Based in Brazil, Fernanda Ferreira is a science writer who covers a range of STEM (and occasionally non-STEM) topics, from textile conservation to vaccine stockpiles.
There are tens of thousands of buildings in São Paulo, the largest city in the Western hemisphere and Brazil’s financial center. From the sky, São Paulo looks like a fossilized forest of concrete trees. From the ground, it’s a pulsing behemoth, every avenue crammed with cars and people. The urban sprawl of Metropolitan São Paulo engulfs 39 municipalities and 21.4 million people: imagine the ramifications of a disease epidemic striking in a city of this size. With yellow fever circling São Paulo, these imagined ramifications have taken on a tangible veneer, and the fight to keep yellow fever out of Brazil’s large urban centers illustrates the importance of global vaccine stockpiles in preventing epidemics from taking hold.
