COVID-19 IN AMERICA: TWITTER ANALYSIS

COVID-19 OUTBREAK AND PANDEMIC

The novel coronavirus is “a major global threat to public health” (Thelwall, 2020). In the early months of 2020, the world was overwhelmed and taken by surprise by a virus that spread very quickly and that no one knew the full extent of this new pandemic would be. In late December of 2019, Chinese officials in Wuhan, China were starting to report upon a new illness that was emerging that caused pneumonia that may have originated in wet seafood markets (Noor et. al., 2020). People have come to find out and know of the virus as the novel coronavirus or Coronavirus Disease 2019 or COVID-19 for short. However, it took a month before public health officials were able to identify this as a new novel coronavirus. At that point, the COVID-19 was spreading all throughout China and the rest of the world. The difficult component of this situation was that many people had mild or asymptomatic cases of the virus which would prevent people from knowing whether or not they had the virus without proper testing. Thus, the foundation was laid for a global pandemic to erupt. At the end of January, the World Health Organization (WHO) “announced that the COVID-19 outbreak as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern” (Raina et. al., 2020).

By February, the virus became an epidemic as it started to arrive in different countries. When March came around, COVID-19 was named a pandemic by the World Health Organization. In effect, this was also the time when the virus started to have community spread which prompted many countries to shut down, implement social distancing measures, and encourage masks to limit the spread of the virus. Public health officials and researchers assert that “self-isolation and social distancing” are integral so that the “initial pressure on our healthcare systems is reduced,” thus giving more time to build up the capacity to handle a pandemic and research a vaccine (Chang et. al., 2020).

​

However, due to the reluctance to implement these measures and policies as quickly as possible, COVID-19 started to ravage many countries. Despite these noteworthy efforts, the virus was spreading at a rate that left public officials wondering how the true extent of the virus’s spread especially without extensive testing and contact tracing. Early on, Italy became the epicenter of the virus in Europe and the world. Not long after that, the United States surpassed Italy as the numbers were increasing at a drastic rate. This is a prime example of a situation that many states were not prepared and for a pandemic to show that the global preparedness for any outbreak “is alarmingly weak around the world and [everyone] should prepare [themselves] better for the future” (Raina et. al. 2020).

Since conducting this research and writing this analysis within the time span since the outbreak of the pandemic, nations are doing their best to adapt and maintain some semblance of normalcy. Especially for the United States, as many states implemented stay-at-home orders, local and state governments are doing their best to promote public health and safety through enforcement measures that would prevent the spread of COVID-19 and ultimately, save the lives of many people especially the most vulnerable communities like the elderly and the immuno-compromised. Nonetheless, the American government has had varying levels to their interaction and engagement with the American society all throughout this global pandemic.