OPINION: India, Brazil and the COVID cost of sidelining science

Last week, Brazil’s total death toll from COVID-19 passed 400,000. In India, the pandemic is taking around 3,500 lives every day and has prompted a global response, with offers of oxygen, ventilators, intensive-care beds and more. Although these two countries are thousands of miles apart, the crises in both are the result of political failings: their leaders have either failed or been slow to act on researchers’ advice. This has contributed to an unconscionable loss of life.

Brazil’s biggest failing is that its president, Jair Bolsonaro, has consistently mischaracterized COVID-19 as a “little flu” and has refused to follow scientific advice in setting policy, such as enforcing mask-wearing and limiting contact between people.

India’s leaders have not acted as decisively as was needed. They have, for example, allowed — and, in some cases, encouraged — large gatherings. Such a situation isn’t new. As we saw during the administration of former US president Donald Trump, ignoring evidence of the need to maintain physical distancing to combat COVID-19 has catastrophic consequences. The United States has recorded more than 570,000 deaths from the disease — still the world’s largest COVID-19 death toll in absolute terms.

As Nature reports in a World View article, India’s leaders became complacent after daily COVID-19 cases peaked at nearly 96,000 in September before slowly declining— to around 12,000 at the beginning of March. ....

And India has other problems. One is that it’s not easy for scientists to access data for COVID-19 research. That, in turn, prevents them from providing accurate predictions and evidence-based advice to the government. Even in the absence of such data, researchers warned the government last September to be cautious about relaxing COVID-19 restrictions (Lancet 396, 867; 2020). And as late as the start of April, they warned that a second wave could see 100,000 COVID-19 cases a day by the end of the month. ...