Trends in Online Discussions of Asthma in the US During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

RATIONALE: Asthma is a topic widely discussed online by patients. Given it is also one of the underlying diseases that increases the risk of complications from COVID-19, we sought to explore whether online discussions around asthma had changed since the pandemic started. METHODS: Data were collected using social listening tools provided by Synthesio, an Ipsos company, to aggregate all online mentions of the word “asthma” across social media platforms, excluding retweets, from December 2019 until November 2020 in the US. Topics most associated with the word “asthma” were tracked over time. RESULTS: From Dec 2019 to Feb 2020, there were a total of 38.1K mentions of “asthma”, with no specific topic particularly associated with the keyword. “Asthma” mentions increased by 53% in the first week of March 2020. The trend continued for three weeks and the highest traction was recorded on the third week of March at 18.1K mentions. During this period, 40% of the “asthma” mentions were associated with the keywords “coronavirus/COVID-19”, higher than the average number of mentions associated with other topics. The number of mentions of “asthma” together with “coronavirus/COVID-19” increased 359%, from 1.5K in the first week, to 7K in the second week of March 2020. From June 2020 to August 2020, mentions of “asthma” were lower than in the preceding three months, but several spikes occurred throughout June and July 2020 (fourth week of June, 9.5K;first and second week of July, 9.6K and 10K). The increased traction was found to be associated with an increase in mentions of the word “mask”. On the fourth week of June, the number of mentions of “asthma + mask” increased by 157% compared to the previous week (1.7K to 4.3K). “Mask” was the keyword most associated with “asthma” for five weeks in a row, before decreasing over time. The number of “asthma” mentions from Sep 2020 to Nov 2020 continued to decline, but remained higher than pre-pandemic levels. A small peak is found during the third and fourth weeks of September, associating “asthma” with “mask” (3.2K mentions) and “symptom(s)” (2.7K mentions). CONCLUSION: Online discussions around asthma increased dramatically at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and continue to remain high. “Asthma” was initially most associated with keywords “coronavirus/COVID-19”, but discussions subsequently changed to focus on the topic of “masks”. It is hoped this research can provide insight into concerns expressed online by asthma patients over the last year.