The captain and his country

ONE DAY in April, as Brazilian hospitals ran out of oxygen and 3,000 people a day were dying from covid-19, Jair Bolsonaro’s 64-year-old chief of staff, Luiz Eduardo Ramos, got jabbed. It was his turn but he went in secret. His boss is anti-vaccine. When asked why Brazil was blocking approval for the Pfizer vaccine, the president joked that jabs turn people into crocodiles.

That Mr Ramos, a four-star general who once commanded peacekeeping troops in Haiti, had to sneak off reveals the depths to which Brazil has fallen under Mr Bolsonaro, whose career as an army captain stood out only when he was jailed for insubordination. Mr Ramos confessed his jab in a meeting he didn’t know was being broadcast. “Like every human being, I want to live,” he said.

Before the pandemic, Brazil was suffering from a decade of political and economic ailments. With Mr Bolsonaro as its doctor, it is now in a coma. More than 87,000 Brazilians died from covid-19 in April, the worst monthly death toll in the world at the time. Vaccines are so scarce that people under 60 will not get them until September. And a record 14.4% of workers are unemployed.

Yet on May 1st bolsonaristas draped in Brazilian flags took to the streets. Unfazed by a parliamentary commission of inquiry (CPI) into the president’s handling of covid...