Pedro Hallal: Is there a lot?

I spent my entire childhood in Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, the city where I live to this day. However, as soon as the summer vacation arrived, planning for the much-desired trip to Itapema, in Santa Catarina, began.

Religiously, once a year, almost always in February, my family was there, facing, by car, the long journey (BR-101 was not duplicated at the time) that separates Pelotas from Itapema.

I am the brother between two sisters, one older and one younger. We’re all anxious, but I’ve always been the most anxious of the three. So, even before arriving in Porto Alegre, I was already shooting at my father and mother: “Is there a lot more?”

My father and mother usually responded patiently, saying that we had already walked a long way, but that there was still a long way to go. From time to time, across the border between Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, one of my sisters would ask the same question. And I got the same answer.

But when we reached the inevitable traffic jam near Laguna, the three brothers would always ask the question. And the father and mother now replied, “We’re almost there.”

Throw the first stone to hand the father or mother who, traveling by car with their children, never heard this question.

With Covid-19 it has been no different.

From the first weeks of the pandemic, I hear this question very regularly. But usually it doesn’t just come from children, but especially from adults and the elderly. It’s natural: we’re all anxious for the pandemic to go away once and for all of our lives.

Some “experts” at the beginning of the pandemic said that the pandemic would end in a few weeks. In fact, the same “experts” said that, in total, Brazil would have about 800 deaths by Covid-19. And the most impressive thing is that such “experts” never went public to admit their mistake. On the contrary, whenever interviewed, they repeat the same answer: “The pandemic is only a few weeks away.”

Some time ago, I wrote a column predicting that the end of the pandemic in Brazil would be around the turn of the year. At the time, the text caused a lot of reactions. Most people are happy enough to hear a hopeful word from an epidemiologist. However, others, including colleagues, felt the forecast was too optimistic.

Then came the arrival of the delta variant in Brazil, and a tug of war began between the variant and the vaccination campaign. Some experts, based on international reality, predicted that the delta would bomb in Brazil, which fortunately did not happen. Today, it is already possible to say that the vaccination managed, at least, to keep the variant in the tug of war.

The graph accompanying this text shows the moving average of deaths (per 1 million people) per Covid-19 in Brazil since the beginning of the pandemic. There is no way to look at this chart without some optimism. The drop has been sustained for several weeks, even with the wide circulation of the delta variant in the country. With that, it’s time to revisit the question, “Is there much more?”

My view is that the worst is over. With over 70% of the population vaccinated with at least one dose, I can’t imagine a scenario where we’ll go back to the staggering numbers (2,000 deaths a day) seen in early 2021.

On the contrary, it is quite likely that the numbers will never even increase to close to 1,000 deaths a day, which was observed for a long time in the second half of 2020. It is more likely that we will not even go back to an average of 500 deaths a day from now on.

No prediction is 100% guaranteed, but 2022 has what it takes to be much better than 2021, both in pandemic and in politics. “Is there much more?”