I really believe Social Media Analytics can be Very Useful. Our team @CUHKMedicine just published an article at @ATSBlueEditor, trying to explore the relationship between public interest in surgical mask and the COVID-19 pandemic. atsjournals.org/doi/abs/10.116… (1/n) 
We utilized @GoogleTrends to search for public interests in protective measures such as surgical mask, hand washing and social distancing. We were able to retrieve data regarding their Relative Search Volumes (RSV) from a global perspective. (2/n)
This is the heat map showing RSV of surgical mask over the course of COVID-19 pandemic. We noted a divergent pattern with early popularity particularly in Asia-Pacific countries. (3/n)
This figure shows that the RSV of surgical mask is negatively correlated with the average daily number of cases in a country-level. The correlation coefficient is -0.47. (4/n)
A big question is whether a ‘public interest’ indicates subsequent purchase and utilization of surgical mask. This figure shows a positive correlation between RSV of surgical mask with the actual sales volume from e-commerce databases. The correlation coefficient is 0.589. (5/n)
Interestingly, public interest in ‘surgical mask’ remains significant after adjusting for other measures such as ‘hand washing’ and ‘social distancing’. We believe wearing a mask is the most important measure in preventing COVID-19 infection. (6/n)
Some people may still challenge on mask wearing because of the 'lack of evidence'. But this last paragraph pretty much sums up our stance “Is it not better to adopt a possibly imperfect protective measure, rather than waiting for more evidence at the expense of human lives?”(7/7)
