Page 39 - IJPS-9-2

International Journal of
Population Studies COVID-19 and intersectionality in Brazil

Intrigued by the question, “Does COVID-19 affect findings. This result is compatible with studies of child
women and men differently?” a study conducted by mortality in Brazil because it corroborates the race-
Rozenberg et al. (2020) found that countries reporting mediated structuring of unequal relationships in Brazilian
COVID-19 data by gender, such as the United States (mainly society from childhood (Alberto et al., 2019).
in New York), Denmark, France, and Belgium, recorded a Finally, even when considering the education
higher number of hospitalizations and deaths among males. “unknown” category (a proxy for social class), the race and
On the other hand, the study also highlighted the need for gender effects on health-care disparities remain. Consistent
caution in interpreting these findings due to variations in with the observations made by Bowleg (2020), deadly
testing capabilities among different countries: lower testing
rates in certain groups could result in fewer recorded cases. pathogens turn the spotlight on the social fissures and
A separate study conducted in Rio de Janeiro investigated inequalities that underlie power relationships related to
the influence of income on the cumulative incidence rate life and death in societies. These disparities extend beyond
of COVID-19 and yielded similar findings (Rafael et al., the pathogenesis of etiological agents and are rooted in the
2020). It revealed lower testing rates in lower-income colonialist structures that have shaped these societies.
neighborhoods, highlighting the issue of under-reporting It is worth reflecting on the concept of necropolicy
due to insufficient testing. Inequity ceases to exist to the and its operation within capitalism. In this regard, the
extent that individuals do not know about it. necropolicy introduced into the role of the government
These findings underline that unequal behavior arises calls for the division of society into social segments and,
from the intersection of gender, race, and class, which by regulating and naturalizing (bio) political power over
are evident in various outcomes investigated in Brazil. lives, institutionally authorizes who should live and who
For instance, a study examining resistant tuberculosis should die. On this logic, the government organizes its
in different municipalities in Brazil found a correlation actions and policies by ranking bodies and distributing
between the supply of culture tests and socioeconomic the right to life in a discriminatory fashion, despite the
indicators (Jacobs & Pinto Junior, 2019). individual caregiver’s morality. Therefore, we emphasize
that making data on the black population unviable, as well
Unlike insurance-based health systems, Brazil’s as the evidently low number of diagnostic tests carried out
Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde, SUS) is on this population group, are necropolitical actions of the
essentially public and operates on a universalist proposal government that establish a genocidal pattern of racialized
based on equal and non-discriminatory access, at least in populations. Structural racism legitimizes the right to
constitutional principle. However, the proposal to produce let others die and/or to kill to protect or preserve certain
equity has been significantly threatened by extensive ways of living regarded as more legitimate than others
underfunding over the twenty years of the SUS’s existence. (Mbembe, 2018).
At the same time, the private subsystem has grown and, to
a point, has filled gaps in the public structure (Glantz et 4.1. Limitations
al., 2019).
The findings of this study must be interpreted in the light of
Ultimately, inequality has increased over the years since some limitations. The first relates to the records on which
higher-income white individuals tend to have more access the investigation was based. The large number of records
to health services than poor, peripheral black individuals. with missing information on exposure variables (gender
This phenomenon may explain the differences in health and race) and level of education (over half marked as
service access found in this study between black females missing or unknown) may have produced differences in the
and males based on socioeconomic status. The latest observed effects; this gap must be bridged by building more
national survey to investigate access to health insurance in robust databases into the health service routine. Another
Brazil showed that females, whites, and higher-schooled limitation of this study pertains to the method of gender
individuals use these private services more often (Barros records, which is guided by the binary model of males and
et al., 2016), which may explain their greater access to females. This approach constrains the comprehensiveness
COVID-19 diagnostic tests. of the data, particularly in relation to transgender and non-
It is essential to think about how the findings of this binary individuals. As a result, these individuals may be
study may relate to the need to broaden perspectives on categorized as unknown or according to their assigned sex
the COVID-19 pandemic and how the cumulative effects at birth, leading to significant underrepresentation and
of race, gender, and social class can produce inequities in potential misclassification within the dataset. It is urgent
individuals’ chances of living and dying, even among black and essential to produce more robust databases to address
children, as suggested in the “non-applicable” education this and other (future) health crises in Brazil. However,

Volume 9 Issue 2 (2023) 33 https://doi.org/10.36922/ijps.0865