BACKGROUND
Resources such as Google Trends and Reddit provide opportunities to gauge real-time popular interest in public health issues. However, use of these free resources to optimize public health
campaigns has been limited.
OBJECTIVE
To determine whether early public awareness of COVID-19 correlated with elevated public interest in non-COVID infectious diseases with epidemic potential.
METHODS
Google Trends search data and Reddit comment data were analyzed from 2018 through 2020 for the frequency of keywords “Chikungunya”, “Ebola”, “H1N1”, “MERS”, “SARS”, and “Zika”, six highly publicized epidemics in recent decades.
RESULTS
Google Trends and Reddit Data both demonstrate large and significant increases in the usage of each evaluated disease term through at least the initial months of the pandemic.
CONCLUSIONS
The start of the COVID-19 pandemic correlated with increased public interest in other epidemic infectious diseases. Google Trends and Reddit can readily be used to evaluate real-time general interest levels in public health related topics, providing a tool to better time and direct public health initiatives that require a receptive target audience.