Death, denial in Brazil’s Amazon capital

MANAUS, Brazil — As the white van approached Perfect Love Street, one by one chatting neighbors fell silent, covered their mouths and noses and scattered. Men in full body suits carried an empty coffin into the small, blue house where Edgar Silva had spent two feverish days gasping for air before drawing his last breath on May 12. “It wasn’t COVID,” Silva’s daughter, Eliete das Graças insisted to the funerary workers. She swore her 83-year-old father had died of Alzheimer’s disease, not that sickness ravaging the city’s hospitals. But Silva, like the vast majority of those dying at home, was never tested for the new coronavirus. The doctor who...