ABSTRACT

We investigate the impacts of the public attention towards the COVID-19 on the situation of the epidemic worldwide and on public mobility with Google trends. We use the number of searches for two keywords ‘corona virus’ and ‘mask’ on the Google search index to show people’s public attention towards the epidemic. The findings show that confirmed cases and death rates are significantly positively (negatively) associated with the public attention paid to epidemic in the early (later) stage of the epidemic. The reason may be that in the early stage of the epidemic, public attention increased outpatient rates and therefore confirmed cases significantly, while in the later stage, public attention accordingly increased cure rates significantly. The epidemic significantly eases for people’s mobility trends when refraining from going outdoors. Such impacts are more profound for low-income countries.

摘要

我们通过 Google 趋势调查了公众对 COVID-19 的关注对全球流行情况以及对公共交通的影响。我们使用谷歌搜索索引中“冠状病毒”和“口罩”两个关键词的搜索次数来显示人们对疫情的公众关注度。研究结果表明，确诊病例和死亡率与疫情早期（后期）公众对疫情的关注度呈显着正（负）相关。究其原因，可能是在疫情初期，公众的关注增加了门诊率，因此确诊病例显着增加，而后期，公众的关注相应地提高了治愈率。当人们不去户外时，这种流行病显着缓解了人们的出行趋势。