Although he uses his in relation to his father, Jair Bolsonaro, the senator () defended theses that contradict science and the opinion of experts during the health emergency, especially at its beginning.
The pre-candidate has presented himself as the “Bolsonaro who takes the vaccine”, and he actually campaigned for immunizations from the first half of 2021, while the then president maintained a denialist stance.
Before that, however, the senator emphatically defended medications such as chloroquine, with no proven efficacy, and was a critic of social distancing and isolation, actions defended by scientists until a vaccine was found.
“I am cured of Covid-19, thank God! I treated it, from the first symptoms, with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, with medical supervision! With me, there are almost 3.3 million Brazilians recovered!”, he posted in September 2020.
In March 2021, when the first vaccines were already distributed, the senator said that “early treatment and vaccine are completely complementary”, in response to a comment by the then president of the Chamber of Deputies, Rodrigo Maia, who criticized ineffective medicines.
Like his father, Flávio also opposed the advice for people to restrict their public movement, as a way of slowing the spread of the virus.
“We will move from horizontal to vertical isolation, protecting the most vulnerable and allowing people to return to work”, he wrote, on March 24, 2020.
Defenders of the so-called “vertical isolation” advocated that only risk groups, such as the elderly and people with comorbidities, stay at home.
On the same day, Flávio congratulated his father for defending the movement of people, in a post with the hashtag .
“If the total isolation of people continues, the forecast is that we will reach 40 million unemployed. Many more people would certainly die. Congratulations, President Jair Bolsonaro, for the courage to act now and think about the post-crisis. This is what is expected of a statesman.”
A year later, in March 2021, Senator
For Flávio, the fact that state executive leaders divided economic activities into essential (permitted) and non-essential (vetoed) would be equivalent to what the Nazis did when they decided who would live or die in concentration camps.
At that moment, Flávio began to give stronger signals that he defended the vaccine, based on a political assessment that the pandemic was damaging the government’s assessment.
In March 2021 to prepare a bill to facilitate the purchase of vaccines by Brazil.
In July of that year, the senator allowed himself to be photographed being vaccinated by the then Minister of Health, Marcelo Queiroga, distancing himself from his father’s attitude.
From that moment on, the defense of vaccination became frequent in the current pre-candidate’s posts.
Even when he started to defend the vaccine, however, Flavio distorted facts. On September 29, 2021, he posted that “all vaccines applied in Brazil, without exception, were acquired by the Bolsonaro government” – ignoring the pioneering spirit of the then governor of São Paulo, João Doria, who acquired Coronavac vaccines, of Chinese origin, at the beginning of that year.
The senator’s advisors were contacted by the Panel between Wednesday (13) and Friday (15) to comment on the demonstrations, but did not respond to the questions sent.
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