Negationism and the role of political factors in Covid-19 mortality in Brazil

Abstract

In a national context marked by a denialist position of the federal government in the fight against the pandemic, Brazil is among the countries most affected by Covid-19. The present study analyzes, along with other socioeconomic, health and demographic factors, how the political orientation of municipalities is related to the mortality rate. In order to analyze two different transmission channels between political factors and mortality, two other econometric models were estimated on the mobility of people and the vaccination rate. One of the most striking results concerns the “Bolsonaro effect”: mortality rates are higher in the municipalities where the president had a more expressive vote in the 2018 elections. The results regarding population mobility seem to confirm that this is one of the main mechanisms of disease transmission. Nevertheless, the political denialist position does not seem to compromise, at least for the first months of the late immunization process in Brazil, the complete vaccination.