Mediatization, polarization, and intolerance (between environments, media, and circulation)

Antônio Fausto Neto 210 also enunciated the Ministry of Health’s anti-guidelines posi- tion on isolation: “The harm we will have with horizontal isola- tion will be much higher than the harm we will have with the virus” (FSP, 03/25/2020). And, according to non-specific allu - sions, he expands the ways of evaluating the containment mea- sures: “Many people, to give satisfaction to their electorate, take absurd measures. Closing the mall, there are people who want to close the church, which is the last refuge of the people” (FSP, 26/03/2020). He evaluated the impact of the virus by designating it as a fantasy - or a small crisis - attributed to the media: The coro- navirus is “a small crisis that, in my opinion, makes the issue of the coronavirus much more a fantasy, which is not all that the mainstream media propagates throughout the world” (TERRA, 10/03/2020). He treated it as a small illness, which he named as little flu, incapable of producing discomfort for himself as for his government: “After the stab, it won’t be a little flu that will bring me down, okay?” (TERRA, 03/20/2020); he explained who his opponents were in the context of this fight, as they converged with the health field regarding social isolation measures: “Soon, the people will know that they have been deceived, right, by these governors, and by a large part of the media in this issue of the coronavirus” (TERRA, 03/22/2020). Without losing the media as a target, he placed him- self as a place of self-reference to assess the effects of the virus: “Have you ever thought what a set meal for the press if I had been infected? I haven’t been. It’s my word. My word is worth more than a piece of paper. If something happens to me, it mess- es with the economy and that is not good for the country. In case the virus comes to me, and I become a carrier, I have no prob- lem disclosing it, I would not lie to the Brazilian people. But I am not affected. I think there is information, disproportionate interference in the life of the human being” (BBR, 03/26/2020, 04/01/2020). Days later, he announced the “end” of the corona- virus cycle, focusing on the association, for the first time , with the economic crisis: “It seems that the issue of the virus is be- ginning to go away. But unemployment is coming and beating hard” (TERRA, 12/04/2020). Upon dismissing the minister of health, for diverging from the guidelines he followed, in conver-