Editorial: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19): Socio-economic systems in the post-pandemic world: Design thinking, strategic planning, management, and public policy

Abstract

Overview: The declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020, led to unprecedented events. All regions of the world participated in implementing preventive health measures such as physical distancing, travel restrictions, self-isolation, quarantines, and facility closures. The pandemic started global disruption of socio-economic systems, covering the postponement or cancellation of public events, supply shortages, schools and universities' closure, evacuation of foreign citizens, a rise in unemployment and inflation, misinformation, the anti-vaccine movement, and incidents of discrimination toward people affected by or suspected of having coronavirus disease. Attempts have been made to protect the oldest age group at risk, but in many cases, this has led to over-restriction and age discrimination.

The rationale for working on the Research Topic “Socio-economic systems in the post-pandemic world: Design thinking, strategic planning, management, and public policy” was the need to start reflecting on resilience and lessons learned from this public health event that revealed the global unpreparedness in critical areas. Also, the pandemic triggered both top-down (e.g., policy tools toward labor markets) and bottom-up (e.g., social and technological innovations in education) responses that needed more in-depth analyzes.

This Research Topic covers interdisciplinary contributions addressing new thinking, challenges, and transformations required for post-pandemic global, national, regional, and local realities. The presented Research Topic combines studies focused on recognizing the actions and interventions leading to the recovery of socio-economic systems during the tail end and after the pandemic. The studies delivered recommendations regarding, among others, the care of vulnerable, planning socio-economic restart, and imagining the “new normal.”

The presented Research Topic includes 27 articles prepared by 113 authors from all continents. This set of texts contains seven types of papers covering: 14 original research articles (Beno and Hvorecky; Bhandari et al.; Bjursell et al.; Breitenbach et al.; El Deeb; Ferchiou et al.; Kieslinger et al.; Liu et al.; Musango et al.; Poppe; Rasul et al.; Rivera-Rodriguez and Urdinola; Suomi et al.; Chen et al.), two perspective articles (Lee and Kang; Takewaki), four review articles (Contreras et al.; Kumar, Malla et al.; Singu et al.; Hamid and Mir), one study protocol article (Marston et al.), three opinion articles (Lever and Safra; Sciacchitano and Bartolazzi; Vlacha and Feketea), one conceptual analysis article (Auriemma and Iannaccone), and two brief research reports (Kumar, Kodidela et al.; Sun et al.).

The editors have identified six themes underpinning and linking together the finally selected papers. The identified macro themes help to distinguish the main contribution focus and the areas of application of the published research. However, these studies are also a testimony of the pandemic's impact on each and every significant aspect of our societies.