Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus

by David Quammen

The virus seems to have first reached Brazil from Italy, by way of four travelers arriving in São Paulo during February 2020, just at the time when Italy’s own initial outbreak began in Lombardy. From there it moved north quickly, meeting a disorganized public health response exacerbated by political turmoil in some states (such as Rio de Janeiro, where the governor faced impeachment), acute shortage of resources in others (Amazonas, a huge state with few ICU beds and all of those concentrated in Manaus), prolonged circulation of the virus before the first case was reported (Ceará state, on the north coast), socioeconomic inequities, and a poorly informed president (Jair Bolsonaro) with autocratic tendencies who rejected nonpharmaceutical interventions (masks, social distancing), promoted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment, fired his minister of health in April, lost another minister of health in May, and then appointed to the job an army general with no medical qualifications. On April 28, a day when Brazil’s total cases exceeded 73,000 and the death toll passed five thousand, Bolsonaro faced a group of reporters at a barricade, and someone mentioned the numbers. “So what?” he said with a shrug. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”

Gamma