Does the Political Variable Explain the COVID-19 Event in Brazil?

Abstract

In effectively confronting the Covid-19 pandemic, it is necessary to complement the contributions of Biomedical Sciences to those offered by the Human Sciences. The theoretical foundations derived from the treatment of the interaction of the infectious agent with the host, primates in formatting the guidelines adopted by the World Health Organization, faced strong opposition from government officials in countries such as Brazil, giving rise to critical pronouncements by researchers in the biomedical sciences in space offered by important scientific journals. Despite being fruitful and strategic in nature, we feel encouraged to consider the objective limits of such investiture, a direct reflection of the lack of dialogue with the Human Sciences, in the field of politics and, mainly, of urbanism. Taking as a starting point the unfolding of the phenomenon in Brazil, specifically in the metropolis of Fortaleza-Ceará, we will show how the "denial" posture is inserted in a broader context, encompassing both a representative political framework of a federative government and including postures of insurgency of the Local Governments (of the federative states) in relation to the Central Government as social and economic aspects that characterize a westernized country to establish impactful filtering genre in the implementation of policies of ordering and control of the singular space. In these terms, the drastic expansion of Covid-19 in Brazil denotes a paradoxical picture to represent: a political context of resistance by Local Governments to minimize the controversial actions and attitudes of the Central Government, specifically the creation of the Forum of Governors in the Northeast to guarantee incorporation WHO international guidelines; a trajectory of unequal and perverse modernization that corroborates the indication of a high number of cases and, mainly, deaths in precarious urbanization areas of cities such as Fortaleza, establishing the periphery as the territory of death, registered in areas with a high social vulnerability index of negatively impact the effective implementation of the social isolation policy.