Texarkana Gazette

Death and denial in Brazil

- By Renata Brito

MANAUS, Brazil — As the white van approached Perfect Love Street, one by one chatting neighbors fell silent, covered their mouths and noses and scattered.

Men in full body suits carried an empty coffin into the small, blue house where Edgar Silva had spent two feverish days gasping for air before drawing his last breath on May 12.

“It wasn’t COVID,” Silva’s daughter, Eliete das Graças insisted to the funerary workers. She swore her 83-year-old father had died of Alzheimer’s disease, not that sickness ravaging the city’s hospitals.

But Silva, like the vast majority of those dying at home, was never tested for the new coronaviru­s. The doctor who signed his death certificat­e never saw his body before determinin­g the cause: “cardioresp­iratory arrest.”

His death was not counted as one of Brazil’s victims of the pandemic.

Manaus is one of the hardest hit cities in Brazil, which officially has lost more than 23,000 lives to the coronaviru­s. But in the absence of evidence proving otherwise, relatives like das Graças are quick to deny the possibilit­y that COVID-19 claimed their loved ones, meaning that the toll is likely a vast undercount.

As ambulances zip through Manaus with sirens blaring and backhoes dig rows of new graves, the muggy air in this city by the majestic Amazon River feels thicker than usual with such pervasive denial. Manaus has seen nearly triple the usual number of dead in April and May.

Doctors and psychologi­sts say denial at the grassroots stems from a mixture of misinforma­tion, lack of education, insufficie­nt testing and conflictin­g messages from the country’s leaders.

Chief among skeptics is President Jair Bolsonaro, who has repeatedly called COVID-19 a “little flu,” and argued that concern over the virus is overblown.

He has resisted U.S. and European-style lockdowns to contain the virus’ spread, saying such measures aren’t worth the economic wreckage. He fired his first health minister for supporting quarantine­s, accepted the resignatio­n of a second after less than a month on the job, and said that the interim minister, an army general with no background in health or medicine, will remain in charge of the pandemic response “for a long time.”

The president’s political followers are receptive to his dismissal of the virus, as determined as he is to proceed with life as usual.

On a recent Saturday in Manaus, locals flocked to the bustling riverside market to buy fresh fish, unaware of the need for social distancing, or uninterest­ed. As swamped intensive-care units struggled to accommodat­e new patients airlifted from the Amazon, the faithful returned to some of the city’s evangelica­l churches. Coffins arriving by riverboat did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of young people at clandestin­e dance parties. And in the streets, masks frequently covered chins and foreheads rather than mouths and noses.

 ?? Associated Press ?? ■ People gather outside a bar Sunday in Manaus, Brazil, amid the new coronaviru­s pandemic. Although health experts warn that the pandemic is far from over in Manaus or across the country, national polls show adherence to lockdowns and quarantine­s falling, and a growing percentage of Brazilians are neglecting local leaders’ safety recommenda­tions.
Associated Press ■ People gather outside a bar Sunday in Manaus, Brazil, amid the new coronaviru­s pandemic. Although health experts warn that the pandemic is far from over in Manaus or across the country, national polls show adherence to lockdowns and quarantine­s falling, and a growing percentage of Brazilians are neglecting local leaders’ safety recommenda­tions.

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