Medellín, Colombia – Colombian politician Germán Vargas Lleras died Friday in the capital Bogotá, according to Semana magazine. His death brings an end to a political career spanning more than 30 years, including as a senator, minister, vice president, and two-time presidential candidate. 

On Monday, Vargas Lleras was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit at the Luis Carlos Sarmiento Angulo Cancer Treatment and Research Center in Bogotá. He was later transferred to another hospital where he lost a battle with cancer he had been fighting for years. He was 64 years old. 

Political career

Born in Bogotá on February 19, 1962, Vargas Lleras grew up in a political family. His grandfather, former President Carlos Lleras Restrepo, was a pillar of the country’s Liberal Party. 

He would go on to make a name for himself on his own, serving as a city councilman, congressman, minister, and ultimately leader of the Cambio Radical political party.

Vargas Lleras first ran for president 2009. He traveled the country, participated in debates, and garnered nearly 1.5 million votes. It wasn’t enough to win, but he finished third. 

The winner of the election, Juan Manuel Santos, would later call on him to serve as a minister in his cabinet. 

In 2014, Santos chose him as his running mate for reelection. Together they won in the runoff, and Vargas Lleras took office as vice president on August 7 of that year. 

Once his term as vice president ended, Vargas Lleras did not sit idle. In 2018, he ran again for president, this time with the “Mejor Vargas Lleras” coalition backed by Cambio Radical. 

His policy proposals included  infrastructure, housing, and a more efficient public administration.

In the first round, he received over 1.4 million votes but finished fourth, knocking him out of the runoff race. His campaign stated that he would not officially endorse either of the remaining candidates, Iván Duque and Gustavo Petro. 

Over time, he kept a lower profile, though he never completely stepped away from politics.

During his career, Vargas Lleras would survive two assassination attempts and a “parapolitics” scandal in which he was accused, but never charged, with benefitting politically from his connections to warlord “Martin Llanos”.

Health issues

In his later years, his health gradually got in the way of politics; reportedly, he suffered from a benign meningioma, a tumor in the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord, which was detected in 2016 after a fainting spell. 

On March 11, former President Álvaro Uribe commented on his condition, saying, “My best wishes for the health of Dr. Germán Vargas Lleras, a distinguished patriot whom I respect despite our occasional disagreements.”

During his final months, the former vice president stayed out of the public eye, though he briefly reappeared on March 3  in a video concerning the March 8 parliamentary elections. 

Upon learning of his death, former President Santos wrote on X that he is “deeply saddened” and described Vargas Lleras as “an exceptional colleague.”

Current President Gustavo Petro also mourned the political leader’s death: “Both in the Senate and on the campaign trail, he behaved like a gladiator. As someone who often disagreed with him, I regret that his seriousness in debate will be lost,” he said on his X account.

Featured image: Germán Vargas Lleras

Image credit: Germán Vargas Lleras via Facebook.

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WASHINGTON, May 9 — An outbreak of the deadly hantavirus on a Dutch-flagged cruise ship is reviving conspiracy theories about vaccines, alleged depopulation campaigns and miracle cures that flourished during the Covid pandemic.

The multilingual misinformation, which dominated online discourse and disrupted public health responses to the coronavirus, resurged even as the World Health Organization insisted Friday that there remained minimal risk to the general public from passengers of the MV Hondius.

“LOCKDOWN ALERT: Globalists Launch Covid 2.0 As Hantavirus Spreads Worldwide”, InfoWars founder Alex Jones said on X. “Just Like A Light Switch.”

A flurry of similar posts declared the outbreak a “plandemic” — borrowing from the title of a widely discredited pseudo-documentary from 2020 that pushed falsehoods about Covid.

A passenger is believed to have contracted the rare respiratory disease before boarding the ship in Argentina and infecting others on board.

Yet, an AFP analysis found widespread claims alleging a sinister plot to force vaccines on the masses, coerce people into lockdown, or sway America’s November elections by justifying expanded use of mail-in ballots — a voting method that election deniers have insisted without evidence is rife with fraud.

“The almost-immediate resurrection of Covid-19 era conspiracy theories is a reminder that misinformation doesn’t simply disappear once the crisis that yielded them is over,” said Yotam Ophir, head of the University at Buffalo’s Media Effects, Misinformation and Extremism lab.

During the Covid pandemic, health misinformation became more entwined with political identity, he said, so the election-rigging narrative “primes existing beliefs”.

Other posts pointed to past coverage of potential vaccines for hantavirus, Covid-era comments from billionaire Bill Gates and a fictional 1990s television show as evidence the hantavirus was intentionally released to reduce the population or make money for vaccine manufacturers.

Some further claimed the hantavirus was a side effect of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccines, misrepresenting a document that showed only that it was one of many “adverse events of special interest” subjected to monitoring, not something caused by the shot.

Ophir said many of the conspiracy theories now resurfacing have a long history, tracing to centuries-old fears that diseases were manufactured by elites.

But they spread faster now, boosted by social media algorithms and sometimes entertained by anti-vaccine voices installed in high-ranking offices by President Donald Trump.

Unproven cures

There are no approved vaccines or known cures for the hantavirus, which is usually spread from infected rodents and can cause respiratory and cardiac distress as well as haemorrhagic fever.

But online, anti-establishment physicians and some politicians immediately touted the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin and other medications as cures.

Former US representative Marjorie Taylor Greene — who posted that the virus was a “bioweapon” unleashed so pharmaceutical companies could profit off “poison” vaccines — amplified ivermectin claims from Texas otolaryngologist Mary Talley Bowden, whom AFP has fact-checked for spreading misinformation.

Bowden later posted an offer to sell ivermectin, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis reupped support for failed legislation aimed at making ivermectin available without prescription.

“There is extreme misinformation about ivermectin,” John Lednicky, a virologist at the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions, told AFP.

“Outside of laboratory tests, ivermectin has not proven effective in treating infections.”

Ophir, from Buffalo, said the promotion of Covid-era conspiracy theories could be an effort to curry political favour — and may also be financially motivated.

Amid anxiety and confusion over the outbreak, he told AFP that “online influencers, social media groups, or AI-operated users, may seize the chance to make some money”. — AFP