long before the first official announcements of local covid-19 infections were made, there was evidence of widespread concern on social media in several european countries, according to a new
study
.
researchers at imt school for advanced studies lucca, published in scientific reports, identified increasing concern on twitter about pneumonia cases in seven countries between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. it turns out that whistleblowing came primarily from the geographical regions that eventually turned out to be major breeding grounds for covid-19 infections.
to conduct the study, researchers set up a unique database that contained all mentions of the word “pneumonia” in the seven most spoken languages in the european union (english, french, dutch, german, italian, spanish and polish) that were posted on twitter between december 1, 2014 and march 1, 2020. the word “pneumonia” was chosen because it is the most severe condition induced by covid-19 and because flu season in 2020 was milder than in previous years, meaning it was less likely that the flu was responsible for all the worry posted on twitter.
the world health organization was first informed on december 31, 2020 of a “pneumonia of unknown etymology” which also prompted the authors to use pneumonia as an indicator of early warning signs.