The Central Bank president says that reducing Covid-19 deaths is worse for the economy.

247 - In a speech to financial market investors, the president of the Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto, took data from a graph prepared by economists from the Center for Economic Policy Research out of context to claim that social isolation will deepen the economic recession. This is what a... Report by journalist Amanda Audi, on the Intercept Brasil website..

"This is a graph that many people have been communicating verbally, which is the trade-off between the size of the recession and the flattening of the [contamination] curve that you want to achieve. It shows that when you have a greater flattening, you have a greater recession and vice versa," said Campos Neto in a live event organized by XP Investimentos, one of the largest brokerage firms in Brazil. 

According to the article, "in Campos Neto's cold logic, the faster new cases and deaths from Covid-19 occur, the better for the economy. What's most important is that industry continues producing and selling. Even if this causes the collapse of hospitals and the public health system, forcing doctors to choose who to treat and who to let die, it's a reasonable price to pay in the name of profit."

"The Central Bank president's statement contains intellectual dishonesty. The graph he used is from the introduction of the book 'Mitigating the COVID Economic Crisis: Act Fast and Do Whatever It Takes'. This is a compilation of articles organized by economists Richard Baldwin and Beatrice Weder di Mauro, from the Centre for Economic Policy Research, a Geneva-based think tank that has brought together more than 700 researchers from mostly European universities since 1983. Released on March 18th, the book (in English) can be found..." downloaded for free from the internet".