Harrowing scenes from Brazil and the long wait for a vaccine in Kyiv
Welcome to the Infodemic. The new year started with chaos on Capitol Hill, fresh lockdowns in Britain and the United States and some positive vaccine rollout news. But disinformation continues to shape the global pandemic response and out lives along with it. Now, in 2021, we are still here to help make sense of it all.
In this issue: tragedy in the Amazon, Boris Johnson upsets Beijing, vaccine skeptics in India and a dispatch from a vaccine enthusiast in Ukraine.
And now to the narratives, both real and fake, that have grabbed our attention this week and deserve yours:
We are closely watching developments in Brazil. The internet is overwhelmed with reports that on Thursday an entire hospital wing full of people suffocated to death in the city of Manaus, after doctors ran out of oxygen. We don’t know the number of deaths, but medical staff have taken to social media to beg people to donate oxygen cylinders to hospitals where staff have been forced to manually ventilate patients. These posts met with fury, because the state government of Amazona knew of an impending oxygen shortage for at least a week and briefed the national health ministry on a possible humanitarian disaster back in December. Instead of sending supplies, health minister Eduardo Pazuello told doctors in Manaus to use hydroxychloroquine — a drug unproven against the coronavirus and endorsed by President Jair Bolsonaro.