When you think about it, using Borat as the Patient Zero vector for COVID-19 makes perfect sense. He's always been known to greet people (well, mainly men, but still) with a hug and a kiss on both cheeks, and he's very keen to get close to people and learn their customs. Thus, he's one of the people least-likely to be predisposed to social distancing you could think of, even before knowing that close quarters contact was the main transmission risk of the virus.
At first, Borat's son Hueylewis changing his name to Jeffrey Epstein makes little sense due to Epstein being Jewish and Kazakhstan's general antisemitism. Until you realize that's just how far Borat has fallen in his son's eyes, he would rather have his name be associated with a Jewish man than what his father named him.
Assuming the people of Kazakhstan even know that he was Jewish, the fact that Epstein was also an infamous sex offender who spent decades enslaving and exploiting women may have "redeemed" him in their eyes.
Borat, and the viewer, assume that Azamat was executed before his skin was turned into a chair, with this being a warning for the fate that awaits Borat if he fails in his mission. It seems odd at first that Azamat would suffer death rather than imprisonment, since he was only a producer while Borat was the face of the first documentary, but at the end of the film, Azamat is shown as a possible candidate to spread COVID-19. Azamat wasn't executed, he was a failed test subject.
Fridge Horror
As with the original movie, a lot of the nonchalant or even enthusiastic nonstaged responses to Borat's racist, sexist, and antisemitic statements can be this.
An "in-universe" example: while Sacha Baron Cohen obviously had to be clear of COVID-19 to film any scene (thus preventing any Fridge Horror about the film's actual production), there's no such indication of this with the (presumably asymptomatic) Borat himself, especially given that he was the main vector for the virus's initial spread worldwide. Now remember that prior to the COVID lockdowns, Borat talks to plenty of people without a mask and in some cases even kisses them on the face. Of course, given the time it would have taken them to get from Kazakhstan to the US, it's possible that Borat eventually lost his infectiousness by the time he arrived in the US.
