Joaquin Monfort | September 10, 2020
Read the review of the monitor’s key Indexes and tables to get an overview of the news analytics of the evolving pandemic. We note how many gauges have declined since August, suggesting the media buzz about COVID is reaching a low ebb.
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The second wave fears that spoiled countless holidays in August appear to have eased, at least from a news analytics perspective.
Our Worldwide Panic Index, for example, has fallen to a month low leveling at 2.06% on September 7, after peaking on August 23.
The Index measures the percentage of news about the coronavirus that mentions panic and hysteria. It has sometimes been found to act as a leading indicator for changes in the overall case count itself, suggesting the possibility global cases may decline in the future.
Moving on to the second Index, Media Hype, which measures the share of the news about COVID, and we can see that it recently moved down to a month low of 30.25% on September 7.
This means that on this day, around 30% of the news was only about Coronavirus. This is a substantial decline from the 69.27% levels it reached in March, at the height of the pandemic.
It suggests substantial segments of the media are ‘moving on’ from talking about Coronavirus, or COVID fatigue is setting in, which is understandable.
Next comes our Fake News Index, which measures levels of misreporting or fake news about COVID in the media; this fell to a 6-month low of 0.31% on September 8, which cannot be a bad thing for consumer confidence in the media.
The Worldwide COVID Sentiment Index has reached a 1-month high at the time of writing, suggesting an improvement in the overall outlook for the pandemic from a news analytics perspective.
The Infodemic Index, which measures the spread of the effects of COVID across different entities, including financial assets - reached a 3-month low on September 7 - something that ought to be reassuring for investors.
The Media Coverage Index is the last key gauge on the monitor, and it measures the share of news sources talking about Coronavirus, however, it remains range-bound.
Moving onto the Geographical Exposure table at the top of the monitor, we see that the top 5 countries by total cases are the U.S., India, Brazil, Russia, and Peru.
The COVID-related topic with the most news exposure is ‘Vaccine’, according to the Related Topics table on the right-hand side of the monitor.
The amount of media exposure the topic is receiving is reaching a 1-month high, probably due to talk about the Russian vaccine as well as stories that trials for another leading vaccine candidate AZD1222 (born out of a collaboration between AstraZeneca and Oxford) have been put on hold after a participant mysteriously fell ill.
The Media Exposure to Coronavirus table under the interactive map lists entities in order of news exposure.
It would take too much time to cover all the subject options, but since ‘Vaccine’ is the hot topic of the moment, toggling to the ‘Treatments’ heading seems apt, and offers some noteworthy insights on a related subject matter - the amount of media attention the different Coronavirus cures are getting.
Here we see the top treatment in the news is the Russian vaccine ‘Sputnik 5’, followed by Hydroxychloroquine, and then the British vaccine AZD1222.
Finally, in terms of total cases, there has been a major shift at the top of the league table with India now sliding into second place after the U.S., and displacing former runner up Brazil.
Yesterday it registered the highest daily rise in cases of any country, with 87,906 new cases.
It is interesting to note how India’s key news analytics gauge - the country’s Sentiment Index - plunged lower between August 30 and September 6, almost as if it was a forewarning of the rise in cases to come.
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