RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) – Rumors and conspiracy theories ran over the past week about the whereabouts of Zé Gotinha, mascot of the national vaccination program.
The clamor surrounding the costumed Zé Gotinha began Wednesday, after former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva drew attention to his recent absence.
“Where’s our dear Zé Gotinha?” Lula said in a speech criticizing the way President Jair Bolsonaro is dealing with the pandemic.
Zé Gotinha, whose name roughly translates to “Gota do Zé” and which resembles Casper, the grown-up Friendly Ghost, was created in the 1980s to help the Ministry of Health promote vaccination against the polio virus and reassure kids.
“Vaccine advertisements were very heavy. They were associated with something terrible, tragic, life-threatening, ”said Carla Domingues, former coordinator of the national vaccination program between 2011 and 2019, to the Associated Press.
Gotinha changed that and, due to his success, since then he has been appearing regularly to warn about the importance of preventing measles, tuberculosis, whooping cough, diphtheria and, more recently, COVID-19.
But the last time that Gotinha was seen publicly at a ceremony in Brasilia was on December 16, launching the country’s vaccination program. The character, much loved by the children, refused Bolsonaro’s attempt to shake hands in the name of social detachment.
Da Silva, Bolsonaro’s rival leftist, presented his own theory about what happened to Gotinha: “Bolsonaro fired him because he thought he was from the Workers’ Party”.
One theory is that mascot advertising services may not be needed at the moment, as Brazil is using its limited doses to vaccinate the elderly and people in priority groups, not yet children.
Many on social media speculate about Gotinha’s fate. One person talked about the drama of Gotinha being unemployed. Another reinterpreted a typical poster of a missing child, with the image of the mascot and the caption “disappeared”.
“Cheering for the quick recovery of Zé Gotinha. Only this hero can save us, ”said a Twitter user who speculated that the pet could be suffering from an illness.
Since vaccinations against the coronavirus began in Brazil, Bolsonaro has cast doubt on its effectiveness. He recently started to recede such skepticism, but continues to claim that drugs like hydroxychloroquine can help prevent hospitalization, although they have not shown benefits in rigorous studies.
Due to low supplies and slow implementation, almost 5% of Brazilians have received at least one vaccine so far, according to the national council of state health secretaries in Brazil. But 79% of Brazilians want to get vaccinated, according to a Datafolha survey released on January 23. This represents 6 percentage points more than the previous survey, in December.
On Friday, a cartoon of Gotinha appeared on the social networks of Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the president and federal legislator. The mascot was depicted holding a syringe in the shape of an assault rifle. “Our weapon is the vaccine,” wrote the legislator.
The creator of Gotinha, the artist Darlan Rosa, was shocked.
“(Gotinha) was conceived as an educational character. There is nothing educational about a gun, ”Rosa told the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper. Carlos Latuff, another cartoonist, drew the image of Gotinha breaking a rifle in his knee.
Domingues, the former coordinator of the vaccination program, said that Gotinha is an integral part of vaccination efforts.
“Gotinha was designed to make vaccination a children’s holiday and it was a great success,” said Domingues. “He was a major contributor to a change in perspective on immunization.”