“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” So speaks the castaway Ferdinand in Scene II, Act I of The Tempest, William Shakespeare’s play about a politically motivated shipwreck. Brazilians today might find themselves recalling the Bard’s celebrated line: the coronavirus pandemic has washed ashore in the midst of a national political crisis that is quickly escalating into a full-blown economic crisis.

Just like The Tempest, the Brazilian plot has an air of conspiracy, a similar opening premise — wreckage — and a common underlying context: a coup d’état. In fact, ever since the removal of former president Dilma Rousseff by impeachment in 2016, the country has been living in a state of near-total anomie.

In the wake of the groundless impeachment proceedings against Dilma, Bolsonaro has committed countless impeachable offences. But perhaps none compares with the outright negationist attitude the Brazilian head of state has adopted toward the corona pandemic. Speaking on national television on March 24, Bolsonaro showed no signs of heeding the calls raised by the entire Brazilian political class to implement emergency isolation measures. In fact, Bolsonaro has only radicalized his negationist discourse in the face of mounting evidence that Brazil is on the brink of a catastrophic humanitarian crisis.