We’re covering the disputes between President Bolsonaro and state governors. Understanding the movements of the stock market. And the battle on social media.
“Vertical” v. “Horizontal” isolation. The beef between Bolsonaro and governors
After a televised speech urging Brazilians to go back to their routines, President Jair Bolsonaro doubled down on the necessity to protect the economy from a catastrophe. He defended a so-called “vertical” approach to isolation, which focuses on only confining clusters of the population that are more likely to die or suffer severe damage from Covid-19: senior citizens, those with pre-existing conditions, or autoimmune problems.
How to deal. The approach is far from the mainstream consensus, which advises “horizontal isolation” (restrictions on movement and commerce of the entire population), but it does have its supporters. David L. Katz, director of the True Health Initiative and founding director the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center wrote that “the unemployment, impoverishment, and despair likely to result will be public health scourges of the first order.”
- Recessions also have their human toll. A 2019 study shows that a 1-percentage-point increase in unemployment was associated with a 0.50 increase in mortality rate per 100,000 people, largely due to cancer and cardiovascular...