Mônica Bergamo: Cities that elected Bolsonaro had more deaths from Covid in 2021, says article in the Lancet

An article published by the Lancet magazine for the Americas states that the Brazilian municipalities that won President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in the 2018 elections registered more deaths from Covid-19 last year than those that chose Fernando Haddad (PT ) in that lawsuit. The researchers analyzed data from 5,570 cities.

ALERT

The risk of death from the coronavirus was 44% higher in those more developed and aligned with Bolsonaro, according to a study carried out by an independent group of researchers linked to institutions such as Fiocruz, UnB (University of Brasília) and UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). of January).

DISPARITY

The analysis also points out that Bolsonarist municipalities in the South and Southeast regions had much higher mortality rates than non-Bolsonaro municipalities in the Northeast, for example.

ON THE SCALE

The possibility of underreporting was considered an unimportant variable, since comparisons were made between cities with an equivalent health structure. “The main difference was the vote for Bolsonaro”, maintains Christovam Barcellos, geographer and public health researcher at Fiocruz and one of the authors of the article.

ON THE SCALE 2

One of the comparisons made was between the cities of Crato, in Ceará, and Sapiranga, in Rio Grande do Sul, both considered large and with medium HDI. While the first recorded a rate of 110 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, the second had a rate of 360 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.

ON THE SCALE 3

“If we compare medium municipalities with a high HDI, those who are Bolsonaristas have almost twice the mortality rate [por Covid-19] of municipalities of equal stature”, says Christovam Barcellos.

HOW WAS

Chapecó, in Santa Catarina, also caught the attention of researchers. Considered a medium-sized municipality, with a good HDI and good health services, in 2020 the city had a number of deaths below the national average.

how was it

With the inauguration of Bolsonaro’s ally, Mayor João Rodrigues (PSD), the city recorded, in early May 2021, an accumulated death rate 75% higher than that of the country. He was an advocate of “early treatment”, with no proven effectiveness, and of what he called the reverse lockdown, with shops open and patients being treated at home.

MEGAPHONE

One of the conclusions of the article published in the Lancet is that, with the absence of national coordination by the federal government, municipalities have come to play a central role in transmitting information about the pandemic. And, in the case of small and medium-sized cities, the words of political and business leaders carried even more weight.

MEGAPHONE 2

“In these cities there is a kind of monopoly of communication by important local politicians. The word of the entrepreneur has a greater weight than in big cities. A favorable environment was created for the sabotage of science, for the circulation of fake news and for putting in doubt all scientific knowledge”, still Barcellos.

TUG OF WAR

Also according to the researchers, the negative effects of sabotage on the effort to contain the pandemic were able to cancel out factors such as the high HDI of the population or the strong performance of the SUS in the regions.

MAGNIFYING GLASS

The article is signed by Diego Ricardo Xavier, Eliane Lima e Silva, Flavio Alves Lara, Gabriel RR e Silva, Marcus F. Oliveira, Helen Gurgel and Christovam Barcellos.

GALA NIGHT

Singer Maria Bethânia and conductor João Carlos Martins performed on Saturday (12) and Sunday (13) at the newly opened Qualistage concert hall in Rio. The singer Baby do Brasil and the lawyer Carmen Valio, wife of the maestro, were there. Singer Caetano Veloso, actress Regina Casé, director Estêvão Ciavatta and singer Mart’nália also attended.

_{with BIANKA VIEIRA, KARINA MATIAS and MANOELLA SMITH}