Between a rock and a hard place, Bolsonaro favors economy over health

Addressing the nation on Tuesday evening, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro complained that the country “must return to normality,” speaking out against nationwide isolation measures to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, urging people to get back to work and for schools to resume lessons. This discourse is obedient to U.S. President Donald Trump’s line that “the cure must not be worse than the problem,” which suggests that Brazil and the U.S. will engage in a balancing act between human life and the economy.

One of the justifications for this line of thinking is that a Covid-19-induced recession would create its own health problems for the population.

There is some scientific backing to this: a study published in November 2019 in online scientific journal Lancet Global Health traced a link between economic recession and all-cause mortality rate during Brazil’s financial crisis of 2014-2016. The researchers found 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 disease. 

With restrictive measures on businesses around Brazil, demand...