Strategies to address the COVID-19 pandemic have elicited polarised debates that frequently focus on an economy versus health trade-off, and are often divided by politics. Evidence has increasingly been used to justify these arguments, without due attention to its quality or reporting. Additionally, evidence suggests arguments over a trade-off are inappropriate as countries which have controlled the pandemic better have experienced smaller economic contractions.

We were dismayed by a recent Correspondence in The Lancet, in which Pontes and Lima argued against social distancing interventions in Brazil—a country lacking a comprehensive pandemic strategy and a catastrophic 150 000 COVID-19 deaths by Oct 15, 2020. The authors cite our work in The Lancet Global Health on the Brazilian recession and mortality but selectively report our findings to skew the debate.