The piece, which addresses disputes over the authorization and rollout of vaccines, appeared in Backchannels, the Society for Social Studies of Science blog. The post links anti-vaccine sentiment to political rupture between João Doria, São Paulo’s governor, and President Jair Bolsonaro.   

The USP Journal described the CompCoRe Interim Report in an article titled “Tensões políticas levaram Brasil a fracassar no combate à covid-19, aponta relatório”(“Political tensions have led Brazil to fail to combat covid-19, report says,”). The article discussed the similarities between the Brazilian and US responses to the pandemic, quoting Marko Monteiro (Brazil team) on how political polarization has been detrimental to the effective containment of the virus. Full article in Portuguese here and English translation here.

Iris Eisenberger and Nikolaus Pöchhacker (Austria team) shared early findings from their project on “REASON – Legal requirements for statistical modelling” at the University of Graz. By analyzing the Austrian government’s press conferences on the coronavirus,  they show that referencing “science” helped resolve the tension between rational decision-making and epistemic uncertainty. However, these appeals to “science” remained vague and did not cite specific research organizations, scientists, or publications.

An article titled “Por que respostas tão diferentes à pandemia?” (Why are there such different responses to the pandemic?) noted Brazil as an important case in the study and reviewed initial CompCoRe findings. Comments from Brazil team members Marko Monteiro and Alberto Urbinatti describe how the project is helping to shed light on Brazil’s pandemic response.