Felipe Dos Reis Campos

This article examines how Brazilian far-right media framed hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) as part of a COVID-19 preventive protocol, referred to as “early treatment.” Brazilian partisan outlets extensively endorsed HCQ’s scientific soundness, helping to legitimize Bolsonaro’s pandemic response. By pushing HCQ, the Brazilian Federal Government downplayed social distancing, aligning itself with herd immunity strategies. A Correspondence Factorial Analysis (CFA) of the most influential partisan outlets extracted three major framings present in the media materials: “Scientific Evidence,” “Personal Experience,” and “Freedom to Medicate.” A subsequent Content Analysis found twenty-six scientific claims regarding the HCQ protocol. Far-right media in Brazil have framed unproven substances for COVID-19, regardless of compelling evidence of their ineffectiveness. Brazil’s case shows the need for a deeper understanding of how partisan vehicles frame contemporary social problems as they legitimize policies contrary to scientific consensus.

The Covid-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus has shown how inadequate institutional strategies interact with, and exacerbate, social inequalities, thus impacting upon the intensity of the harm produced and amplifying negative consequences. One of the lessons from this pandemic, which happens against the background of other, interconnected systemic crises, is the urgency of adopting a ‘whole-of-society’ approach to determining what does and what does not work in the context of a health emergency response. However, how can institutional performance in health emergency response be assessed? How to make sense of success or failure? We argue that the adoption of a risk governance approach sheds light on institutional performance in the response to health emergencies. Risk governance is particularly pertinent in situations where the potential for extreme consequences is considered high, where there are enormous uncertainties regarding the consequences and where different values are present and in dispute. Based on a documentary evidence review, we analyse the Brazilian response to Covid-19 by considering: (1) how the Brazilian federal government performed on its central role of managing the national response, (2) the reactions from other actors prompted by this performance and (3) the main observed effects emerging from this scenario. We argue that the Brazilian federal government response was weak in five risk governance parameters that are essential in a health crisis response: risk communication, transparency and accessibility of data, negotiation between actors, social cohesion and public participation and decisions based on technical and scientific evidence, resources and contexts. The neglect of risk governance parameters, combined with an attempt to spread doubt, confusion and disinformation—which could be termed a ‘governance by chaos’—is an important element for making sense of the effects and controversies surrounding Covid-19 in Brazil.