Of all the pandemic mismanagement horror stories, Brazil’s is up there with the US and India. With more than 15.7 million cases and close to half a million deaths, South America’s biggest and most populous country has been among the world’s worst performers.

And even from a country with a history as chaotic and at-times brutal as Brazil’s, few of its leaders have drawn the world’s gaze as much as Jair Bolsonaro, the wildcard right-wing ideologue and gun-toting freedom-fighter who captured a nation’s imagination but whose denialism, creeping authoritarianism and pandemic maladministration could prove his undoing.