No more bodies on the streets. But coronavirus batters Ecuador with disproportionate force

QUITO, Ecuador - The grisly scenes of bodies left on the streets of the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil seemed dystopian even in the era of coronavirus.

"This peaceful city received a bomb from the air, like Hiroshima," Guayaquil Mayor Cynthia Viteri told a TV interviewer last week.

The shocking images that went viral in March and April proved a warning about the virus' capacity to collapse fragile healthcare and mortuary systems, especially in developing nations. But even as such ghoulish scenes have faded, the specter of Guayaquil - which some refer to as the Latin American Wuhan - looms ominously over a region where infections are not expected to peak until coming weeks in many countries as ill-prepared as Ecuador.

In Brazil, critics have warned that the denialist approach