RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Without offering any evidence or proof, President Jair Bolsonaro challenged the accuracy of the death toll from the novel coronavirus on Friday afternoon, Mardh 27th, and mentioned that Brazilian states could be cheating on the death toll to make “political use” of the issue. Bolsonaro questioned data from both Brazilian states and Italy, the country with the highest number of deaths.
Bolsonaro said that a number of states have artificially increased the number of victims to justify the social isolation measures being implemented.
“Now, what I am also seeing in some Brazilian states, if I am not politicizing, if I look, nobody else, virtually nobody else is dying from the H1N1 [flu]. Everyone is dying from the Covid-19. It seems that the goal is to enhance this to be able to say: “You see, what I did was warranted, so many people have died. If I hadn’t, there would have been five, ten or 20 times as many deaths.
Then he again implied that states may be cheating numbers to make “political use” of them:
“Find out how many have died of H1N1 by state so far. It’s not that I want people to have died, but last year there were 700 or so. There’s going to be someone who died this year from it. If everyone is dying of the coronavirus, that’s a sign that they’ve been cheating on the cause of death of those people, wanting to make political use of numbers”.
Bolsonaro specifically referred to the case of São Paulo, which records the highest number of people infected by coronavirus and is governed by his disaffected João Doria:
“I’m not buying these numbers in São Paulo,” he said.
‘Myths’ in Italy
Bolsonaro said that “certain myths” are being dispelled and said that most of the deaths in Italy were not really caused by the coronavirus. According to Italian authorities, 9,134 people have died from the Covid-19.
“The virus is evolving, we have information from all over the world about how things are being handled, including certain myths we are undoing. The issue of deaths in Italy, for one, most deaths have nothing to do with the coronavirus, nothing to do with it. They were people who were in a cold region and all around 80 years old on average,” he said.
The President credits the data to a “study,” yet failed to elaborate which study he was referring to.
“Now there is a study claiming that the vast majority of deaths in Italy have nothing to do with the virus. It was a specific region, colder and the average age of death was 80 years. And of people with two, three other conditions”.
According to the President, some people will die from the Covid-19 in Brazil, but that is the reality:
“Are some going to die? They’re going to die. I’m sorry. That’s life, that’s reality. We can’t stop the car plant because there are 60,000 traffic deaths in a year”.
The Lancet, one of the world’s most renowned scientific journals, mentioned President Jair Bolsonaro in criticizing the tardiness of several governments in adopting measures to isolate the population from the coronavirus pandemic. The criticism was expressed in a release by the magazine on Friday. Bolsonaro was the only president named by the publication.
“Many federal governments have reacted quickly, but many still do not take the Covid-19 threat seriously – for instance, by ignoring the World Health Organization’s recommendation against crowds. Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has been heavily criticized by health experts and faces a strong public reaction for his poor response,” reads the text in “The Lancet”.