Ageism in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic

How age prejudice became evident in Brazil

Abstract

This article analyzes the age prejudice in Brazil, from the panorama of the pandemic of the new coronavirus, which changed the country's routine circumstantially right after the 2020 carnival. Thus, an interpretation about how the perceptions constructed socially regarding the elderly, they are crossed by prejudice and arouse hatred, reinforcing distances of respect, solidarity and empathy. A survey of the public discourse of the President of the Republic and of Brazilian businessmen is also carried out, which minimized the alert of the pandemic and contrary to the requests for isolation and / or quarantine from the World Health Organization. The interpretation of data from recent economic research helps to support the importance of the elderly as an economic force, contradicting the idea of ​​their unproductiveness so present in current neoliberal thinking. Among the main conclusions of the work, it can be seen how the pandemic opened up the facets of a prejudice naturalized in the country and still little debated publicly.