Negacionismo, sindemia e risco : o impacto social da pandemia de covid-19 no município de Pelotas/RS

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to analyze the relationship between socio-territorial inequality and the defining disputes around the risks of worsening the social impact of the Covid-19 pandemic in the municipality of Pelotas/RS, between the years 2020/2021. To carry out this analysis, socio-territorial inequality is considered an operational construct, which includes differences in income, access to work, environmental and housing quality and access to public services, in each of the neighborhoods and regions of municipal planning (the territories), notably the places where the highest rates of contagion and mortality from the disease were observed. Definitive disputes, on the other hand, are characterized by argumentative confrontation and political staging around the risks of the pandemic, carried out with the aim of forming public opinion. To develop the research, a comparison was made between the numbers of the contagion process by the new coronavirus in the municipal space, considering the different stages of dissemination and the social and economic indicators of neighborhoods and regions where the majority of cases and deaths occurred, which will be called the concrete or realistic dimension of the risks. Also considered will be the political strategies adopted by each level of government since the beginning of the pandemic, the positioning of different social and economic segments in the dispute around discursive hegemony and influence in the decisionmaking process by health authorities, establishing the called the political dimension. The central argument of the thesis consists of the understanding that although preexisting social inequalities, resulting from structural factors such as income, housing (density) and age, have a great influence on the increase of risks caused by Covid- 19, constituting a process of syndemic interaction between the virus and the social conditions of the victims, the confrontation of the discursive and management strategies adopted by the different levels of government and the results of the pandemic observed in the municipality of Pelotas, with those obtained in other cities and regions with similar characteristics, demonstrate a strong prevalence of the government choices and the legitimization of the pandemic denialist discourse as factors that increase and aggravate these risks.