On March 11th, when the global community already had been struggling to contain the spread of coronavirus for many weeks, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro declared that the outbreak was something “of a fantasy.” It was a “moment of crisis,” he acknowledged, but “a small crisis” that had been exaggerated by “mainstream” media. “Some press outlets had managed to make oil prices fall,” he added. “[It’s] a stock-market problem. It happens occasionally.” These comments echoed the views of Bolsonaro’s most enthusiastic right-wing supporters, who have spent recent days disseminating articles and social-media posts downplaying the virus as mere hysteria—perhaps even part of an organized campaign created by the media, NGOs, and communists. A blogger with ties to Brazil’s far-right government, Bernardo Küster, wrote that the situation was “in the first place, a great psychological experiment of manipulation on a global scale… Why not start tests to manipulate the international market by fear and [appealing to] our survival instincts?” Küster added that the template for this sort of campaign had already been witnessed on “a global scale …