Impactos econômicos das políticas de desinformação no Sistema Único de Saúde do Brasil: uma análise nas unidades federativas durante a pandemia do Covid-19 (2020 a 2021)

Abstract

Disinformation policies encourage and disseminate statements by a public entity and or by its representatives that demonstrate flagrant disrespect for verifiable information, regardless of the means of transmission. Thus, in order to define the topic, the use of early treatment to combat Covid-19 is considered a misinformation policy, since international bodies, such as the World Health Organization, have confirmed the ineffectiveness of the treatment. The objective of this work is to analyze the economic impacts of disinformation policies associated with the Unified Health System in Brazil, during the Covid-19 pandemic in the period from 2020 to 2021. The methodological procedures that were used involve the Exploratory Analysis of Spatial Data (AEDE), comparison of proportions test, mean comparison test for paired samples and Kruskal-Wallis test for k independent samples. The research covers the direct economic effects of using early treatment to combat Covid-19 through variables such as: cost of purchasing early treatment medications, costs of ICU-Covid hospital beds, cost of purchasing a respirator, costs of hospital input materials, deaths, respirator use. The data used correspond to the period of the Covid-19 pandemic, specifically in the years 2020 and 2021 and are available on open datasus and Comprasgov, as well as complemented with the use of bibliographic and documentary research delimited to the object of study. In the results obtained, it was seen that the disinformation policies associated with the Unified Health System during the Covid-19 pandemic, brought with it a negative economic impact, considering that they were spent from the public purse on a treatment without proven effectiveness, in this way in addition to direct costs with treatment, there were indirect costs, such as an influence on the proportion of people who needed respiratory support and even died.