Igor Sacramento 250 published between the period of February 26, 2020 (the first case of COVID-19 confirmed in Brazil3) and July 25 of the same year (when Bolsonaro tested negative in the fourth test done since he contracted the disease on July 74). 1. Sensitive certainty as a strategy Covid-19 is undoubtedly not the first pandemic to generate rumors and lies. Throughout history, certain demagogues, politicians, doctors, and journalists have exploited diseases and health situations considered catastrophic to spread falsehoods, maintain power, or gain prestige. Studies on the 1918 influenza pandemic show the role of physicians and journalists in Brazil in prescribing quinine salts as a form of disease prophylaxis (cf., for example, BERTUCCI, 2004). In fact, as had been scientifically proven at the time, there was no benefit in preventing the dis- ease from the use of such a drug. However, doctors prescribed it, newspapers advertised it, people consumed it. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems profoundly different that we do not face just misunderstandings and misstatements but deep skepticism about the very idea that truth exists. In our world, differenttly from that, post-truth prevails; the line between fact and opinion becomes extremely thin and porous, especially regarding authority and legitimacy. If in the 1918 influenza pan- demic, which lasted in Brazil and the world until 1920, the om- nipresence of fear was the principal vector and opportunity for the establishment of panaceas (BERTUCCI, 2004), in the current context, marked fundamentally by the abundance of production, circulation, and consumption of information online, the truth seems to be moving more and more quickly into the realm of opinion. More than that: in recent decades, we have observed the process of detachment from a regime of truth structured in truth as evidence for truth as experience. In other words, we may be moving from an emphasis on experimental truth - based on ex- periment, on the scientific method - to an experiential truth, in which experience legitimizes (and authorizes) knowledge about 3 Available at: https://bit.ly/39u0HuY. Accessed on Jul. 23, 2020. 4 Available at: https://bit.ly/33yJ1LY. Accessed on Sept., 2020.
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