Can we expand the range of our responses to COVID-19 and impending pandemics? (Preface to the issue)

The COVID-19 pandemic has already caused individual and societal health, economic consequences worldwide like no other event since the end of WWII. What is still to come to mankind, e.g. as a result of mutants, cannot be seriously predicted. The forecasts, which have been predicting mantra-like for a year that we would live again in three weeks like in 2019, if only we all strictly comply with all conditions, are so unsatisfactory that the demand for a new U.S. facility has been raised — linked with the demand to also question the entire strategy. Are we really prepared for the next — and be it artificially produced — SARS-CoV2-mutants as well as would be possible with the scientifically available means? And how do we prevent the next pandemic with an as yet completely unknown pathogen? These questions are addressed in this article, various articles in this issue, and the planned focus issue. The approach currently adopted by governments worldwide assumes that any epidemic can be prevented if contact between infected persons and all infectious persons is prevented in an ideal manner. These measures must be enforced by any means necessary until the (world) population has been immunized by vaccination to a sufficient extent and on a permanent basis. From a theoretical point of view, this seems conclusive. But is this feasible in our non-ideal world and with which consequences? In addition, it is questionable to what extent it corresponds to reality if no reference is made to the individual influences of the relationship between the virus and the cells to be infected as well as their influenceability by personal social, cultural, economic, etc. factors. Influencing variables are not referred to. It is possible that these hitherto unconsidered areas provide options for additional protective measures. Taking into account the classical knowledge of physiology, epidemiology, social medicine and humanitarian science, it seems necessary to assume dynamic and modifiable processes extending over several levels of different «age» from an evolutionary point of view. This needs to be taken into account: This issue therefore presents some contributions for relevant sub-aspects, e. g., on basics of non-specific physiological processes and the different relevance of identical stresses depending on e. g., circadian rhythms, holistic principles of human health preserving, formation of individual ecological culture. This paper is also intended to introduce the two parts of the planned focus issue on COVID-19: Part one deals with problem-oriented possibilities that open up the different processes from occurrence of the pathogen via transmission in the environment to possible contact between infected and infectable person as a prerequisite for the possible approach of an infection of a cell e.g. of the nasal mucosa and further to a possible disease with different outcome. Major conclusions leading to a fundamental expansion of options in the fight against SARS-CoV-2 (and other pathogens) and COVID-19 are presented. They go beyond the proposals that are now available and that have been put forward as solutions from different approaches, e.g., by the S20 or the Independent Panel Each approach claims to be suitable to end the «Era of Pandemics». None makes reference to other «global solutions». One reason for this is seen in the fact that the different disciplines are not interconnectable for methodological reasons. However, the meaningful ness of these approaches would be greatly enhanced if the different approaches could be understood as subsets of a common basic set. Einstein proved that this can be achieved in practice with the technique of principle theories. The second part of the special issue is devoted to this approach for COVID. There, the relevance of the individual processes is also discussed: it is always a concrete person who falls ill, not society — no matter how important the societal, social, economic, cultural, etc. factors are.