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THIS IS THE FIRST PART OF THE COVER STORY ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE IN BRAZIL. CHECK OUT THE OTHERS:
– Part 2: Politics
– Part 3: Military
– Part 4: Civilian Population
– Part 5: Escape and Reconstruction
A ME talked to specialists, analyzed health reports and consulted hundreds of statistics to try to imagine, with maximum verisimilitude, what an undead apocalypse would be like in Brazil – from the inexplicable beginning to the end of our society. Believe: the terror is real.
1. The beginning of the end
Where would an apocalypse begin zombie in Brazil? In books dedicated to the subject, when a “patient zero” is defined, it usually appears in urban centers with basic sanitation problems, lagging health system and inconstant presence of state supervision. In this case, the city of Rio de Janeiro could be a good (or bad!) starting point.
2. Health in the ICU
In June 2016, the government of Rio de Janeiro had to declare a state of public calamity in the face of an expected deficit of BRL 19 billion. Only the Secretary of Health accumulated debt of R$ 1.4 billion. Hospitals such as Adão Pereira Nunes, Albert Schweizer and Getúlio Vargas operated under dramatic conditions, with emergency closures. Doctors and nurses had delayed salaries.
3. Nobody noticed
Overburdened, hospital care staff might not pay attention to a patient with the first signs of infection. Or simply misdiagnosed him with a type of rage. After all, the disease would be unprecedented – perhaps, with only a few isolated reports described abroad, not yet documented by science.
4. Imported virus
Rio also has potential as “ground zero” for the invasion because it is the second largest tourist entrance door from Brazil. There were 1.4 million in 2015. Some of them could bring the virus here – in Brazilian airports, isolation of passengers with suspected contagious diseases has always been rare. The last example was with Ebola in 2014.
5. Generalized infection
Regardless of where it started, the epidemic would spread quickly, because health in the rest of Brazil is not great either. The SUS operates in the red. More than 200 Santas Casas or non-profit hospitals have recently closed due to debt. A recent study indicated that, in the last five years, the country lost 24,000 beds.
6. Doctors for the few
Soon, hospitals would be full of patients (or victims of attacks). And probably not staffed enough to serve them. In the last five years, the total number of doctors in the country has grown, reaching 432 thousand (about 2.11 per thousand inhabitants). but they are poorly distributed: 60% are in just 39 cities – those with more than 500,000 inhabitants.
7. Just to compare
Aedes aegypti has been known for over a century, yet dengue cases in the country rose from 147,000 in 2005 to 1.6 million in 2015. Some analyzes have estimated that, when the first cases of chikungunya and zika appeared, the government it took five months to react. If we can’t beat a mosquito, what chance would we have against zombies?
+ Check out the second part of this article
CONSULTANCY Rodrigo Stumpf Gonzalez, professor at the Department of Political Science at UFRGS
SOURCES Articles The Crisis and Public Healthby José Luiz Spigolon, Human Quarantine Measures in Public Health: Bioethical Aspectsby Iris Almeida dos Santos and Wanderson Flor do Nascimento, You Can Run, You Can Hide: The Epidemiology and Statistical Mechanics of Zombies, by Alexander Alemi, Matthew Bierbaum, Christopher Myers and James Sethna; books World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War It is The Zombie Survival Guide, both by Max Brooks; documentaries The Truth Behind Zombiesfrom National Geographic, and Zombies: A Living History, from the History Channel; reports National Sample Survey by Household 2012 It is Atlas of Violence 2016both from IPEA, Budget Executionfrom the Ministry of Defence, Small Arms Holdings in Brazil: Toward a Comprehensive Mapping of Guns and Their Owners, by Pablo Dreyfus and Marcelo de Sousa Nascimento; websites IBGE, CNT, Denatran, Conselho Federal de Medicina, Abraciclo, Centers of Disease Control, Military Power, Global Firepower, Zombie Research Society and Defesa Net