RIO DE JANEIRO — The people started queuing up before first light. The line of cars soon stretched for miles — streaking out of the city, winding into the countryside, thousands of elderly people hoping it would finally be their day.
The mayor of Duque de Caxias, a working-class suburb of Rio de Janeiro, announced last week that anyone over the age of 60 was eligible to receive a coronavirus vaccine. But there was a problem. More than 80,000 people fit that age bracket — but the city had only 6,100 doses. Thousands of people battled huge crowds, waited for hours and exposed themselves to infection, only to return home, frustrated and unvaccinated — one more public health failure in a Brazilian tragedy riddled with them. ...
The question in Brazil, which has suffered more coronavirus deaths than any country outside of the United States, is no longer how it got into this mess. Under the chaotic leadership of President Jair Bolsonaro, Latin America’s largest country long ago succumbed to denialism, disorganization, apathy, hedonism and medical quackery — and buried more than 266,000 people along the way.
The question is whether the failure to control the virus poses an international threat that will undermine the hard-won gains other countries have made.
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