Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Throughout human history, epidemics have left their mark, on habits, on language, even on urban architecture.

Disease has shaped many of the world's cities. We look at how likely it is that COVID-19 will do the same.

And, at first, it seemed like a joke, a misfortune global beer brand with a name echoing that of a global pathogen.

But the marketeers behind Corona have a real problem on their hands, and a simple rebranding isn't really an option.

First up, though, switch on the news today, and chances are it'll be about one thing. The US coronavirus deaths almost doubling.

But six or seven months ago, something else was dominating global headlines, and this show.

A wave of protests had erupted across the globe, not least in the Middle East and Arab world.

Not since, I suppose, the Arab Spring of 2011 have once seen so many apparently coordinated

or simultaneous protesting on place.

We are so afraid what's going now in Baghdad is a carnival.

As the coronavirus has spread, many of these protest movements have necessarily been put on hold.

Lately though, in Lebanon, not even a lockdown has been able to contain the public anger that has swelled as the country's economic crisis has gone from bad to worse.

Those who took to the streets last October are protesting against their government once again.

For more than a month, the lockdown bought the Lebanese government clear streets.

There was a lot of concern here that the virus would overwhelm the underfunded healthcare system in Lebanon,

and so people really did obey the government's stay-at-home order for the

latter part of March, for much of April. Greg Carlstrom is our Middle East correspondent,

reporting from Beirut. We've gotten to a point over the past two weeks where the virus looks

contained and where the economic situation has gotten so bad that people have begun to

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