The coronavirus continues to spread… and so does public fear
As the world moves into its 3rd month since the Coronavirus outbreak (also called COVID-19), fear continues to worsen as cases rise across the world.
On January 30th, 2020, the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern”. The Google Trends report above shows a spike in searches near the end of January, just as news from the World Health Organization broke.
According to the WHO, and as of February 27th, 2020, there are 82,539 cases confirmed worldwide. 59 of those come from the US. There are 2,812 deaths, 2,747 of those coming for the virus’ origin of China.
On February 27th, 2020, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, stated in a press release that the virus has “pandemic potential” and that “the number of new cases reported in the rest of the world has exceeded the number of new cases in China”. Looking at the Google trends report, there is a noticeable increase in searches for the term ‘pandemic’ that occurs around the same time of this press release.
Taylor Swift and Harry Styles both drop new music videos
Two of the music industry’s most popular artists, Taylor Swift and Harry Styles, released music videos within a day of each other. Swift started the chaos by releasing the music video to her song “The Man” on February 27th on Youtube.
Swift’s self-directed music video to her new song “The Man”, garnered over 14 million views in just 24 hours. A google trends report shows the spike in YouTube searches for “Taylor Swift” occurring early on the 27th.
The video demonstrates Swifts’ social and political views while paying particular attention to concepts such as toxic masculinity and gender double standards.
The following day Harry Styles, ex- One Direction member and current teen heartthrob, released a music video for his song “Falling”. After only 12 hours, the video sits at over 4 million views. The google trend report above illustrates the spike in searches for “Harry Styles” on YouTube.
Styles’ video enchanted fans with beautiful scenery and raw, emotional lyrics. “Falling” is a track on Styles’ newest album, “Fine Line”.
As music fans start to recover from this weeks madness, one thing is certain, these two artists are incredibly talented and have the fan base to back it up. It seems like we won’t be in any shortage of new tunes to listen to in Spring 2020.
Julia Kindelin 