Women in Times of Pandemic

Abstract

The year 2020 began with news of an infectious disease in Wuhan, China. Most Brazilians thought it was unlikely to reach our country. In March, however, Italy and Spain, countries so similar to us, presented contagion rates above any expectations. In about three months, the world had become infected, and the number of deaths started to grow exponentially. This was not an unprecedented situation in human history, but the last time had been in 1918. Therefore, pretty much no one alive has experienced a pandemic before. Each country reacted in its own way, not knowing what to do, as the legend of Rome’s succession shows. As Plutarch reports, after a reign of 38 years, Romulus disappeared, carried away by rain and wind, leaving nothing behind, not even his corpse. Until then, no transition process had been formulated to appoint a successor, so the coronation of Numa Pompilius did not occur immediately after Romulus’s death. For some time, the senators ruled the city in rotation, alternating among themselves every ten days, in an attempt to replace the monarchy with an oligarchy. This period became known as an interregnum. Currently, there seems to be a period of interregnum. The pandemic could not have better exemplified this finding.