COVID-19 and times of crisis: between risk and care

The article reflects on the notions of risk and care in crisis contexts, taking into account the social experience of COVID-19. The focus is to understand how the institutions and individuals who took part in the public debate dealt with the notion of danger. The article is based on the following axes of reflection: the media discourse, the pronouncements of the then-president Bolsonaro, the positioning of health professionals and the perspective of subjects in the daily care and illness. The analysis of journalistic material, statements by government authorities and scientific papers on the first two years of the pandemic revealed the polysemy of these conceptions. There was tension around the notion of severity since the pandemic was seen as both an ordinary and an exceptional event; and care was formulated as an individual and collective dimension; in which caregivers were marked by vulnerability, anguish, and exhaustion. The pandemic experience in this context took place under the aegis of state and institutional helplessness, in the face of political conditions marked by the rise of the far-right and the Bolsonaro government.