A Brazilian cautionary tale on pandemic negationism: Open data is an essential safeguard for evidence-based policy-making

When it comes to COVID 19 deaths, Brazil is the second hardest hit country in the entire world (reaching almost 130.000 at the time of writing). This may be surprising to those who remember that, when the new Corona virus made its way to Brazil, after having caused thousands of deaths in other countries such as China and Italy, there was a widely shared belief that the warm temperatures in the country would prevent its spread. Perhaps this bolstered the confidence of the country´s President Jair Bolsonaro in minimizing the importance of the virus, criticizing the “oversized” concern for its destructive power and attaching economic motives (mainly linked to oil prices) behind that exaggeration. What was more puzzling however is that the President maintained a negationist approach despite the steady increase in the numbers of victims, and in direct clash with the instructions given by health authorities, state governors and even his own Health Minister. On March 24th, Bolsonaro gave a national address on television, where he made clear the key tenets of his strategy in fighting the pandemic: first, a preoccupation for the economic consequences, demonstrated by his admonition that “life goes on, and jobs must be maintained”. Second, a forceful rejection of the social isolation imposed by state and municipal authorities combined with an exhortation to “vertical” isolation, meaning an isolation of those segments of the population with higher risk of death or of developing serious conditions with Covid-19. In support of that strategy, he suggested that for most people the virus would be no more than a “gripezinha” (small flu), and that Brazilians have somehow acquired an immunity to disease by “diving into sewers” (a reference to the fact that in certain areas of Brazil people have to cope with sewage water pouring onto the streets). Third and last, an investment into demonstrating the efficacy against the virus of hydroxychloroquine, a medicine produced in Brazil and widely used to fight malaria, lúpus (SLE) and arthritis, not without some significant side-effects.