Monday, March 2, 2020

Coronavirus is more popular than sex (except in South Africa)

I was wanting a way of judging just how serious the coronavirus outbreak is in Iran. Alas government figures are not to be trusted. And figures from other sources - mostly anti-government blogs and the like - are also not to be trusted (as they have an agenda).

I went for the old fall-back. Google Trends.

Here is the google trends for coronavirus in Iran. It is clearly skyrocketing.




Okay - but this does not help me. I needed something to judge it against.

I figured that it would need to be something that was searched for a lot. So I went for the staple: sex.

Here is coronavirus vs sex in Iran.




I am beginning to conclude that coronavirus is more popular than sex (at least as a search topic).

It sounds pretty serious.

So I thought I should benchmark it.

I figured the British are likely to be big searchers of sex. Maybe I am mistaken - but there seems something desperately English-schoolboy about googling "sex".

Yep - coronavirus is more popular than sex in the UK too.




And so it was with almost every jurisdiction I tried.

Except South Africa.




Sex is more popular than coronavirus in South Africa.

Is that because the South Africans are really into sex or that they are not scared of coronavirus?

I have no idea.

Not all research is productive.





John
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4 comments:

Unknown said...

Stocks being effected indirectly related to the corona virus would include travel, have you shorted anything like $WEB or $FLT. As I know flight centre is struggling with knowledge from my brother, that works at flight centre recently working overtime just refunding people travel that are continuously cancelling.

March 9, 2020 at 3:50 AM
Jason said...

Great work and good to have you back John. More blogging please!

March 18, 2020 at 10:02 PM
Joe said...

I was living in South Africa when this was written and can confirm that prior to March 15th, when the president announced a state of emergency, South Africans definitely cared more about sex than coronavirus. If you check now, I bet that they have caught up with the rest of the world.

March 27, 2020 at 5:12 AM
Nesnes said...

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) cases is affecting more
than 195 countries and territories, authorities have confirmed more than 600,000 cases of the coronavirus, 140,186
recovereds and more than 22,000 deaths

March 30, 2020 at 3:34 AM

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