You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives during the last year dramatically and in a totally unexpected way. For months now, we've been constantly confronted with an elusive mortal threat. In some countries, the virus continues to spread at an alarming rate, for example in India, where (at this writing, May 2, 2021) more than 400,000 people are infected every day. In other countries, such as the United States, which has suffered the most deaths so far (over 568,000), thanks to vaccinations, which are now progressing well, the false sense of security that one can return to a prepandemic life is growing, creating new risks. For example, virologists warn vehemently of newly emerging mutations in populations that have not yet been vaccinated, for example in the Third World, which could then spread globally again and also reinfect those who have already been vaccinated. The difficult truth is that every person all over the world is only save to the degree that everyone in the whole globe is safe. Or, as the public health professionals say “until all of us are safe, none of us.”
In countries like Brazil, where more than 320,000 people have now died, the misery has reached such proportions that a psychoanalytic society even decided to publish an Open Letter to the Population in April 2021.
The Brazilian Federation of Psychoanalysis (FEBRAPSI) would like to publicly express its apprehension and perplexity in view of the epidemiological disaster due to the lack of control of COVID-19. We are all in a situation of risk and helplessness, whether in the sense of catching the disease or becoming psychically ill, as a result of the frightening experience of seeing family, friends, and strangers succumbing to coronavirus infection. In this scenario hunger, poverty, domestic violence, and other ailments that already existed in our country have also been aggravated.
Even in countries with a less dramatic situation as for example, in Germany, the pandemic has a terrible fa