Hope Amid of a Pandemic: Is Psychological Distress Alleviating in South America while Coronavirus is still on Surge?

TL;DR

This study analyzes Twitter data from South American capitals to assess psychological distress during COVID-19 lockdowns, revealing that public anxiety decreased over time despite worsening pandemic conditions, indicating adaptation.

Contribution

It introduces an infodemiology approach using large-scale Twitter data to monitor psychological responses during the pandemic in South America, highlighting adaptive behavior.

Findings

Initial high anxiety levels declined over time

Psychological distress decreased despite increasing COVID-19 cases

Population adaptation to pandemic conditions observed

Abstract

As of July 31, 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has over 17 million reported cases, causing more than 667,000 deaths. Countries irrespective of economic status have succumbed to this pandemic. Many aspects of the lives, including health, economy, freedom of movement have been negatively affected by the coronavirus outbreak. Numerous strategies have been taken in order to prevent the outbreak. Some countries took severe resections in the form of full-scale lockdown, while others took a moderate approach of dealing with the pandemics, for example, mass testing, prohibiting large-scale public gatherings, restricting international travels. South America adopted primarily the lockdown strategies due to inadequate economy and health care support. Since the social interactions between the people are primarily affected by the lockdown, psychological distress, e.g. anxiety, stress, fear are supposedly affecting the South American population in a severe way. This paper aims to explore the impact of lockdown over the psychological aspect of the people of all the Spanish speaking South American capitals. We have utilized infodemiology approach by employing large-scale Twitter data-set over 33 million feeds in order to understand people's interaction over the months of this on-going coronavirus pandemic. Our result is surprising: at the beginning of the pandemic, people demonstrated strong emotions (i.e. anxiety, worry, fear) which declined over time even though the actual pandemic is worsening by having more positive cases, and inflicting more deaths. This leads us to speculate that the South American population is adapting to this pandemic thus improving the overall psychological distress.