Covid-19

Partial isolation, or vertical isolation as it has been called, consists essentially in only removing from social relations the groups that are most susceptible to mortality by COVID-19, such as people over 60 years old, or diagnosed with diseases as hypertension and diabetes. Bolsonaro, Brazil's current president, defends this measure, based on the bolsonarist discourse, taking the mass "return to work" as justification. This argument precisely inflated the small (fortunately) motorcades in favor of the "return to work" on March 29th, 2020. However, in constant meetings and pronouncements on the Planalto, the federal authorities admit that there is no study to justify such a direction, which is often contrary to the guidelines of the Minister of Health himself and the World Health Organization[1]. On March 31st, 2020, the president distorted once again the statement of the General Director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Ghebreyesus, to question the quarantine and state that he is right about how to conduct the crisis.

Despite the many changes that have occurred, we all know how to point out and understand the established gender roles, where women would be the "caregivers," "housewives," mainly responsible for homes and families.

On one of my last visits to the apartment of my doctoral supervisor, the Africanist anthropologist Louis-Vincent Thomas, in the elegant Parisian neighborhood of Saint Mandé, I was stunned by the personal mode of handling death, by he who was a specialist in the theme. His apartment was lined with photographs of his wife, who had recently passed away. Literally lined, beginning from the hallway entered when stepping off of the elevator, where large banners reproduced photos from different epochs, many of them with her face, photos of augmented identity. “It’s impressive the number of photos that a person takes during their life”, he commented upon seeing my eyes fixed on them. “Just look in the drawers, and there they are”.