Misinformation Caused Increased Urban Mobility and the End of Social Confinement Before the Second Wave of COVID-19 in Amazonia

Abstract

Tendentious projections about COVID-19 in Brazil provided an appealing excuse for individuals and decision-makers to justify poor choices during a critical phase of the pandemic. The erroneous results likely contributed to premature resumption of in-person school classes and easing of restrictions on social contact, favoring the resurgence of COVID-19. In Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon region, the COVID-19 pandemic did not end in 2020 of its own accord, but rather rebounded in a disastrous second wave of the disease.

Keywords: Amazon; Brazil; COVID-19; Prevention; Public health; Social confinement; Virus coevolution.

Fig. 1

a Violet (black) indicates the projected (observed) deaths to Manaus. b Shows the community use of public transport (busses) in Manaus, compared to the February 2020 baseline. (Data: Ferrante et al. [3])

Fig. 2

a This is Figure 1 in Pereira et al. [18]. The graphs of the cumulative number of COVID-19 deaths for Boa Vista, Macapá, Rio Branco, and Porto Velho indicate a tendency for the curve to continue rising, but a gray trend line was added that induces readers to think that the curves will automatically plateau. b This is Fig. 2 in Pereira et al. [18]. The authors use the figure to state that the number of daily deaths was slowing in the cities of Belém and Manaus. However, since the y-axis has a logarithmic scale, a decrease in the slope of the death curve does not necessarily mean that the number of daily deaths is slowing