ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2021
Public Interest in Immunity and the Justification for Intervention in the Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Analysis of Google Trends Data.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- COVID-19 Pandemic and Consumption of Dietary Supplements among Adult Residents of Lithuania.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Enhancing COVID-19 Epidemic Forecasting Accuracy by Combining Real-time and Historical Data From Multiple Internet-Based Sources: Analysis of Social Media Data, Online News Articles, and Search Queries.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2022Article
- Online Information of COVID-19: Visibility and Characterization of Highest Positioned Websites by Google between March and April 2020-A Cross-Country Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Consumption of Food Supplements during the Three COVID-19 Waves in Poland-Focus on Zinc and Vitamin D.Nutrients · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
14 authors at 9 institutions in 6 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe use of social big data is an important emerging concern in public health. Internet search volumes are useful data that can sensitively detect trends of the public's attention during a pandemic outbreak situation.
objectiveOur study aimed to analyze the public's interest in COVID-19 proliferation, identify the correlation between the proliferation of COVID-19 and interest in immunity and products that have been reported to confer an enhancement of immunity, and suggest measures for interventions that should be implemented from a health and medical point of view.
methodsTo assess the level of public interest in infectious diseases during the initial days of the COVID-19 outbreak, we extracted Google search data from January 20, 2020, onward and compared them to data from March 15, 2020, which was approximately 2 months after the COVID-19 outbreak began. In order to determine whether the public became interested in the immune system, we selected coronavirus, immune, and vitamin as our final search terms.
resultsThe increase in the cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases that occurred after January 20, 2020, had a strong positive correlation with the search volumes for the terms coronavirus (R=0.786; P<.001), immune (R=0.745; P<.001), and vitamin (R=0.778; P<.001), and the correlations between variables were all mutually statistically significant. Moreover, these correlations were confirmed on a country basis when we restricted our analyses to the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Korea. Our findings revealed that increases in search volumes for the terms coronavirus and immune preceded the actual occurrences of confirmed cases.
conclusionsOur study shows that during the initial phase of the COVID-19 crisis, the public's desire and actions of strengthening their own immune systems were enhanced. Further, in the early stage of a pandemic, social media platforms have a high potential for informing the public about potentially helpful measures to prevent the spread of an infectious disease and provide relevant information about immunity, thereby increasing the public's knowledge.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.