Declining Interest in 'Corona Social Distancing' Raises Growing Concerns Over Resurgence

Source: Global Big Data Research Institute

[Asia Economy Reporter Changhwan Lee] As the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) continues to rage, public interest in social distancing is declining, raising concerns about a resurgence of the virus.

On the 20th, the Global Big Data Research Institute announced that an analysis of big data on a weekly basis across 11 channels?including 'community, blogs, cafes, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, KakaoStory, Knowledge iN, companies/organizations, and government/public'?excluding media 'news' which are not directly related to the general public's opinions, showed these results.

According to the analysis, the amount of information related to 'COVID-19,' indicated by the number of online postings, peaked at 640,531 posts during February 23?29 (Sunday to Saturday, hereafter the same) and then steadily declined to 196,020 posts during June 7?13.

This represents a sharp drop to less than one-third of the peak.

Regarding interest in the 'social distancing' campaign, the peak was recorded at 122,354 posts during April 5?11, less than two months after Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon officially proposed it on February 24.

Since then, interest in the social distancing campaign has also steadily decreased, with only 41,774 posts during the week of June 7?13, about one-third of the peak.

Both keywords have retreated to about one-third of their peak levels, and such a sharp decline in interest inevitably leads to a lack of vigilance, increasing concerns about the spread of a second infectious disease wave.

In fact, during the 1918 'Spanish flu,' which caused over 50 million deaths worldwide (140,000 deaths in Korea, reported by Maeil Shinbo) over three years, the damage during the second wave was much greater than during the first.

Lee Hyun-sook, head of the Big Data Analysis Reporting Center at the institute, said, "Due to fatigue from the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, public interest in infectious diseases has significantly decreased," adding, "It is now necessary to continuously raise awareness through interviews on the status of infectious disease patients, alertness about safety within families?especially 'parents and children'?and education on past cases."

She added, "Because of asymptomatic transmission and frequent mutations of infectious diseases, complete eradication and vaccine development are difficult, and since we cannot continue to sacrifice the economy indefinitely, it is time to gradually establish detailed guidelines for 'practicing prevention in daily life,' similar to the flu."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.