Friday, 27 March 2020

President Bolsonaro boasts that Brazilians can bathe in excrement and not get sick

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro boasted that his citizens are immune to the coronavirus because they have the magical ability to wallow in human waste “and nothing happens,” reports The Guardian. “They never catch anything. You see some bloke jumping into the sewage, he gets out, has a dive, right? And nothing happens to him,” he told reporters.

Unfortunately, Bolsonaro's magical thinking appears to be immune to the wily virus:

On Thursday Brazil’s health ministry said that its coronavirus death toll had risen to 77, up from 46 on Tuesday. So far 2,915 cases have been confirmed.

A report in the Folha de São Paulo, a leading Brazilian broadsheet, suggested there had been a “vertiginous” rise in the number of people being admitted to hospital with severe respiratory failure since late February when the Covid-19 case was detected.

Image: By Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil - http://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/politica/foto/2014-02/congresso-promulga-emenda-constitucional-77?id=78867, CC BY 3.0 br, Link