At the Tomb of Lazarus

Who needs tears—let alone a miracle—when you have hydroxychloroquine?

Forty-two percent of Americans are now fully vaccinated. In Brazil, that percentage drops to eleven percent. When it comes to the pandemic, the two countries with the highest number of Covid-19 deaths have plenty in common. But there is one huge difference: Although presidents in both countries have advocated the use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and chloroquine (CQ) as treatments for the virus, in the U.S. these medications were largely abandoned when the FDA declared their use ineffective (a conclusion since backed up by further research). In Brazil, on the other hand, the current administration continues to support and promote their use. Researchers studying Facebook have discovered that over the last fifteen months President Jair Bolsonaro was responsible for eleven million Facebook interactions related to these drugs, while former President Trump was responsible for 1.1 million.

The contrast in this situation indicates that established democratic institutions may offer resistance to politicians taken in by their own credulous beliefs. But such resistance has occurred less frequently in Brazil than in the U.S., as the Federal Senate’s official inquiry into the Bolsonaro administration’s handling of the pandemic—taking place right now—has already shown. So far, the inquiry has revealed that many of Bolsonaro’s supporters have continued to defend these demonstrably ineffective drugs. 

Why is this happening? How have we arrived at this war of information and disinformation? 

Perhaps the answer is bound up in what political scientists Guilherme Casarões and David Magalhães call “a global medical populist response to COVID-19” guided by “alternative science.” Looking more closely at a parallel situation in Brazil and the U.S., one that involves military generals and Mormons, will give us a better understanding of our precarious political moment. 

In the U.S., the state of Utah appointed retired Army Major General Jefferson S. Burton to coordinate its response to the pandemic. In Brazil, an active Army General named Eduardo Pazuello was the Minister of Health during most of 2020. This parallel situation also features devout Mormons in both countries: Garry Herbert, then Governor of Utah, and Carlos Wizard, an informal advisor of the Ministry of Health, who ultimately declined an appointment to a high post in the ministry.

In March of 2020, amid enormous anxiety surrounding the virus, the identification of a readily available drug to treat the disease was heartening. On March 16, American journalist Laura Ingraham interviewed defenders of the drug on her Fox News program; three days later, Donald Trump asserted that this treatment was “a game changer.” From that point on, Trump became a defender of this “very powerful drug”—but his defenses have had none of the staying power Bolsonaro’s have in Brazil.

On her March 19 program, Ingraham testified that after taking CQ, “One patient was described as Lazarus getting up after—after he was, he was like on death’s door.” The next day Lazarus was invoked in Utah at a press conference featuring representatives of the state’s department of health, the state senate, the medical profession, and pharmaceutical companies. Physician Kurt Hegmann affirmed that “There are responses that are equivalent to Lazarus—literally the biblical Lazarus—people almost dead coming back. It is a stunning medication. I have no doubt in my mind this will be a very effective program.”

On March 21, Bolsonaro, attuned (as ever) to Trump, appeared live on his social media networks, expressing his enthusiasm for the medication and announcing that he had ordered the military not simply to oversee the production of it but to actually produce it, in-house. Adding to the effort, Trump sent two million doses of HCQ to Brazil in May. On the Brazilian government’s official statement of expenditures, it appears to list $600,000 spent on CQ—not counting costs tied to the promotion and distribution of the drug or an app to facilitate diagnosis and prescription. It’s been estimated that the Brazilian government has spent eighteen million dollars on medications that have proven ineffective in the fight against Covid-19.

In Utah, a plan unfolded that also involved an app and the purchase and wide distribution of medications. It began with an initial grant of $800,000 in doses, with provision for another eight million dollars. But many opposed both this course of action and the emergency funding. By the end of April, General Burton had joined the opposition. “I chalk it up to fog of war,” he later said. “Since then we’ve decided that was not a wise purchase.”

Some in Brazil also offered resistance to a similar course of action. But unlike what happened in Utah, two successive Ministers of Health who disagreed with the Bolsonaro plan were fired. The president, in quest of someone to carry out his program, named General Pazuello as the next Minister of Health.

What happened in Utah captures my attention: We find points of concrete hope in the way Utah’s public institutions, and democracy itself, functioned. Governor Herbert, after consulting with specialists (and feeling oppositional pressure from various civil society organizations), finally decided not to buy the medications, and was able to secure reimbursement for the sums that had already been spent. Herbert proved himself an alert politician—and not a denialist. 

Meanwhile, Carlos Wizard, Brazil’s billionaire Mormon businessman mentioned above, declared in June of 2020, when he was nominated for a position in the Ministry of Health, that he was going to “bet 100% on CQ.” Even when evidence had turned against the medication he continued his crusade—as late as March 2021 he defended it in an interview.

One must not forget the public funds that made possible the purchase of these medications. In Brazil the Senate is currently investigating the matter of public funding; meanwhile, an audit underway in Utah was sparked by a desire to examine what took place, including the involvement of the pharmaceutical lobby in the state’s handling of the pandemic. The New York Times reported that Donald Trump would acquire shares in a company that sells CQ and HCQ. And in Brazil, there also seems to be evidence that public funds were approved for the development of these treatments by the private sector.

For his part, Carlos Wizard has been invited to respond to the senatorial inquiry. If he were to follow in the footsteps of his American colleague and back effective steps for confronting the pandemic, it would be an important public demonstration, especially if he were also to throw his support behind making the nation’s public health system the central provider of vaccinations. As it happens, though, Wizard, besides being a defender of ineffective medications, also advocates a completely preposterous plan that gives Brazil’s private sector a primary role in the purchase and administration of the vaccine. Some outlets say that Wizard is currently in the U.S., where he would presumably have been vaccinated himself—and far from the Senate’s inquiry.

Probably the worst thing that could transpire in Brazil at this moment—besides the continued use of ineffective treatments—is the increase of denialist postures in relation to vaccination. There are many campaigns here—stemming from churches and other social movements and organizations—touting the safety and necessity of the vaccine. Thanks to the dedication of many scientists and health care professionals, we do have an authentic response to the pandemic. But another grave issue centers on how to handle the rapid rise in hunger and poverty. Bolsonaro, who declares himself deeply committed to both the economy and public health, hasn’t demonstrated the ability to care for either. The Economist’s recent editorial judgment on the question of Bolsonaro is forceful: “The most urgent priority is to vote him out.”

There is one last similarity: the figure of Lazarus. It was Brazil’s Reinaldo Azevedo, another journalist, who referred to him this time—except that Azevedo didn’t make an allusion to the miraculous effects of CQ. What he wryly questioned, in the midst of the government’s defense of the medications, was whether Jesus might actually have said, “Lazarus! Take your chloroquine and walk!” 

According to the biblical witness, prior to resuscitating Lazarus “Jesus wept.” In the midst of so much death, tears will remain, sadly, a steady reality. We may hope for miracles, too—but if miracles come, it won’t be hydroxychloroquine that delivers them.

Alexandre Brasil Fonseca is a sociologist and Associate Professor at the NUTES Institute for Science and Health Education at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the author of Evangélicos e Mídia no Brasil (Evangelicals and the Media in Brazil, 2003). From 2012-2016 he was special adviser to the President of Brazil on religious affairs. He is the president of Peace and Hope Brazil. Contact: abrasil@ufrj.br