Book Description
With the world in a state of emergency due to the Coronavirus pandemic, almost the entire scientific community and all governmental/intergovernmental agencies are focused on defining the most effective disease control and forecasting. However, is disease control the only or most crucial element to consider? In this Research Topic, we intend to highlight crucially important topics about Coronavirus related to its environmental dependencies, biological diversity and stability, and socio-economic outcomes, considering also information, modeling and technological aspects of the pandemic. The objective of the Research Topic is to bring together spatio-temporal biological, ecological, environmental and social aspects of Coronavirus to better understand its dynamics, shifts, systemic impacts on health and socio-economic effects. Studies via models that link Coronavirus to other viruses are welcome, in order to properly characterize the biology, ecology and environmental niche or universality of Coronavirus dynamics. We also seek prospective studies that investigate potential future spillovers of Coronavirus-like viruses by indicating risk hotspots in relation to socio-environmental determinants. Other issues focused on public health and medical aspects are welcome; however, these studies need to explicitly address the virus’ connection with the environment in order to gain insight into its ecology and evolution. Studies addressing data and modeling challenges as well as different model approaches (from machine learning to phenomenological and process-based models) have a lot of interest. Lastly, we highly encourage studies that quantitatively explore the coupled evolution of population perceptions and the associated infodemic (for instance, inferred from social media), behavior and systemic health outcomes.
