Brazil's COVID-19 response.

It was disappointing to read the Editorial about Brazil's response to COVID-19, criticising the Brazilian president who “discourag[ed] the sensible measures of physical distancing and lockdown”. Yes, he insisted that lockdown is ineffective and terrible for the economy.

Evidence suggests that he was right. A European study concluded that lockdown might not have saved lives. A Brazilian study found that a 1·0% increase in unemployment rate was associated with a 0·5% increase in all-cause mortality. The expected rate of unemployment (23%) would cause 120 000 deaths in Brazil, according to the authors' projections. Therefore, the Brazilian Government implemented protective measures; distributed US$5·6 billion to the cities, states, and directly to the population through an emergency salvage salary; created intensive care unit beds; and delivered protective equipment and ventilators. Does this response show a “vacuum of political actions”?

The the time of writing, Brazil is doing better than the UK in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Population-adjusted COVID-19 cases, deaths, and case-fatality rates are much higher in the UK than in Brazil. The Lancet should criticise their own country, before criticising ours.

We feel that bias has abounded during Richard Horton's editorship, including the MMR vaccine imbroglio (putting children's lives at risk) and the incendiary Correspondence about the situation in Gaza. The Lancet praised the Chinese response to the COVID-19 pandemic, even after China was accused of covering up the initial spread and human-to-human transmission of COVID-19. The Lancet was harsher with Brazil, suggesting that we should eject the president from his chair.

We have disregarded your misinforming Editorial, which we feel is clearly biased against our right-wing government. Unfortunately, The Lancet has published nothing against the Brazilian left-wing government, which prioritised football stadiums over hospitals.

As Brazilian physicians, we give you a clear answer: the Editor of The Lancet must abandon political bias, retract the Editorial, and focus on science, or else he “must be the next to go”.