The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) that was first reported at the end of 2019 has impacted almost every aspect of life as we know it. This paper focuses on the incidence of the disease in Italy and Spain—two of the first and most affected European countries. Using two simple mathematical epidemiological models—the Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered model and the log-linear regression model, we model the daily and cumulative incidence of COVID-19 in the two countries during the early stage of the outbreak, and compute estimates for basic measures of the infectiousness of the disease including the basic reproduction number, growth rate, and doubling time. Estimates of the basic reproduction number were found to be larger than 1 in both countries, with values being between 2 and 3 for Italy, and 2.5 and 4 for Spain. Estimates were also computed for the more dynamic effective reproduction number, which showed that since the first cases were confirmed in the respective countries the severity has generally been decreasing. The predictive ability of the log-linear regression model was found to give a better fit and simple estimates of the daily incidence for both countries were computed.

The United Nations Organization states that well-being consists of universal goals and aspirations in human life throughout the world. The arrival of the digital age has a profound impact on humans’ way of production and life. While material living standards continue to improve, happiness has become the pursuit of social residents. Based on the theory of happiness economics, we use the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) data to construct an Ordered Probit fixed-effect model and systematically investigate the dividend and disparities of digital literacy on rural residents’ subjective well-being in China, such as age, gender, region, education attainment, and so on. The results indicate that digital literacy significantly strengthens rural residents’ subjective well-being. Under the influence of digital literacy, subjective well-being is heterogeneous in individuals’ natural and social attributes. Further mechanism tests show that rural residents’ digital literacy strengthens subjective well-being through income generation, consumption upgrading, and social belonging effects. In consequence, the government should promote the construction of digital infrastructure, focus on the penetration and quality of digital technology, digital skill education and training, and guiding residents to utilize digital technology properly. Our study furthers the understanding of residents’ well-being and highlights digital literacy as a means to boost well-being, reduce regional development gaps, and support sustainable development.