Beyond pandemics, such as syndemics and economics, different authors further elaborate on the term by calling it syndemics. One of the first to conceive of the term was Merril Singer, an American medical anthropologist, who argued that the focus of the new term includes biological and social interactions and that these are very important for prognosis, treatment and health policies.
If we refer to the World Health Organisation (WHO), it indicates that a pandemic is only a worldwide spread of a new disease.
By understanding the above two perspectives, we will align the economic vision with the need to connect with the syndemic from its social point of view.
But how to fight a syndemic from an economic point of view? A first approach in the form of an answer is through collaboration, more than ever, close and close.
In economics, the term collaborative economy arises, which we can define as a model in which services are considered as exchange goods. Also known as collaborative consumption, the interaction between several subjects can occur through digitalised or non-digitalised media. The satisfaction of the needs of the set of subjects receiving the service from a digital point of view is something we have to focus on as a society. Good tools for developing the above are collaborative platforms focused, for example, on a person who can offer accommodation to another person for a few days and exchange this service for cooking or language classes.
From a general point of view, collaborative platforms establish a framework of interaction where the different service providers and service seekers can expose their services and interact with each other and the platform itself from an open and dynamic system.
All of the above, from the point of view of syndemics and the economy, is leading us towards an economic and social change, as well as a cultural change, accelerated by the current syndemic, since, per se, it will provoke a new scenario of individualised consumerism, with increasingly lower levels of distrust due to the possibility of incorporating secure tracking and traceability systems based on blockchain techniques.
