Epidemiologists, economists and sociologists throughout the world agree on one point: the post-Covid-19 period will be totally different from the period before ... provided that humanity first defeats the pandemic. The "old normal systems" have shown their limits and we will certainly have to invent new ones to survive. And not only in terms of production, consumption and more generally the economic system.
The coronavirus has also disrupted many old habits, including those related to social interactions. We are witnessing a generalized collapse of sociability: children, women and men, young and old hardly see each other anymore, and when possible, stay at a safe distance fenced-in behind their masks or face shields. No more affection, no more emotion, personal health comes first. Relations between people, apart from the closed family circle, are carried out only through the small window of the telephone or the computer screen.
To get an idea of this global upheaval, one only has to look at the case of Hong Kong, hit by SARS in 2002, a cousin of Covid-19, but much more deadly. Since then, all habits have been disrupted, and until the last pandemic of the new coronavirus, the Chinese in this special administrative region scrupulously apply all preventive measures and systematic hand washing. Lifestyle habits that have been upheld for... 18 years!
The same is true in Lebanon, of course. Except that in Lebanon, in addition to the pandemic, it will be necessary to emerge from the economic and financial collapse. And it is certainly not the current political class, at the origin of the meltdown, which will be able to do so. The essential change in the Land of the Cedar will have to begin first and foremost with a profound modification of political practices, based since the independence on clientelism and cronyism. MPs, ministers and presidents without a political agenda, without a vision of governance, dragging each other in eternal discussions about trivial details, ignoring basic public services voluntarily kept in a state of neglect. In short, it is an indispensable return to the fundamentals that Lebanon needs. And the fundamentals are first and foremost education, where practically everything has to be rebuilt...