The Coronavirus Crisis in Brazil: An Initial Historical Assessment

Brazil currently has the second highest COVID-related death toll in the world, behind only the United States. Circumstances are so bleak that many hospitals lack even basic medical supplies as a new, more contagious variant sweeps through Latin America’s largest nation. Drawing on theoretical insights from the social history of medicine, Marcos Cueto and Gabriel Lopes chart how Brazil’s early response to coronavirus was hampered by institutional and political paralysis. While the vaccine rollout offers a potential roadmap out of the crisis, it has simultaneously silenced voices calling for an end to glaring inequalities, amplifying pre-existing social and political cleavages.

Speakers:

Marcos Cueto is a professor at Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, Fiocruz, in Rio de Janeiro. He is the author of countless books, including The World Health Organization: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Gabriel Lopes is a postdoctoral researcher at Casa de Oswaldo Cruz working on the history of virus and vectors in the urban ecology of diseases in Latin America.

Professor Marcos Cueto	Dr Gabriel Lopes

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Lecture Series: The Long History of the Coronavirus Crisis.

The UCL Americas Research Network is delighted to announce a series of virtual lectures on the long history of the COVID-19 pandemic. A distinguished group of scholars will identify and discuss the historical roots of the current crisis - and the implications of this history for the next stage of the pandemic, as the vaccine rollout continues. A brief Q&A will follow all lectures, which are due to occur in March 2021. Convenor and chair: Stephen Colbrook

Two other events are part of this series:

• Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Immunity in Antebellum New Orleans, with Kathryin Oliverius (Stanford) on March 8 
• American Contagions: Epidemics and the Law from Smallpox to COVID-19, with John Fabian Witt (Yale) on March 22