ABSTRACT
The denialist approach that the Brazilian government adopted to the COVID-19 pandemic makes the country an interesting case study of the consequences of politicised and populist responses to the virus, which are summarised in this chapter. Bolsonaro’s ‘underreach’ politics were based on a permanent strategy to expose the population to the virus in the hope of herd immunity, even after consensus had emerged on the inefficacy of such an approach. This chapter reconstructs the central aspects of this response.
