Oxford Researchers Project 478,000 Covid-19 Deaths in Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The estimate is based on a preliminary study published by researchers from Oxford University, England, on March 14th.

Several scientific websites have reproduced it. To preserve the required authenticity, to the detriment of aesthetics and in the name of absolute transparency, follow the link where it was first published on the internet (in English).

In the abstract the authors write:

Governments around the world must rapidly mobilize and make difficult policy decisions to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic. Because deaths have been concentrated at older ages, we highlight the important role of demography, particularly how the age structure of a population may help explain differences in fatality rates across countries and how transmission unfolds.

We examine the role of age structure in deaths thus far in Italy and South Korea and illustrate how the pandemic could unfold in populations with similar population sizes but different age structures, showing a dramatically higher burden of mortality in countries with older versus younger populations.

This powerful interaction of demography and current age-specific mortality for COVID-19 suggests that social distancing and other policies to slow transmission should consider both the age composition of local and national contexts as well as the social connectedness of older and younger generations.

We also call for countries to provide case and fatality data disaggregated by age and sex to improve real-time targeted nowcasting. 

Although preliminary in nature, the work stems from a major research center, the Leverhulme Center for Demographic Science, linked to the prestigious university. It bears the signature of eight scientists: Jennifer Beam Dowd, Valentina Rotondi, Liliana Andriano, David M. Brazel, Per Block, Xuejie Ding, Yan Liu and Melinda C. Mills.

The first of these, Jennifer Beam Dowd, along with the word “coronavirus”, generated 687,000 hits on Google by 3 PM on Thursday, March 26th.

The number of hits grows daily, indicating that it is perhaps a thesis worthy of attention.

The report had access to the study the same day it was published. That is, two days after the staff went into self quarantine. It was decided not to publish in order not to cause panic. The decision came from international learning.

In pandemic situations, what is expected of a media outlet with minimal social responsibility is to cooperate with health authorities for the common good. This is not about self-censorship. It is about preventing the spread of the disease on a global scale (which is what defines a pandemic) and all the potential consequences: hospital admissions, deaths, business collapse, unemployment, despair, hunger, looting, uprising.

A pandemic is an ugly thing. A routine research study on public sources is enough to make anyone lose a night’s sleep.

The document was passed on to the Ministry of Health in the hope of obtaining reassuring explanations and data that would help to better understand the subject and cover the effects of the pandemic in the country, reporting as much as possible, with as little harm as possible to the ones who matter most at this time: doctors, other health professionals and crisis managers in the different public bodies involved, with a leading role of the Ministry of Health.

Often constrained by President Jair Bolsonaro, the Minister of Health, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, was at that time a major pivotal figure in the political-institutional stability.

Mandetta was encouraged by the presidents of the Chamber, Senate and Supreme Court to take the necessary technical measures, while leaving Bolsonaro aside, who has lost all rapport with governors, Congress, the main media groups and is increasingly being challenged within an area where until now he still reigns securely, the Office of the Prosecutor General, which is tasked with proposing an investigation into the nation’s highest authority.