Opinion – Vinicius Torres Freire: Covid starts to kill the elderly much more, death becomes ‘invisible’

This year, 83% of Covid-19 deaths were 60 years old or older in São Paulo. During the entire epidemic, it was 69%. It is a number similar to that of flu/pneumonia in the state: 85% of those killed by these diseases in 2019 and 2020 were 60 years old or older (there are no data for 2021 yet).

As if it were a caricature of the prophecy of the monster in power, Covid has become a new great killer flu.

We got used to Covid, its deaths and sequels, just as the country’s institutions got used to Jair Bolsonaro. Destruction continues, but it is part of the landscape. So too we get used to poverty. Next year, we go into the TENTH year with no growth. In fact, we will still be much poorer than we were in 2014.

In the case of the plague, we are now used to 250 deaths a day in Brazil; to 69 a day in the state of São Paulo. At this rate, the epidemic will have killed 700,000 people in the country on the eve of the second round of the election. Will there still be any commotion over the ephemeris of the horror round number?

Maybe not, because there could be a concurrent catastrophe, like the apex of the coup now underway. But as far as the epidemic is concerned, perhaps it is not paid attention because death by Covid has become invisible, so to speak.

The disease kills even more the older, “elderly”. For our growing (or customary?) inhumanity, the shortened life of the elderly seems to cause less commotion, as if inevitable.

Considering the numbers of other causes of death in 2019 (last year before the epidemic), Covid would be the third deadliest disease in the state of São Paulo, for the total population. Every day, about 159 people died from cancer and 87 from ischemic heart disease (clogged arteries, which can lead to a heart attack). This year, so far, 85 people have died a day from Covid.

Flu/pneumonia killed 63 a day in 2019; cerebrovascular diseases, 59.5. Aids, 5. Suicides, 6.5. Homicides, 9. Transport accidents, 14. The numbers are very similar to 2020.

Younger people are the majority of murdered, homicide victims: about 90% are between 15 and 49 years old. They die much earlier and much more blatantly than the old people who go more quietly because of the flu, pneumonia or Covid. But it’s all intolerable.

Death from Covid has also become routine because, at least for now, there is not much to do except what has to be done: vaccines, masks, ventilation, awareness campaigns, which has been known for a long time – but each less and less is done. It is necessary to live with the disease, for lack of an alternative, but it is not necessary to surrender to another reason for great slaughter: the third most common cause of death in São Paulo, let’s repeat.

Despite the darkness, there is something left of Brazil that works. The country is doing relatively well in the vaccination ranking. In the case of two doses, we are ahead of Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Germany. In the case of the other doses, booster, not so much, but not far from France and well ahead of the shame of the United States.

The daily number of deaths has been growing here, but it is now lower than in the UK, Italy, USA and France, for example (deaths per million inhabitants), although these comparisons are quite difficult, due to social and seasonal differences. It wasn’t just us who got used to Covid.

It can not be. For the rest, resignation or indifference towards death are married to other conformisms or coldness. How many will be the victims of serious sequelae of the disease? As many as the 700,000 dead? The double? The half? Whatever it is, it’s a disaster. We haven’t even asked ourselves how many there are and how these people suffer.