Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro is known for his controversial statements, and his most recent target was the COVID-19 vaccine. The right-leaning leader was skeptical of the virus since it first emerged in late 2019, and has gone so far as to call it “a little flu.” In December 2020, as Brazil began a mass COVID-19 inoculation program, Bolsonaro insisted he, personally, would not get vaccinated.
Moreover, he suggested that the vaccine developed by Pfizer-BioNTech could turn people into crocodiles and make women grow beards. It's unclear if he was being sarcastic, but here are his exact words:
"In the Pfizer contract it's very clear: 'we're not responsible for any side effects.' If you turn into a crocodile, it's your problem [...] If you become superhuman, if a woman starts to grow a beard or if a man starts to speak with an effeminate voice, they will not have anything to do with it."
Bolsonaro caught the virus in July 2020 and recovered in three weeks. On his insistence against being vaccinated, Bolsonaro added, “Some people say I'm giving a bad example. But to the imbeciles, to the idiots that say this, I tell them I've already caught the virus, I have the antibodies, so why get vaccinated?"
Brazil has recorded more than 7.1 million cases and almost 185,000 deaths from COVID-19.
We rate this claim as a “Correct Attribution.”