For now, though, the concerns are much more immediate — and are often finding visceral expression. A team of researchers at the Institute for Economics and Peace, a global think tank, tracked more than 5,000 pandemic-related violent events between January 2020 and April 2021. The protests on view from Latin America to the Middle East reflect mounting unemployment, as jobs in the informal economy vanished with no recompense, and hunger as food prices spiked, as well as the backsliding of millions of people around the world into poverty.
