**1. Introduction**

An epidemic of viral-appearing pneumonia of unknown aetiology emerged in Asia in December 2019. In January 2020, the identification of a new coronavirus was o fficially announced by Chinese health authorities and the World Health Organisation (WHO). It was first called NCoV 2019 and then SARS-CoV-2. This new virus is the agen<sup>t</sup> responsible for the infectious respiratory disease called COVID-19. On 11 March 2020, WHO announced that COVID-19 could be qualified as a pandemic, the first one triggered by a coronavirus.

The epidemic phenomena are the expression of a violent clash between species [1] and between humans and non-humans [2,3]. Coronaviruses (CoV) entail a large group of viruses, some of which are pathogenic to humans, whose infections are usually associated with clinical respiratory manifestations, without high severity. Over the last decade, two new coronaviruses have emerged as highly pathogenic infectious agents for humans, causing potentially lethal infections. These coronaviruses have been responsible for the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus) and the MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-related Coronavirus) respiratory syndromes. Both SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV viruses have a zoonotic origin, i.e., their natural reservoir is animals, in particular some species of bats. The genesis of the SARS-Cov-2 coronavirus, although raising some doubts, also had a zoonotic origin [4].

In the process of naming the SARS-CoV-2 virus, WHO favoured a "politically correct" nomenclature, which sought to prevent the stigmatisation of the Chinese regions associated with the genesis of the pandemic. This potential stigmatisation was present in the designations "West Nile Virus", "Lhasa Fever" (a city in Nigeria, located in the Yedseram River Valley), "Ebola Virus" (a river in the Democratic Republic of Congo), "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome" and, in the H5N1 outbreaks, "from Fujian" (a province in South-East China) or "from Qinghai" (a lake in West China). The WHO's strategy to prevent this was to name viruses and viral outbreaks with an emphasis on the molecular structure. The focus on the molecular can be deemed as a way of blurring the relevance of economic and environmental factors in the emergence of new strains of a virus, particularly in the case of the H1N1 or H5N1 variants, i.e., industrial livestock. Since the late 1970s, with the globalisation of intensive pig and poultry farming, outbreaks of the increasingly virulent influenza have multiplied. In industrial animal husbandry, stocking density and genetic homogeneity provide "the perfect incubator" for viruses, which have an evolutionary interest in transmitting faster and becoming more virulent [5].

The COVID-19 pandemic is generating a global threat. By mid-July 2020, there were 14 million people infected, 7.7 million considered cured and about 600,000 dead. However, the exact number of those infected due to a lack of testing or those killed due to underreporting is not known. This pandemic has most significantly a ffected the older population and/or individuals with respiratory complications and other similar pre-existing diseases [6–8].

The vast majority of countries [9–11] have imposed a set of preventive procedures and devices, in addition to medical tests, based on isolation, quarantine, community containment and physical distancing [12,13], travel restrictions, hand hygiene and the banning of events and gatherings. These measures have led to the temporary closure of several economic and social institutions, a relative national lockdown in several countries and enormous pressure on health systems [12,14–23]. However, countries such as Sweden, South Korea and Taiwan did not impose total containment but followed a strategy that articulated quarantine targeting risk groups, monitoring, and large-scale testing, together with social distancing measures (even the use of masks).

The extraordinary and temporary measures adopted by a significant number of countries sought to keep people confined to their homes, in prophylactic isolation and, preferably, in a teleworking regime where the functions concerned were allowed. This situation could not take place if people were unable to telework or to carry out activities deemed essential and a priority. In some countries, individuals should remain in their homes, although they could go out for exercise once a day, to buy food and other essential items. The sick and elderly should also stay in their homes. Several restrictions were imposed on the interactions between people who were not cohabiting; for example, they could not interact with more than one person and should respect the distance of two meters from other people [10,24].

Without ye<sup>t</sup> knowing the specificities of the e ffects of the di fferent dimensions of the pandemic on mental health, it is possible, however, to assess its importance with the data already available. The stigmatisation and production of scapegoats—already known in other epidemics and other historical moments—in the case of COVID-19, have victimised some health professionals and individuals from minority social groups. The uncertainties and partial mistrust of medical knowledge and information, together with the publication of conspiracy theories have also added to the emergence of a di ffuse living disease that does not facilitate mental health. In this context, some disturbances, which are characteristic of uncertainty/unpredictability and lack of self-control in the relationship with oneself and with others, have emerged. As indicators of the fragility of these relationships, the increase in generalised anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorders, aggressive depressions, insomnia and feelings of frustration [25] are understandable.

These various measures have a profound impact on everyday life, and the future consequences for the reconfiguration of social life are unknown [20,26]. This is a dynamic situation with varying amplitude, taking into account the geographical, economic, societal and cultural contexts a ffected. Social distancing (this is the term medically consecrated and, therefore, used in this article, although the physical distance corresponds to what is under discussion) may be e ffective in preventing contagion and deaths, although it can be perceived as insidious to the economic activity since social distancing usually entails economic distancing: most industries require workers to develop close interactions to produce goods, while various services require close contact between customers, users and suppliers, or between customers [13].

However, inequality in various dimensions is a critical element, a ffecting responses to COVID-19 and even exacerbating inequalities [11,27–29]. Poorer populations, and especially older ones, are more vulnerable to infection and more vulnerable to the most serious consequences. The pandemic is generating a significant economic crisis and, consequently, unemployment rates will tend to increase substantially. Furthermore, weakened social safety nets further threaten the health and social security of the most vulnerable social categories also in day-to-day situations, such as to buy masks, gloves and disinfectant, as well as the greater need of these social groups to travel in public transports. Poor people who do not have access to health services under normal circumstances are more vulnerable in times of crisis. The manipulation of information, poor content quality and di fficulties in accessing communication and information technologies a ffect individuals with fewer resources and enhance illiteracy, making them more likely to ignore the health warnings developed by the governments [11,29].

In several discursive records, widely disseminated in the global public space, the idea is conveyed that this is a moment of unpredictable and disturbing rupture: a "health crisis", an "international health emergency", using WHO's expressions. The notion of crisis entails a normal state and its temporary disturbance before a return to normality, i.e., the emphasis is placed on a linear view of the crisis [30]. A crisis has several properties: the loss of meaning, the de-sectorisation and its complex, urgen<sup>t</sup> and dynamic nature. These three dimensions are combined. A crisis is a test of an existing order and, in particular, of cognitive categories and actions, but also of the limits and hierarchical structures that organise it, which can lead to organisational collapse [31–35]. Another challenge underlying the widespread use of the "health crisis" notion lies in the appreciation of the noun "health". By qualifying the event in this way, priority is ascribed to the health framework over others. However, one of the e ffects of these "crises" is to go beyond the usual organisation by sectors, producing a "de-sectorisation" [32]. This forces people to think outside their sole area of competence and forces coordination. The health, social, ecological, economic, financial and political dimensions of a "pandemic crisis" are interdependent.

The pandemic, as a global threat, is therefore imbued with a constant state of crisis, in which the crisis becomes permanent and the cause that explains everything [36]. This global threat has an epidemiological and medical dimension, but also a political and governance one. The clinical and epidemiological approaches imbricate to a political component (power, violence, constraint) and a governance component (state structure, governments' behaviour). The State's mastery of threats depends on its capacity to create, develop and manage complex and specialised organisations (care and health system, agencies and expert committees, among others), its capacity to ensure the continuity of its functioning and the mobilisation of its resources, as well as its power to control the use of coercion in response to global threats and dangers [37].

What added to the crisis was the decision of the authorities in many countries to resort to general population containment for a long period [31]. There are no studies that allow political actors, when taking this type of decision, to anticipate its consequences for the physical and mental health of populations, the relationships within households, the care of dependent, isolated or precarious individuals, the economy, work, the life of organisations or education. Governments only have hospitalisation and mortality rates as indicators to guide their actions. To this loss of meaning can be added the confusion in crisis managemen<sup>t</sup> between the di fferent authorities at the top of the state, as the borders are unclear and give rise to jurisdictional struggles [31].

This economic, social and health crisis has serious and profound implications that raise questions to which the contribution of Social Sciences does not seem to be su fficiently mobilised by policy-makers (research in SCILIT, virtual social networks and other databases) [38]. Social Sciences can collaborate more intensely in better knowing and managing this epidemic [20,22,39–41].

Besides studying society, Social Sciences are also part of it. They develop a permanent self-reflexivity as a social practice and system of representations, stage of conflicts of interest and power games, on the practices of Social Sciences as a scientific and professional activity socially conditioned, socially produced and always with social consequences [42,43]. This reflexive capacity establishes the domain of the symbolic and becomes e ffective to the extent that it provides cognitive and representative elements of adaptation to reality. The knowledge and representations that individuals, groups and societies have and use—generally referred to as "common sense"—are, in modern societies, increasingly shaped by Social Sciences. This social appropriation of knowledge developed by Social Sciences has a return e ffect by causing a permanent rethinking of problems and conceptual elaborations [44]. The potentials of this reflexivity frame the reflection on several domains of the "societies of individuals" [45] a ffected by this permanent crisis.

The objective of this concept paper focuses on the relevance of the analytical potential of Social Sciences for the understanding the multiple implications and challenges posed by the COVID-19 contagion–pandemic dyad. This crisis has profound implications and raises issues for which the contribution of Social Sciences does not seem to be su fficiently mobilised. In the analysis, the contribution of Social Sciences is paramount, in terms of their knowledge and skills, to the knowledge of these problematic realities and to act in an informed way on these crises. Social Sciences are a scientific project focused on interdisciplinarity, theoretical and methodological plurality. This discussion is developed from the systems of relationships between social phenomena in the coordinates of time and place, and in the socio-historical contexts in which they are integrated. A pandemic is a complex phenomenon as it is always a point of articulation between natural and social determinations. The discourse space on the COVID-19 pandemic can be understood as the expression of a coalition of discourses. The circumstantial coalitions of interests, which shape the di fferent discursive records and actions produced by di fferent agents of di fferent social spaces enable the acknowledgement and legitimation of this pandemic threat and danger, and the promotion of its public management. It is, therefore, important to promote an interdisciplinary scientific project characterised by the interdependence between the epidemiological, medical and biological knowledge and the knowledge produced by the Social and Human Sciences to better understand an economic, social and health crisis of such a huge scale and to shape the medical and political managemen<sup>t</sup> of this and future epidemics and pandemics. To attain this goal, the article is divided into the following sections: Methods; COVID-19: the contagion–pandemic dyad; multiple implications of the COVID-19 pandemic; and Conclusion.
