
Coronavirus: Hard-hit Brazil removes data amid rising death toll - ColinWright
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-52952686
======
silveira
I have been using
[https://github.com/wcota/covid19br](https://github.com/wcota/covid19br) which
pulls data from each brazilian state.

However, the military government will start to fudge the numbers even further.
They are moving numbers from covid-19 to any other deaths. All other numbers
of causes of death are spiking. All this with a brutal underreporting of
covid-19 deaths.

I lost another family member yesterday. A young mother of 2 girls.

~~~
411111111111111
Meanwhile in Germany ppl are complaining that the government's response is too
drastic and that the danger is way overblown.

There other day I was literally told that all the measures that were taken
probably don't work because the infections were already getting less days
before they came into effect.

I'm sometimes confused how far apart the general opinion on platforms such as
hn is compared to people you encounter in real life.

~~~
rayiner
The level of medical care available in Germany is drastically different than
Brazil. The infant mortality rate in Brazil, for example, is five times higher
than in Germany.

~~~
dghughes
Even the infant mortality of the USA (6 per 1000) is double that of Germany (3
per 1000).

~~~
werbel
Your comment sounds like it's an exceptional achievement that in Germany the
value is half of the USA.

When in fact it's the US that's embarrassingly low on the list:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_and_under-
five_mortality_rates)

Let's skip the top countries like those in Scandinavia, Japan, Singapore,
Germany and Switzerland. Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Serbia, Bosnia
and Herzegovina are all above USA.

------
personlurking
According to Worldometers data [1], Brazil is currently trending, on a global
level, 1st in new cases, 1st in new deaths, 2nd in overall deaths and, within
a few days from now, 2nd in total deaths. Real estimates are said to be up to
6x official numbers.

I really wish the Youtube videos [2] by Atila Iamarino, a PhD in Virology,
were available in English. I couldn't recommend him enough. He's done 21 talks
on the situation in Brazil and elsewhere, and often mentions how the official
data lies.

1 -
[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/)

2 -
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSTlOTcyUmzvhQi6F8lFi5w/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSTlOTcyUmzvhQi6F8lFi5w/videos)

~~~
Findeton
BTW Spain is using the same tactics to basically say there are no new deaths.
But there are.

~~~
hadrien01
Do you have a source?

~~~
Findeton
[https://www.ft.com/content/77eb7a13-cd26-41dd-9642-616708b43...](https://www.ft.com/content/77eb7a13-cd26-41dd-9642-616708b43673)

~~~
genezeta
While I do not doubt for a minute that there has been and there _is_ a lot of
number fudging (both intentional and not), that link is 1.5 months old.

I point it out just to mean that the data is not current and as such can
hardly reflect the current situation. This [1] seems to have more current data
about _excess deaths_.

[1]
[https://momo.isciii.es/public/momo/dashboard/momo_dashboard....](https://momo.isciii.es/public/momo/dashboard/momo_dashboard.html#nacional)

~~~
kgwgk
> that link is 1.5 months old.

Maybe the link has changed since you wrote your comment, but:

"Flawed data casts cloud over Spain’s lockdown strategy

"Erratic numbers create uncertainties for policymakers and the public

"Daniel Dombey in Madrid and John Burn-Murdoch in London JUNE 4 2020"

~~~
genezeta
Yeah, that's not what the link previously pointed to, I guess. It was a report
from mid-April.

------
lucis
Not only that, but the government has also removed data from several sources
about Brazil's public health system (SUS). It's not possible, right now, to
analyze the underreporting of COVID deaths since the data regarding deaths in
the country [1] was zeroed.

[1] [https://opendatasus.saude.gov.br/group/dados-do-
coronavirus](https://opendatasus.saude.gov.br/group/dados-do-coronavirus)

------
thanatropism
It’s almost hopeless to really understand Brazil from the outside.

On the one hand, response to Coronavirus has been really frakked at the top
messaging level; if not a full-on denialist, Bolsonaro seems blinded by the
_existence_ of a jobs-deaths tradeoff and can’t seem to work with it. He’s not
a terribly sharp person.

On the other, there’s a lot riding on making things look worse than they are.
And every time you read something bemoaning how un-excellent someone like
Orban is, you have to factor who’s rooting for them to fall. There is always a
bigger story.

——

Edit: Jesus, dang, why is a perfectly reasonable reply to this comment [dead]?

~~~
compumike
As I've simulated numerically [1] (which has been discussed elsewhere on HN
[2]), there is no tradeoff between saving lives (due to COVID-19) and reducing
widespread economic damage. Counterintuitively, the policy frontier (economic
vs human damage) is concave and non-monotonic, and has three distinct regions,
as you can see in the linked graph.

However, this is a highly technical argument designed for engineering-minded
or economics-minded thinkers. If we have leaders who are "not terribly sharp"
as you say, I'm not sure what we can do about it.

[1] [https://www.circuitlab.com/blog/2020/05/28/surprising-
covid-...](https://www.circuitlab.com/blog/2020/05/28/surprising-
covid-19-strategy-how-to-reduce-economic-damage/)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23418252](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23418252)

~~~
dorgo
Great work! I think simulations/models are a great tool.

some feedback:

>there is no tradeoff between saving lives (due to COVID-19) and reducing
widespread economic damage

It is easy to show that there is no tradeoff by assuming that economic damage
is only dependend on the duration of the lockdown. Why not aim for R=0? This
would save even more lives and reduce the duration of the lockdown to what? 3
weeks? It will just stop all economic activity for 3 weeks. More severe
policies have a greater impact on economy. And my intuition is that this
dependency is non-liniar. Each reduction of R by 0.1 could for example
double(?) the damage to economy. I only skimmed your article [1] - so maybe
you already addressed this?

>Counterintuitively, the policy frontier (economic vs human damage) is concave
and non-monotonic, and has three distinct regions.

Not surprising at all. I think the right hand side negative slope region of
the policy curve is the herd immunity strategy (at least I call it so). It was
discussed (and rejected) months ago.

------
caiobegotti
For the data-driven folks I highly recommend
[https://brasil.io/covid19/](https://brasil.io/covid19/) as a source for
numbers on coronavirus in Brazil as official figures are completely tainted
now.

------
renatovico
I Work in an OTA, when this started i thinked am really fuck, just because: I
live here (São Paulo state) the company dependents roughly of the people’s
free going to any place, the first resolution of my bosses is stay home,
perhaps because the hq is in Rio de Janeiro, the everyone in company started
in home office, changes in whole organization to “new life”, after this
initially impact the changes, i think what’s our sell, the travel or the dream
? People need assisting now around the world, and people wants the vacation
for next year and for Christmas, and well all back to normality. We stays in
our home at least this month maybe august. It is hard for the northern and
center of Brazil because this states really need the travel now, we really
work with tour supply chain to raise money for him to help the chain. But it’s
not common in others ota

~~~
chkaloon
Sorry, what is an OTA? Travel Agency?

~~~
renatovico
Yes online travel agency

------
dannykwells
This might work in the short term, but excess mortality will ultimately come
out and tell the truth, unless Bolsanaro wants to claim those that died are
still living (don't put it past him).

------
bwb
Any HNers in Brazil? How are things going in your area?

~~~
lbrito
Brazilian living in Brazil here.

This news is not surprising at all.

I'm going to avoid adjectives so that my comment doesn't get downvoted into
oblivion by government fanboys, but let's just say that it is safe to assume
that the Brazilian federal government does not believe science should be the
main weapon in the fight against Covid.

Brazil is one of the few countries that denies the pandemic[1]. The others are
Turkmenistan, Belarus and Nicaragua. Fun fact: neither of those are really
democracies (whether Brazil still is a democracy, it is increasingly
debatable).

The Brazilian president has scoffed covid as "a little flu"[2].

He is also against social distancing/lockdown measures, claiming they don't
work[3]. Needless to say, he doesn't provide any scientific evidence of that
-- he knows full well his supporters need nothing more than his word to
believe in anything.

State governors are basically on their own since the beginning of the pandemic
-- a lot of states implemented lockdowns/social distancing, but with limited
effect since Bolsonaro routinely goes on national TV to downplay those
measures and basically call them a hoax.

The situation now is that people are fed up with the long, ineffective
(because they were always superficial, half-baked) social distancing and
lockdowns, and the state governments are beginning to reopen right when the
death toll is accelerating.

So basically we're screwed. Deaths will accelerate like crazy now that a lot
of places are reopening and the federal government will do anything it can to
hold onto its alternate reality where everything is fine.

[1]
[https://www.ft.com/content/974dc9d2-77c1-4381-adcd-2f755333a...](https://www.ft.com/content/974dc9d2-77c1-4381-adcd-2f755333a36b)

[2] [https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/06/a-little-flu-brazil-s-
bo...](https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/06/a-little-flu-brazil-s-bolsonaro-
playing-down-coronavirus-crisis)

[3] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/04/while-
bra...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/04/while-brazils-
president-fights-social-distancing-its-public-health-system-is-fighting-
pandemic/)

~~~
kaybe
> Needless to say, he doesn't provide any scientific evidence of that -- he
> knows full well his supporters need nothing more than his word to believe in
> anything.

I want to live in a world where this is actually viable everywhere, where we
can trust our leaders to confer with experts and change their opinion if the
situation changes. (Living in Germany, I do trust Angela Merkel that much, for
example. I want that for everyone.)

~~~
dreamcompiler
I take your point, but Angela Merkel is a very special case. Angela Merkel is
a quantum chemist. I wish every world leader was an actual scientist too, but
there aren't many who can wear two hats the way Merkel does.

~~~
threatofrain
Many in Chinese leadership have technical degrees in science. While science
appears to be the enemy of some authoritarian governments, others see it as
their national edge.

------
ColinWright
I've been tracking reported cases and deaths from the ECDC[0] data[1] for some
months now. I've added Brazil to the chart ... here is the most recent plot of
deaths:

[https://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/ECDC_DeathsLinear.png](https://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/ECDC_DeathsLinear.png)

The horizontal axis is in "days since reported deaths exceeded 100"

[0] European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control

[1]
[https://opendata.ecdc.europa.eu/covid19/casedistribution/csv](https://opendata.ecdc.europa.eu/covid19/casedistribution/csv)

~~~
pvaldes
An "all Europe" variable would be an interesting addition to this plot.

~~~
ColinWright
Plotted separately, the scales make it hard to plot in a single diagram:

[https://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/Europe_Deaths_linear.png](https://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/Europe_Deaths_linear.png)

------
coldcode
If the data doesn't match what you want, make it fit. In the end of course
it's hard to hide dead people.

~~~
uniqueid
The state of the world being what it is, it’s probably doable to cover up
thousands or millions of dead people.

All most people will know, first hand, is the deaths of their immediate
circle. The full extent of the calamity can remain a matter of debate.

If there are photos, the government can call them forgeries. If there are
anecdotes from health care workers, or in the press, the government can
dismiss them as left wing propaganda.

And besides, there are bogeymen on whom one can pin all of one’s own mistakes.
Perhaps Soros and Bill Gates developed an electricity-based bio-weapon, and
unleashed it, over TCP/IP, to decimate the people of Brazil.

~~~
Sawamara
Darn, now after 5G, even TCP/IP is attacking us? What is next, morse code?

~~~
uniqueid
I hear the deep state hired an Austin-based choreographer to develop
weaponized TikTok dances.

------
ck2
There are a few other poor/dense countries that are headed for a bad year too
sadly. Also note for every death there are many survivors that will have
lifelong heart/lung problems.

[https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-
chart/?areas=bra&areas=mex&are...](https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-
chart/?areas=bra&areas=mex&areas=usa&areas=gbr&areas=can&areas=ind&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usnj&cumulative=0&logScale=1&perMillion=0&values=deaths)

~~~
rmsaksida
Minor nitpick but Brazil is not a dense country. It is actually much less
dense than the USA.

It isn't particularly poor either, but it is very unequal.

------
htk
Hard to take this article serious, they compare Brazil to other countries in
number of deaths like all countries had the same number of people, they talk
about the number of infections being not reliable like it's not a widespread
problem in almost every nation, etc.

Discussions about COVID are already politicized, and discussions of politics
and COVID are obviously even more, so readers have nowhere to run, they have
only extremely polarized views and need to try to "average" them out.

~~~
sizeofchar
Yes, Brazil is very far from being hard hit. We aren’t having colapse in our
health system. This death count is mostly inevitable, by the nature of the
disease. It is indeed much lower than predicted by March, where some were
pointing numbers as high as 500k deaths by May.

------
hkai
Not to disagree with the premise of the article, but in the previous pandemic
at some point we just stopped counting the cases. We settled on the estimate
that 10 to 15% of people in the world got it.

Now that we know the death rate of this virus is roughly 0.4% and it's
widespread enough, is it time to also stop counting every single case?

------
turrini
The data is available here:

[https://transparencia.registrocivil.org.br/especial-
covid](https://transparencia.registrocivil.org.br/especial-covid)

~~~
satya71
I don't understand Portuguese, but all the charts are at 0 now. That can't be
right.

~~~
spyremeown
I do. They basically stopped updating the database. We were getting 1000+
deaths/day. They say they're going to "recount" because they don't trust the
numbers are right. Everyone here knows it's just a political move.

~~~
turrini
Sorry but this is incorrect. The numbers are being updated once a day at 10
pm.

And yes, the actual and previous numbers are under investigation by the
Federal Police.

~~~
spyremeown
Dude, look at the graph on the given link above. Deaths literally went from
1000+ to 61 yesterday. Also, in the main panel [1] the gov. quit updating the
total death count and does not let you download the .csv like they did before,
but still keep the total death count for the day.

[1] [https://covid.saude.gov.br/](https://covid.saude.gov.br/)

~~~
turrini
That's a dashboard, read the about section that explains it.

Here is the CSV:

[https://mobileapps.saude.gov.br/esus-
vepi/files/unAFkcaNDeXa...](https://mobileapps.saude.gov.br/esus-
vepi/files/unAFkcaNDeXajurGB7LChj8SgQYS2ptm/c6949e9ad47392ef2a7307641cc014a0_HIST_PAINEL_COVIDBR_05jun2020.xlsx)

------
pelasaco
the data is available here:
[https://covid.saude.gov.br/](https://covid.saude.gov.br/)

