Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

On International Women's Day, our correspondent crunches through piles of survey data to get a look at how women are doing in America's labor force.

The numbers aren't encouraging.

And after a scathing television interview, we take a look at Britain's Royal Rift.

What were Harry and Megan hoping to accomplish, and what damage might it have done

to the royal family and to their prospects on the other side of the pond?

But first...

Brazil has just gone through its deadliest week of the pandemic.

Daily fatalities hit a record level of more than 1900 on Thursday, bringing the total number of deaths to more than 265,000,

and cases to more than 11 million. The discovery of a contagious new coronavirus variant in the

Amazon region has fueled the brutal second wave.

But the government's response has been slow and patchy and has failed to contain the spread.

The sense that you get living here is sad and almost fatalistic.

It feels like this country has given up on dealing with this

pandemic in a responsible, life-saving way many months ago.

Sarah Maslin is our Brazil correspondent. Even though we are all seeing that the cases are

higher than they've ever been, the hospitals are full in nearly every part of the country.

The restrictions that have been introduced feel completely out of tune with that reality.

They've been late. They've been minimal. And some cities are slightly stricter than others.

But I think the feeling that most Brazilians have is that COVID is just going to happen and

overtake this country like a tidal wave and there's nothing that anyone can do about it.

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