‘The other’ of the COVID-19 pandemic: ageism toward the elderly people in newspapers in Brazil and Chile

Araújo PO (0000-0002-7941-9263)^*, Freitas RA (0000-0002-9367-3639)^*, Duarte ED (0000-0001-8170-7523)^*, Cares LJ (0000-0002-4857-5343)^*, Rodríguez KA (0000-0002-0360-3865)^*, Guerra V (0000-0003-2093-2334)^* and Carvalho ESS (0000-0003-4564-0768)^* offered substantial contributions to the conception or design of the manuscript, analysis or interpretation of data; participated in the elaboration of the paper and the critical review of important intellectual content; final approval of the version to be published; agree to be responsible for all aspects of the work, ensuring that issues relating to the accuracy or completeness of any part of the work are properly investigated and resolved.

Origin level of ageism	Ageism origin groups	Newspaper fragments
Microestructural	The elderly person himself (authorized ageism)	But we ancients accept the mockery. Partly, out of resignation, and partly because, deep down, we think that “old” really are the others. (N20_G) Until the virus arrived in Brazil, I didn’t feel that old. I was even feeling younger [...] But I soon realized that they were talking about those who are over 60. The old people are us! In my specific case, the old man is me. (N12_G) The politician, who turns 70 next week and is in the group considered to be at greatest risk in this epidemic, said he was willing to die to reactivate the economy. (N1_EM)
Mesoestructural	Policy makers and politicians	In addition, the speeches refer to them with “a paternalism that disguises discrimination, without considering that the vast majority continue to work and make enormous contributions to the country,” says Albala. The mandatory quarantine for those over 75 years of age, she details, which lasted for five months, is an example of this discrimination: “Why was it thought that older people cannot take charge of their health?” (N6_LT) The president of Brazil questioned procedures that have been adopted around the world, such as the closing of schools, and minimized risks of the disease, such as suggesting that control measures be restricted only to the elderly. (N6_FSP) A representative: “I care about all lives! But the lives of those who lived the least worry me more. In fact, I think it is time to clearly establish rules to prioritize the use of available resources: beds, respirators, etc. It’s dark, but it’s necessary!” (N26_FSP) It is true that, in theory, social distancing is general, but, in relation to the elderly, the campaign is radical, with some regional and local governments even declaring a real hunt for old ‘offenders’, just like the dog catcher in search of abandoned dogs, but with the threat of a fine and even imprisonment. (N36_FSP)
	Health and social institutions	It is not possible for older people to perceive that their lives will not be prioritized by health and social protection services, nor that discourses that assign different value to the death of a young person or an elderly person be normalized, it cannot be so easily accepted that rights are violated. (N2_MS)
	Health and social institutions	Regarding the causes of these prejudices, the specialist maintains that there is a degree of responsibility on the part of the professionals who work with the elderly, particularly in the field of health. [...] communicate that an elderly person has died as if it were a minor loss, not as relevant. We almost come to a objectification of the elderly person, treated as an old and broken object, so that is where the entire vision of the right to life and equality is effectively distorted. (N9_EM)
	Low acceptance in the labor market as an active worker	They are stigmatized as professionals with less flexibility in the face of changes, less updating regarding technology and new trends in their areas, in addition to often having more experience and years of work, having higher salaries. (N2_LT) The age prejudice, which already existed with the elderly, has been getting worse with COVID-19. Due to the greater lethality of the disease - 75% of deaths occur among those aged 70 or over -, they are seen by the labor market as vulnerable and more susceptible to absences. (N16_G)
	Media	However, the very eyes and ears of viewers, netizens and readers have been shocked by expressions, phrases and headlines disconnected from reality to refer in a paternalistic tone to an age group as diverse as it is heterogeneous: ‘Our older adults’, as if were part of our property or ‘old people’ in a clear gesture of infantilization, not to mention ‘senile’, ‘veteran’, ‘pensioner’, ‘retired’ to refer pejoratively to older men and women. But one of the most used terms has been ‘grandfather’, in circumstances where not all older people are grandparents and not all grandparents are older people. (N22_LT) The old people are in the crosshairs - whether from the virus or from the open prejudice that is not ashamed to expose itself. Memes with old people, jokes, poorly disguised offenses; if half of what circulates on the internet about the elderly referred to an ethnicity or some nationality, there would be violent demonstrations or we would be on a war footing. (N20_G) The coronavirus was once called ‘old man’s disease’ or ‘baby remover’, as a remover of the baby boomer generation, born between the late 1940s and mid 1960s. In the form of memes, satire or jokes, prejudice with age revealed itself inhumanly. (N12_FSP)
	Relatives of the elderly	Disrespect for the elderly intensified at home, with violation of autonomy, mistreatment and violence against property. And how prejudice has been wide opened: there are those who blame the elderly for the need for social isolation. (N8_G)
Macroestructural	State/Society/Culture	The pandemic has reinforced the idea that Chile is not prepared to guarantee the fundamental rights of older people. I’m not sure if people are seeing older people as subjects of rights or objects of charity. They have been presented as vulnerable. I think that a kind of welfare has been installed towards older people that, whether we like it or not, is positive discrimination. (N13_LT) In addition, in the comparison between 18 countries, Chile reaches first place in a disease that today finds the elderly in the worst scenario: a pandemic that isolates them and leaves them even more alone. (N4_LT) We live in a society that exalts youth and considers age a social burden; a society that has not yet realized that Brazil is a country that has aged. (N20_G) We have heard speeches that attribute little relevance to the coronavirus because it is a disease with a higher fatality rate among the elderly. What does that say about us as a society? (N3_ FSP)

Implications of ageism against the elderly	Newspaper fragments
Damage to the psychological, emotional and physical health of the elderly.	Therefore, they were confined more than other people. That affected his quality of life. Less physical activity and less social activity. All aspects, which decrease according to Palomo, their physical, cognitive and relational functionality. (N6_LT) Ageism - discrimination based on age that directly affects older people - has deep roots in the Chilean State that, consciously or unconsciously, devalues older people. We are talking about a type of systematic and structural discrimination that has serious consequences for the physical and mental health of these people, as well as social and economic effects. (N20_LT) Although the aim was to protect them from contagion, Aurenque emphasizes that these protections are unacceptable because they paternalize and infantilize older people. “Applying prohibitions of this nature to the elderly population ends up being a discriminatory and stigmatizing measure; discriminatory, because fundamental rights are paused without their consent and because they belong to an age group; stigmatizing, because the measure considers every older adult as a member of a ‘risk group’; thus strengthening negative stereotypes of old age or ageism”. (N6_LT) They are suffering, depressed, afraid of the disease and what it will be like to live at home. (N3_ FSP) That’s where I got the hang of it: when you reach a certain age, it’s as if you’re ignored. It’s a feeling of rejection. (N16_G)
Increased need for public policies that meet the demands generated by the pandemic	Because ageism harms our health and well-being and is a major barrier to effective policy making and action on healthy aging. (WHO, 2021). (N22_LT) “There is more need for care for elderly adults and they may not be receiving it, which can be a difficult situation because they can be alone, there is more demand for care issues that in normal situations are covered by people who come from the poorest communes,” says Basaure. (N9_LT)
Banalization of deaths of elderly people	COVID-19 returned the vocabulary of the elderly and the elderly to the lexicon of senescence and old age. He undressed septuagenarians and octogenarians, transforming them into victims of a virus with great capacity for age discrimination. He turned nursing homes into contemporary concentration camps, where corpses were accumulated as in the old photographs of the infamous final solution of the last Nazism. (N8_EM) “If anything is going to hurt the world, it’s moral decay. And not taking the death of the elderly or the elderly as a serious problem is moral decay. Any individual, any age, any human being matters.” (N21_LT)
Unemployment and early retirement	Those (elderly people) who were still in the job market left for fear of contaminating themselves or were fired because prejudice against the elderly increased. The person went from the idea of the ‘best age’ to that of the ‘risk group’. (N22_G) And unemployment ends up being more than a passing problem. “The pandemic further aggravates the situation, not least because these people are staying out of the job market for a long time. The longer you are away, the harder it is to come back”, says Ana Amélia. (N34_FSP) One of the most devastating impacts of the pandemic is at work. For the first time in a decade, unemployment exceeded two digits (11.2%) and one of the most affected sectors are those over 60 years of age: for every 100 jobs lost, 19 are from that group. This is the conclusion of a study by the Aging Observatory of the Catholic University-Confuturo. According to the research, 384 thousand people over 60 years of age who worked in 2019 became inactive in the March-May quarter. (N15_LT)
intergenerational tensions	The pandemic has greatly increased tensions in family nuclei and decompensated the intergenerational balance, showing the greater risk to which the elderly are subject, in addition to suggesting their greater uselessness. It also blatantly accentuated ageism, which had previously been swept under the rug. In an extreme way, it has led to a radicalization in society about what to do with the very old. (N30_FSP)
intergenerational tensions	The situation led to the dramatization of a reality already experienced by the elderly, which is that they are useless and a burden to society. That only get in the way, harm, need to be controlled. It’s a view that when you get older, you can be eliminated. (N3_ FSP) Age has become a central criterion for dividing society between those over 60 and those under 60. (N15_G) Away from sociability under a new nomenclature, that of a risk group, competing with young people for the last available respirator, an entire generation is seen as disposable. Voices that drove social changes and built the country’s redemocratization no longer seem necessary. (N20_ FSP)

‘The other’ of the COVID-19 pandemic: ageism toward the elderly people in newspapers in Brazil and Chile

ABSTRACT