandemic.
In total, there were 1,448 posts in which the word appeared, between March 2020, when the health crisis began, and August 15, 2022, when the election campaign began.
The amount is much higher than the mention of words associated with topics dear to Bolsonarism, such as communism, which had 155 mentions, and corruption, 428.
The survey is from Metamemo, a platform that stores public information posted on social networks. In this compilation, more than 84,000 posts from four family members were considered: President Bolsonaro and his sons Flávio, Carlos and Eduardo.
The main social networks of the four were considered: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Telegram also composed the survey, but with information collected only this year.
The compilation of the data shows the changes in the speeches that the Bolsonaros had about vaccination with the course of the pandemic. The survey itself has a temporal division that places the mentions of the vaccine in perspective with the stage of the pandemic in which Brazil was and the changes in the narratives that the family adopted about the immunizers.
According to Metamemo, at first the posts were with messages favorable to research and then they began to focus on defending the freedom of people not to be vaccinated.
The first stage was from March to September 2020. Vaccine mentions were a minority of the total – just 4%. The posts were in favor of vaccines against Covid, which, at that time, were still in development. President Bolsonaro, for example, mentioned in the networks the actions he took to buy the immunizer developed by the University of Oxford and the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca.
On the other hand, during that same period, the president was already taking a stand against preventive measures recommended by specialists and entities, such as the WHO. Social distancing and the use of masks were rejected by Bolsonaro. Phrases that marked the turbulent management of the pandemic were uttered by the president in those months: “I’m not a gravedigger” and “So what? I’m sorry. What do you want me to do? I’m Messiah, but I don’t do miracles” had great repercussion.
The second period of the survey focused on the range from October 2020 to early January 2021. Posts increased, but were still a minority, representing 8% of the total. At that time, Bolsonaro used a denialist speech about vaccines, especially against Coronavac. The reason was related to the race of the then governor of São Paulo, João Doria, to buy the drug.
The president began to call the immunizer a “Chinese vaccine” and insinuated that the drug would cause “death, disability, anomaly.” Studies, however, have already proven the safety of Coronavac.
Their children also acted to spread fake news or suggest reluctance to adhere to the vaccine. One case was that of Senator Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), who doubted the need to be vaccinated because he had already been infected by Sars-CoV-2. “I’m already immune, what vaccine?” he wrote.
The interval between January and July 2021 was addressed in the third phase of the survey. Almost 62% of the posts citing vaccines were concentrated in this period, mainly addressing the purchases and distributions of drugs.
The Bolsonaro clan continued to propagate anti-vaccination speeches, but also adopted more conciliatory positions with the increase in vaccination rates. The change in the narrative – sometimes critical of vaccination, sometimes with a milder tone – marked the posts made by the family.
The fourth period analyzed in the survey was longer: from the end of July to the first day of 2022. The moment was characterized by the drop in the number of deaths by Covid in Brazil and the increase in the vaccination rate. Posts in this range amounted to about 16% of the more than 1,400 registered on the platform.
The moment was marked by Bolsonaro’s criticism of the vaccination against Covid of children and adolescents. Pfizer already had the authorization to be applied to teenagers, and Coronavac was trying to get the approval.
To this day, vaccination in minors is still the object of contestation by the president. The most recent case was when the Ministry of Health ignored the technical opinion to make the vaccine against Covid-19 available to all children over six months – the ministry recommended the immunizer only for those with comorbidities.
The fifth and last period compiled was from January to August 15 of this year, when the election campaign began. The average number of mentions of vaccines has dropped – it makes up 10% of the total.
One change in recent months was that the president’s children were the ones who posted the most posts related to vaccines. Bolsonaro’s shy posts mainly dealt with how the vaccine was being distributed. Even so, the president continued to propagate anti-immunization speeches — especially among children.
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