TheEconomistAugust 29th 2020 431T
he nightmarebegan in earnest for
residents of Parque das Tribos when
their cacique, or local chief, died of co-
vid-19. Messias Kokama had battled politi-
cians, developers and drug gangs to trans-
form a dusty informal settlement on the
outskirts of Manaus, a city of 2m people
deep in the Brazilian Amazon, into a haven
for some 600 indigenous families from 35
ethnic groups. He was 53 and said he wasn’t
afraid of the virus. His death on May 13th
shook the community.
By then, hospitals in Manaus were turn-
ing people away and cemeteries were dig-
ging mass graves. Ambulances wouldn’t
come to Parque das Tribos (“Tribes Park”)
because the city and the federal indigenous
agency each claimed that indigenous city-
dwellers fell to the other institution. Such
neglect exacerbated their grief. Every few
days another elder would start gasping for
air. Those who made it back from hospital
told horror stories of frigid wards packed
with dying patients and doctors who didn’t
speak their language. One resident fled the
icu. “He said he would rather die in a ham-
mock than surrounded by tubes,” said his
daughter-in-law, Cláudia Baré. Five weeks
later, he did.
The pandemic has now subsided in Par-
que das Tribos. Burials in Manaus have fall-
en from more than 150 per day to the pre-
pandemic norm of around 35. Sunbathers
once again pack Ponta Negra beach on the
banks of the Rio Negro. It scarcely seems
imaginable that just two months ago, boats
were arriving at the port with covid-19 pa-
tients who had died on the journey. Yet the
chaos of the past few months is giving way
to a second crisis. Lingering trauma and
continued hardship will take much longer
to overcome. Mr Kokama’s daughter, Mir-
ian, is being treated for depression. His
son, Miqueias, who is 33 and took over as
chief, barely sleeps.
For some, the second half of 2020 will
bring much-needed relief. For the time be-
ing the number of new recorded global in-fections has plateaued. In many countries
it has dropped dramatically. Yet for those
places hit hardest, a full recovery will de-
pend on more than getting the virus under
control. In a world paralysed by death, sur-
vivors are everywhere: icupatients who
faced the horror of covid-19 first-hand, doc-
tors and nurses who cared for them, rela-
tives forced to mourn over WhatsApp and
Zoom, families who lost their livelihoods.
Mental-health professionals say that no
single event since the second world war
has left so many people in so many places
traumatised at once. How people fare in the
months and years ahead will depend partly
on how their countries—and, more impor-
tantly, their communities—respond.Stress en masse
In 1972 a dam burst at a coal mine in West
Virginia and 132m gallons of sludge ripped
through the Buffalo Creek valley, killing 125
people and destroying thousands of
homes. The victims’ lawyers hired Kai Erik-
son, a sociologist, to study the aftermath of
the flood. It had swept away not only physi-
cal belongings, but also relationships, rou-
tines, tradition and trust. He called this
devastation “collective trauma”.
The way Mr Erikson saw it, traumatic
experiences harm individuals, of course.
But they can also change group dynamics.
People stop trusting each other. It becomes
harder to bring people back together andMental health
The common tragedy
BEIJING, CODOGNO, HONG KONG, MANAUS, NEW YORK, PARIS AND QUITO
Covid-19 is forcing the world to confront a new form of collective trauma
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