Last week, the number of new Omicron cases in Israel went sky-high, and there's more to come. But while the number of confirmed cases here is nearing 70,000 a day, the situation for Israel's neighbors is completely different.
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In Syria, the number of new cases, which stood at 37 a day dropped to 36 by the end of the week. No, that's not a typo. In Syria, home to 17 million residents – those who survived the war and the waves of expulsion – saw an average of 30-40 new cases per day last week. Incidentally, the number of total cases there since the pandemic began two years ago, is some 51,000 – for those who believe it.
Syria might be an aberration, but the situation in other countries in the region isn't significantly different. Iraq, home to over 40 million, saw its number of new daily cases drop from 6,000 at the start of last week to 4,000 by the end of the week. Egypt, with a population of 100 million, saw a "stable" number of 1,200-1,300 new cases per day, while Jordan, home to about 11 million – including 4 million refugees from Iraq and Syria – is seeing about 5,000 new cases per day. Even Saudi Arabia, with its 35 million residents, is recording about 6,000 new daily cases. Meanwhile, Lebanon – a failed state on the verge of collapse, but which has one of the most advanced healthcare systems in the region, for those who can afford to pay for its services – is seeing more "reliable" numbers – 7,000-8,000 new confirmed cases a day.
It turns out that the Omicron variant skipped the Middle East, or that the Middle East found a cure for it. So while the entire world is buckling under the wave of infection, the region around us has become the world's healthiest and most resilient.
There are a few explanations for this – apart, of course, from the grace God grants to the faithful. First of all, these are third-world countries, some of them are failed states, and their healthcare systems reflect this, meaning they cannot give us a trustworthy picture of local morbidity. Moreover, most of the population has no awareness of it, and even if healthcare were easily accessible, the governments don't always care.
Secondly, the population around us is young, and over two-thirds of it are under 20. Life expectancy is also short, with the result being that the virus has less of an effect on the population, which affects young people less – most of them are asymptomatic – and is most damaging to at-risk elderly groups, which are almost not to be found in the countries around Israel.
Theoretically, one could argue that what is happening in the Middle East models how humans dealt with disease and pandemics in the past. The young and the strong survive, at least some do, and thus humanity continues to move from pandemic to illness and back again. But COVID is just part of a bigger story about the backwardness of the Middle East region. While Omicron might have little effect on youth, the same cannot be said of other illnesses form the past – polio, typhoid, and more – that have reemerged in the region, not to mention shortages and even hunger and starvation experienced by the young generation around us. The data about Omicron does not paint a rosy picture – the opposite. The picture is dark, depressing, and troubling.
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