Angry Brazilians Dress As Reptiles For Covid Jabs, Mock RW Pres. Bolsonaro; Crocodile, Anaconda, Boa

[appalachiablue]

- Bolsonaro said the shot might 'turn people into alligators.'
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The Guardian, July 23, 2021. - People are wearing costumes as a protest to the government’s handling of an outbreak that has killed more than 545,000. Last year Bolsonaro said the Pfizer shot might turn people into ALLIGATORS. - -Ed.

Klinger Duarte Rodrigues set off for his coronavirus shot last weekend dressed as a South American snake. “A sucuri,” he said, using the indigenous name for the Amazonian water boa whose skin he borrowed for his first dose of AstraZeneca. The outfit was not merely a fashion statement: it was a protest against the Brazilian government’s woeful handling of a Covid outbreak that has killed more than 545,000 citizens, among them Rodrigues’s brother-in-law. “If the government had been quicker to acquire vaccines, many people would still be with us,” said the environmentalist & internet influencer who attached a placard to his snake costume calling for the impeachment of Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro.

Rodrigues’s protest was not the only act of reptilian resistance documented as Brazilians have headed out for their jabs – and the explanation for their choice of clothing is the president himself. Last year Bolsonaro, who has disrupted vaccination efforts by buying insufficient vaccines and refusing to get one himself, claimed sarcastically that Pfizer’s shot might turn recipients into alligators. In response to that notorious remark, pro-science opponents, furious at Bolsonaro’s denialist conduct, have been getting vaccinated clad as different kinds of reptiles.

Most come as the jacaré: the scaly alligator native to several parts of Brazil, including the Amazon, a region which has come under growing attack from illegal loggers and miners since Bolsonaro took office in 2019. “My costume was a way of expressing my horror,” said Leila Fernandes, a 60-year-old educator from the city of Fortaleza whose crocodilian onesie was designed to reflect her fury at Bolsonaro’s “abhorrent” handling of the Covid epidemic, sabotage of containment measures and promotion of ineffective remedies.

“I lost my mother-in-law, the husband of my niece and several close friends. You’ll struggle to find a family that hasn’t lost a loved one,” Fernandes said. “We cannot forget what this president fellow has done … So many Brazilians have been buried who could have escaped death but died because of the president’s impositions.”Rodrigues, who lives in the Amazon city of Manaus, said he had decided to go one step further and transform himself into an anaconda. “It’s a traditionally Amazonian animal [and] it represents medicine and science,” said the 29-year-old whose TikTok video of his vaccination has been viewed more than 6.4m times...

More + Photos of Costumes,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/23/brazil-coronavirus-vaccine-bolsonaro-protest