Given that Brazil has run just a bit less than 1 million tests so far with 675k cases (and counting) testing positive you can be sure that every number is underreported (with death counts probably being the most accurate as it's the hardest to fudge around).
Apart from that the Health Ministry is hiding the numbers for acute respiratory syndrome deaths (which could be seasonally-adjusted and an inference to CoViD-19 deaths be made).
He might be an alarmist but models all around the world are wrong and being updated constantly to keep on track with reality, you can't say that to dismiss all the information he's shared because of a missed prediction/projection.
> Citing total number of cases in Brazil is disingenuous in my opinion because the country has one of the largest populations in the world.
Nothing that involves exponential growth should disregard total numbers, the growth of total numbers is explosive. Total population doesn't matter as it's barely the upper bound limit of total number of cases a given region might get, how the numbers are accruing towards this total is the most important information and the only way to keep track of that is by keeping track of the total cases. It doesn't matter that Brazil has a low ratio of deaths/million if the cases are still growing exponentially as deaths will always lag behind.
Brazil's curve is accelerating, numbers are severely underreported, I heard the same kind of talking points in early March around death rates, etc. and the situation has steadily got worse by the day. Trying to paint a better picture by selecting a ratio-based metric doesn't seem to be the way to analyse Brazil's current situation, it's worsening and measures against the spread are being haphazardly removed or fought against by the Federal Government, it's a brewing disaster.