Brazil under Covid-19: the rise of the (un)popular Bolsonaro

In March 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic ramshackle the Brazilian political crisis. At first,
the Bolsonaro's administration handled the pandemic as a case of international panic
and hysteria, understating its severity and asserting that Covid-19 was a humanmade
plan to weaken capitalist economies. The authoritarian, technocentric and scientific
denialism posture of the government reinforced the "pharmaceuticalization" approach
through the Covid-19 kit, touting the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, rather
than setting a robust and coordinated national public health response centered at the
Brazilian Unified Health System. Concomitantly, low rates of health disbursements, lack
of political leadership, inadequate communication of risks, and the struggle against
some governors and mayors influenced Bolsonaro's unpopularity, including blaming him
the main culprit of Brazil's high death tolls. These elements, indeed, unveiled Brazil's
structural vulnerability and the authoritarian contours of the current Brazilian political
regime. Contrastingly, more recently, the new moves of Bolsonaro's administration in
support of the emergency aid boosted his popularity, majorly over the poorest sectors of
the population. In this regard, this paper aims to understand the authoritarian outlines of
Bolsonarismo based upon three axes: economics, science, and health. The economics
will be assessed through the emergency aid plan (cash transfer), contingent upon social
protection frameworks. The scientific realm will be analyzed through the Covid-19
denialism and the post-truth phenomenon. The health driver will be assessed through
the Covid-19 rhetoric of "pharmaceuticalization," despite a holistic and unified national
answer regarding the social determinants of health. Thus, the guiding research question
deals with the following: to what degree these axes have strengthened Bolsonarismo's
authoritarian nature. The methodology carried out for this research was a descriptive
inference to evaluate the hypothesis of how these three axes contributed to increasing
Bolsonaro's popularity amidst the pandemic.

Keywords: Bolsonaro, Brazil, Covid-19, Emergency aid