Fernando Alcoforado*
This article aims to demonstrate that Brazil will be able to register the mark of 1 million deaths by the new coronavirus in 2021 if nothing is done to reverse this trend. Article by Michele de Mello and Giovanny Simon under the title Brasil pode atingir 1 milhão de mortes por covid-19 até outubro de 2021 (Brazil can reach 1 million deaths by covid-19 by October 2021), published on April 19, 2021 on the website <https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2021/04/19/brasil-pode-atingir-1-milhao-de-mortes-por-covid-19-ate-outubro-de-2021> informs that Brazil can reach 1 million deaths by covid-19 by October 2021, according to an independent study carried out in Russia. Brazil could reach the figure of one million deaths by covid-19 by October 2021 if the current conditions remain, that is, high mobility without restrictions in the national territory, new variants of the virus, slow vaccination, according to a study carried out by the Russian social scientist Alexei Kouprianov.
Currently, Brazil accumulates almost 14.8 million infected and 408 thousand killed by the covid-19. The moving average of the number of cases in the second week of March 2021 reached 65 thousand infected, placing Brazil as the third country in the world ranking in absolute numbers and new daily cases. Despite the development of a series of vaccines, approved by the World Health Organization (WHO), the pace of the pandemic does not slow down in Brazil and worldwide. According to the projections of scientist Kouprianov, Brazil would be going through a third wave of contagions, with the peak showing signs of having been reached in the second week of April 2021.
In his research on Brazil, the Russian scientist simulated three scenarios, using data from the three Brazilian contagion waves. According to forecasts, with data from the first wave, which covers the period from March 17 to November 1, 2020, Brazil could reach 500 thousand deaths by covid-19 by the middle of 2021. In the second scenario, using data from the second wave published by Johns Hopkins University, from November 1, 2020 to February 15, 2021, the country would reach 800 thousand dead by October 2021 and exceed the figure of 1 million in the beginning of 2022. While the third scenario, which was based on data from the third wave of contagion published between February 15 and April 15, 2021, points to a much more serious trend, in which Brazil would register one million deaths in the next six months.
The methodology used by the Russian scientist Alexei Kouprianov for the construction of the aforementioned scenarios takes into account the factors that cause the pandemic, such as the existence of the virus, number of contagions, speed of propagation, among others, and admits the evolution of the pandemic based on in the “S” curve, referring to the logic of the mathematical function applied to obtain the results, when considering that a pandemic is a process with a high degree of autonomy. In a model situation based on the “S” curve, the pandemic develops like a wave, acquiring slow velocity at first, later expanding rapidly, when crossing a threshold, and, in a subsequent moment, it decelerates until reaching a ceiling. So it can be represented as a sequence of waves, explains Kouprianov.
In figure 1, shown below, the red “S” curve corresponds to the case in which the pandemic grows uncontrolled, reaches its peak and decreases when the virus has no more people to infect and kill because the population is already mostly infected. With the red “S” curve, as many infected and dead people as possible would be reached in a given population. The hatch line corresponds to the capacity of the health system that would be collapsed. In this case, the health system collapses because, as demand is greater than the supply of beds, it has no capacity at any given time to serve the population. In turn, the blue curve corresponds to the ideal situation when the pandemic is controlled. In this case, the pandemic grows, reaches its peak and decreases at the limit of the capacity of the health system with the adoption of “lockdown”, mass vaccination and with the population wearing masks, hand hygiene and maintaining social distance. The situation in Brazil corresponds to the red “S” curve.
Figure 1- “S” Curve
With this method, the projections obtained become more feasible for realization as long as the situation does not change, as is the case in Brazil. Kouprianov’s projections may happen due to the sabotage of the Bolsonaro government in combating the pandemic, paralysis of the National Congress and inaction of the PGR- Attorney General’s Office to frame Bolsonaro in the penalties of the law and the Constitution and lack of pressure from the opposition forces to reverse the reality in which we live. This situation contributes to the evolution of infected people to grow dramatically in Brazil until reaching one million deaths by the end of 2021. This set of factors described above shows that Kouprianov’s projections on the scenarios for the number of deaths by covid-19 in Brazil are correct. If the projections made by the Russian scientist already offer a very pessimistic outlook on the future of the pandemic in Brazil, the sabotaging action by the Bolsonaro government in combating the pandemic may further worsen the scenario in 2021 and 2022.
The catastrophic scenario of one million deaths by covid-19 in Brazil by the end of 2021 should happen because the population’s vaccination has been slow due to insufficient vaccines, Brazil adopts an ineffective policy of social isolation and the urban mobility of the population continues high because the context of job informality for 40% of the economically active population added to the food insecurity that affects 125.6 million Brazilians makes it mandatory that the majority leave home to fight for survival. Without enough vaccines to immunize the population, without the adoption of a “lockdown” to curb urban mobility and without financial support from the government to vulnerable populations and micro, small and medium-sized companies, the trend is for the pandemic to worsen in Brazil . The lack of measures to curb the free circulation of the virus and the interaction of people with the new variants of the virus generates a kind of time bomb for the explosion of other, more aggressive versions of the new coronavirus. It is no accident that Brazil, which has about 2.7% of the world population, is responsible for about a quarter of all new deaths on the planet.
The breaking of vaccine patents could be a way to accelerate and decentralize the production of the drug worldwide and accelerate the vaccination of the world population to curb contamination by the virus. However, Brazil voted together with the representatives of the great world powers – holding 75% of the formulas already developed – against the proposal to break patents in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Yesterday (5/5/2021), the historic decision by the Joe Biden government of the United States to support the proposal by emerging countries to suspend vaccine patents, during the covid-19 pandemic, took place, while Brazil goes down in history as a of the worst defeats and one of the greatest embarrassments of Brazilian diplomacy. While taking a stand against breaking the vaccine patent, the Bolsonaro government also collaborates to prevent the acceleration of vaccination in Brazil by rejecting Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine through Anvisa.
The Russian sovereign wealth fund, which financed the development of Sputnik V, is consulting Brazilian lawyers to sue directors of Anvisa (National Health Surveillance Agency) for defamation, which considered this vaccine to be of high risk to humanity, attempting against its use in the world. The decision to bring an action against Anvisa can be made in the coming days. The consulted lawyers understand that the directors of Anvisa advanced the signal, from a legal point of view, by not only denying permission to import due to the absence of documents, but also making considerations that Sputnik V may be of high risk to humanity. The Gamaleya laboratory, which developed the Sputnik V vaccine, contested the result of Anvisa’s analysis. Anvisa’s rejection of Sputnik V may be in line with the United States Department of Health, which acknowledged, in public reports, that it exerted pressure on Brazilian government officials not to approve the Russian Sputnik V vaccine in order to avoid further Russian influence in the region
The scenario of one million deaths in Brazil in 2021 is aggravated by the factors described above, but also because the Bolsonaro government did not deliberately use the entire budget approved in 2020 to fight the pandemic, failing to spend R$ 80 billion – an amount that could pay up to one billion doses of vaccines, considering an average value of US$ 15 per dose. Even the Army Strategic Studies Center (CEEEx) published in April 2020, a report that pointed out the tendency of the pandemic to be out of control in Brazil, if policies were not adopted that took into account: 1) WHO guidelines; 2) encourage the application of quarantines; 3) were based on scientific data and studies; 4) actions were articulated with state and municipal governments, according to four axes: health, political, social and economic. All of these guidelines were ignored or even countered by the Bolsonaro government.
University of Washington study confirms the projections of Russian scientist Alexei Kouprianov. Article by Eduarda Esteves under the title Universidade projeta cem mil mortes por Covid-19 no Brasil só no mês de abril (University projects one hundred thousand deaths by Covid-19 in Brazil in April alone), published on the website <https://saude.ig.com.br/coronavirus/2021-04-03/universidade-projeta-cem-mil-mortes-por-covid-19-no-brasil-so-no-mes-de-abril.html>, informs that, if there are no changes in the current conditions, Brazil can surpass the United States in absolute numbers of deaths in August 2021. The analysis is by Lebanese doctor Ali Mokdad, professor at the Institute of Health and Evaluation Metrics (IHME) at the University of Washington, an American institution that has released worrying projections for Brazil. Ali Mokdad estimates that Brazil should register an additional 100,000 new deaths from covid-19 in April 2021 alone – one-third more than the approximately 66,000 deaths caused by the coronavirus in the already devastating month of March 2021. In the most likely scenario, taking into account the use of masks by the population, without restrictions on social mobility and low rate of vaccination, the American institute estimates that Brazil will account for a total of 562,800 deaths by June 30, 2021. In the worst scenario estimated by the IHME, this total can reach 597,800 deaths.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the United States, said that Brazil should seriously consider doing a “lockdown” to slow the pandemic’s progress. In addition to the lockdown to be adopted by states and municipalities, money should be distributed by the federal government to populations, especially the vulnerable, to prevent them, due to the need for survival, to be forced out of their homes to work in offices or in the streets. In other words, the federal government should pay people not to go out on the streets so as not to infect or be infected by the virus. Measures should also be adopted by the federal government to help companies, especially micro, small and medium-sized companies, to survive at this time of falling revenues, as well as states and municipalities to avoid their insolvency due to the drop in tax collection. Only the federal government has the capacity to put these measures into practice.
For these measures to be successful and result in the success of combating the new Coronavirus in Brazil, the adoption of the measures described above is urgent, especially the “lockdown” for two or three months. The indispensable condition for Brazil to win the war against the new Coronavirus is that the federal government, the state and municipal governments and the population are united against the common enemy. For these measures to be put into practice, there must be coordinating action by the federal government that, with Bolsonaro, would be impossible. Unfortunately, in Brazil, this situation will not occur as long as the President of the Republic Jair Bolsonaro is at the head of the government of Brazil. If everything continues as it is today, Brazil will inevitably reach the milestone of one million deaths by covid-19 in 2021. To prevent this from happening, Bolsonaro must be removed from the presidency of the Republic because he is the main obstacle in the fight to the pandemic of the new Coronavirus in Brazil.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 81, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).
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