The COVID-19 pandemic is not only a health crisis. It will have deep economic, social, political, and cultural impacts, some of which will be long-lasting.
In the MENA in particular, we could be looking at a perfect storm. This is happening at a time when regimes in the MENA region have very little credibility and little trust, and societies have a tragic leadership crisis.
We cannot expect a strong community response in compliance with government orders such as we’ve seen in European or East Asian countries; this means that governments will have to resort to more draconian measures.
Furthermore, most MENA economies are already in bad shape, and unemployment, especially among the youth, is already high.
Governments are ill equipped to deal with the economic fall out - they cannot for long order citizens to forego work while also failing to provide their living needs
This is not to mention the already limited capacity of health sectors in many MENA countries - we may end up with a situation where citizens are under legal curfew, out of jobs (and money), and still dying in large numbers as governments struggle to keep things together.
Our dictators have systematically and nihilistically destroyed all existing and potential leadership structures in our countries, pushing their countries to the brink and saying "only we can fix this" (or, either we rule or let it go to hell). And now comes a pandemic.
