Report From Bolsonaro’s Brazil: The Consequences of Ignoring Science

Abstract

Currently, the fast spread of COVID-19 is the cause of a sanitary emergency in Brazil. This situation is largely due to President Bolsonaro’s denial and the uncoordinated actions between the federal and local governments. In addition, the Brazilian government has reported that it would change its method of sharing information about the pandemic. On June 6, 2020, the presentation of accumulated cases and deaths was stopped, and the Supreme Court of Brazil determined that the federal government should continue to consolidate and disseminate the accumulated figures of cases and deaths. However, doubt about the transparency of the data remained. We used data reported by the government from Situation Reports 38–209 of the World Health Organization to assess the Benford’s law fulfillment as an indicator of data quality. This rapid evaluation of data quality during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil suggests that the Brazilian public health surveillance system had an acceptable performance at the beginning of the epidemic. Since the end of June, the quality of cumulative death data began to decrease and remains in that condition as of August 2020. A similar situation has existed since August, with the data of accumulated new cases.

Under-Reporting of COVID-19 Cases Among Indigenous Peoples in Brazil: A New Expression of Old Inequalities

“…Nevertheless, the federal government under the administration of Jair Messias Bolsonaro, who holds the sad title of the worst world leader in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic (38)(39)(40), has not prepared to offer vaccines to the population. Under Bolsonaro's guidance, Brazil not only did not join the consortium of countries that collaborated in the development of Covax when it first started (41), but also did not anticipate the purchase of active pharmaceutical ingredients (AFI) produced by Chinese, North American, and European pharmaceutical companies.…”

Infodemia: noticias falsas y tendencias de mortalidad por COVID-19 en seis países de América Latina

“…En Brasil, es difícil evaluar el papel desempeñado por las noticias falsas y el comportamiento de la mortalidad, debido a que el manejo de la pandemia se ha caracterizado por la escasa implementación de acciones políticas y gubernamentales, problemas de gobernanza, cambios de ministros de salud ( 40 ) e insuficiente respuesta a la pandemia en general, lo que ha llevado al país a estar entre los de mayor incidencia y mortalidad en el mundo ( 41 , 42 ). Algo similar se puede decir de Colombia, donde evaluaciones realizadas sobre los modelos de vigilancia de salud pública han generado múltiples críticas ( 43 ).…”

COVID-19 in Brazil: A Message to the World

“…However, the announcement of scientific inconsistency in the discourse and actions of the Brazilian government in the face of the pandemic does not come from today: native and foreign researchers have been trying, over the last year, to warn about it. [3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Furthermore, the apparent ineptitude of those who hold power is compounded by the neglect of a significant portion of the population, which, according to the mainstream media, preferred to form agglomerations from the Christmas festivities to the carnival, in spite of following the contrary recommendations from the World Health Organization. 10 Yes, what we see here is the clear effect of the so-called post-truth 11 echoing in science, mixing reason and emotion in a contradictory broth, and taking people to the extreme of a faithful belief in any speech that relieves fears or promises a miracle of healing.…”