The novel coronavirus disease arrived not only amid a retreat of multilateralism and rising strategic rivalry between the United States and China, but also at a time of ongoing worrying trends for democracies worldwide. Freedom House in March 2020 notes that we are entering the 14th year of consecutive decline in the health of democracy globally. Tracking the fate of the ‘third wave democracies,’ Mainwaring and Bizzarro (2019) found that of the 91 democracies that emerged from 1974 to 2012, 34 experienced democratic breakdowns, while the quality of democratic practices stagnated in about 28 countries. In fact, several of those regimes may now be considered democracies in name only. Illustrative examples include Putin’s Russia, Orban’s Hungary, Erdogan’s Turkey, and closer to home, Duterte’s Philippines.