Covid-19 in the news this week
- WHO: 14.9 million excess deaths associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021
- CNN: Coronavirus wave this fall and winter could potentially infect 100 million, White House warns
- Axios: The next COVID crisis – Long COVID
- US News: U.S. Records More Than 100,000 New COVID-19 Cases in a Day
- The Hill: FDA finds ‘no evidence’ that second Pfizer pill stops repeat COVID-19 symptoms
- FDA: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: FDA Limits Use of Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine to Certain Individuals
- Investopedia: Pfizer’s (PFE) COVID Treatment Pill Falls Short
- US News: Pandemic Pivot: COVID Vaccination Rates Are Stalling in the U.S
- CNN: The US is closely watching this Covid surge for clues
- ScienceAlert: Cognitive Impact of Severe COVID Is Equivalent to 20 Years of Aging, Study Finds
- CIDRAP: Studies show promise for 2 new COVID vaccine platforms
- Reuters: Valneva to launch trial for booster use of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate
DrugVisual Covid-19 links
Daily sentiment
Net daily sentiment ranged from -24.21 for Moderna vaccine on Monday the 2nd to 30.02 for Monoclonal antibodies on Monday the 2nd.
The sentiment for each tweet is scored from -1 (most negative) to +1 (most positive) using VADER sentiment analysis. Net sentiment is calculated by summing the sentiment across all tweets for a given day and/or category, then normalizing the score by the number of tweets.
Medical conditions from the MedDRA dictionary
Infection was the most frequently observed medical condition mentioned. Ulcer had the highest overall net sentiment of -6.13. Thrombosis had the lowest net sentiment this week (-51.87).
| medical condition | count | sentiment |
|---|---|---|
| Infection | 163 | -9.60 |
| Clotting disorder | 113 | -37.05 |
| Hepatitis | 95 | -19.87 |
| Sickness | 87 | -39.23 |
| Thrombosis | 75 | -51.87 |
| Flu | 70 | -34.44 |
| Cancer | 63 | -41.71 |
| Poisoning | 49 | -48.55 |
| Ulcer | 43 | -6.13 |
| Coldness, Cold | 41 | -17.08 |
MedDra is a standardized medical terminology developed by the International Council for Harmonization Cross-referencing tweets against this list is a starting point for identifying medical conditions mentioned in tweets.
Cross-referencing the MedDRA dictionary by sentiment and topic
Positive tweets:
There were 216 tweets with an strong positive sentiment. The top 10 most frequent medical conditions mentioned within these tweets were (1) Infection, (2) Flu, (3) Ulcer, (4) Sickness, (5) Forgetfulness, (6) Cancer, (7) Blindness, Blind, (8) Pneumonia, (9) Coldness, Cold, (10) MS. Of these terms, Forgetfulness (n=12), Blindness, Blind (n=9), Pneumonia (n=9), MS (n=7) were not in the top 10 most frequent terms across all tweets.
Negative tweets:
There were 638 tweets with an strong negative sentiment. The top 10 most frequent medical conditions mentioned within these tweets were (1) Clotting disorder, (2) Thrombosis, (3) Sickness, (4) Infection, (5) Flu, (6) Cancer, (7) Poisoning, (8) Fear, (9) Pain, (10) Pneumonia. Of these terms, Fear (n=25), Pain (n=24), Pneumonia (n=18) were not in the top 10 most frequent terms across all tweets.
Word-level analysis
The 25 most important words within positive tweets (compared to negative and neutral) tweets are shown in the treemap below. The size of each box represents the weighted score of each word. The word “safe” within the search for “Johnson and johnson vaccine” had the highest overall weight. When the words are summed for each topic, Pfizer vaccine had the highest overall weight.
The 25 most important words within negative tweets (compared to positive and neutral) tweets are shown in the treemap below. The word “mother” within the search for “Pfizer vaccine” had the highest overall weight. When the words are summed for each topic, “Johnson and johnson vaccine” had the highest overall weight within negative tweets.
This analysis of words evaluates the stemmed version of words using the Snowball algorithm. By stemming words, words with similar meaning, such as pain, painful & pained, are grouped together as simply “pain”.
Beta: text classification
Tweets that describe adverse events/side effects (first person point of view)
| tweet | search topic(s) | medical condition(s) mentioned |
|---|---|---|
| I was coerced into getting the Pfizer “vaccine!” I am now crippled. My legs hurt with a pain that is difficult to describe! Like a knife being stabbed into my knees, thighs, groin, shins, elbows! I wake up and cannot move. My legs hurt all day long, but especially in morning! | pfizer vaccine | Pain |
| I took Ivermectin, prescribed by my doctor, on the first 3 days I had Covid symptoms (also the same day I tested positive). By day 3 I had no fever, body aches were gone, and most of my stamina had started to return. It was day 8 before the cough ever appeared. | ivermectin | Ache, Coughing, Cough, Fever |
| Comirnaty vaccine:
Swelling at the injection site Pain at the injection site Headache Joint aches Muscle aches Tiredness Chills Fever |
pfizer vaccine | Ache, Chills, Fever, Headache, Injection site pain, Joint ache, Muscle ache, Pain, Swelling, Tiredness |
| _4America August 2021 I contracted full blown covid-19 that I caught from a vaccinated elderly woman. I took ivermectin the next day after throwing up, high fever, extremely sore throat and my lungs were starting to fail. Within 20 minutes I started to feel better and am here today. I’m 64 | ivermectin | Fever, Sore throat |
| Sure, I am 62 years old and I live in Washington Illinois. I have had both Moderna vaccine shots, and both booster shots. Never had covid, never even felt sick in the last 2 years. I dont think I even had a cold in 2 years. | moderna vaccine | Coldness, Cold, Sickness |
| In a moment of weakness, I got the Moderna vaccine. Four days after the second shot, i started losing my balance and falling several times a week. Unfortunately, I can’t undo it. | moderna vaccine | Fall, Weakness |
| Comirnaty vaccine:
Headache Joint aches Muscle aches Pain at the injection site Tiredness Chills Fever Swelling at the injection site |
pfizer vaccine | Ache, Chills, Fever, Headache, Joint ache, Muscle ache, Pain, Swelling, Tiredness |
| I took the Moderna vaccine 10 months ago. Two weeks after I started having non-stop tachycardia. 3 months later symptoms got worst that I was unable to get up from bed. About a month ago I found out that my pericardium is damaged and my heart is partially herniating. I’m sick! | moderna vaccine | Sickness |
| Yikes! First COVID in 2020 left me with horribly sore joints for 9 1/2 months but the 2nd Moderna vaccine nearly killed me….ended up in emerg with pericarditis – 10 days of severe chest pain.
Just had echocardiogram. No damage thank God. |
moderna vaccine | Chest pain, Pain |
| lmao dude its a joke ive had covid and no vaccine i took ivermectin and my flu symptoms went away took tylenol for my fever i was fine the next week as long as i took tylenol smell came back after a month | ivermectin | Fever, Flu, Flu symptoms |
| _a_u _2626 Comirnaty vaccine:
Headache Joint aches Muscle aches Pain at the injection site Tiredness Chills Fever Swelling at the injection site |
pfizer vaccine | Ache, Chills, Fever, Headache, Joint ache, Muscle ache, Pain, Swelling, Tiredness |
| Used myself as a guinea pig when covid hit me and went with the horse paste ivermectin. 2 doses and 28hrs later, fever and symptoms gone and back feeling 100%. The actual flu i had 4 years earlier was exponentially worse. Sinus infections have hit me harder. All a big lie. | ivermectin | Fever, Flu, Infection, Sinus infection, Sinusitis |
| Welp after my second Pfizer vaccine I have had Distal Clavicle osteolysis, an annular tear in my l4-l5, and a torn meniscus in my left knee. Been lifting for 6 years never had an injury that lasted more than a week. Now within 3-4 months, I have had 3 life-altering injuries. | pfizer vaccine | Tearfulness |
| I ended up getting Covid from a vaccinated family. Was sick till I took ivermectin. Felt better the next day. Lol. Nobody believed me at first… | ivermectin | Sickness |
| Yes, I retweeted several of your post. I’ve Been injured by the Moderna Vaccine also. Arthritis symptoms in my shoulders hands and legs. I went from healthy to barley able to walk in just a few months time! | moderna vaccine | Arthritis |
| I got the moderna vaccine and currently have had nasal congestion for a week now. I got it a while back from walgreens | moderna vaccine | Nasal congestion |
| _thats I had Pfizer vaccine and two Pfizer boosters. Only side effect from the second booster was a really sore arm and headache for about 12 hours. Side effects from vaccine and first booster were worse for me. | pfizer vaccine | Headache |
| __ I had a fever & Headache for three days after taking J&J vaccine <U+0001F62B> | johnson and johnson vaccine | Fever, Headache |
| I haven’t had my second booster. I’ve had the Moderna vaccine. I was sick for a week after I got my booster and the first two days I thought I was going to need to call the ambulance. Should I switch to Pfizer. Am 82. I still follow all protocols. | moderna vaccine | Sickness |
| Pfizer vaccine. My sister got very sick for a few days I had no bad experience. | pfizer vaccine | Sickness |
This classifier was trained on a set of tweets manually reviewed and tagged. The classifier was trained using GloVe, a pretrained word embedding layer.
References
Webpage created in R version 4.1.0 (2021-05-18) and R Studio (Version 1.4.1717) using the following packages: plotly, kableExtra, formattable, treemap, and wordpressr.
- C. Sievert. Interactive Web-Based Data Visualization with R, plotly, and shiny. Chapman and Hall/CRC Florida, 2020.
- Hao Zhu (2021). kableExtra: Construct Complex Table with ‘kable’ and Pipe Syntax. R package version 1.3.4.
- Kun Ren and Kenton Russell (2021). formattable: Create ‘Formattable’ Data Structures. R package version 0.2.1.
- Martijn Tennekes (2021). treemap: Treemap Visualization. R package version 2.4-3.
- Simit Patel (2021). wordpressr: An API Wrapper for WordPress Site APIs. R package version 0.1.0.
- WHO COVID-19 Dashboard. Geneva: World Health Organization, 2020. Available online: https://covid19.who.int/ (last cited: May 10, 2022).
- Hutto, C.J. & Gilbert, E.E. (2014). VADER: A Parsimonious Rule-based Model for Sentiment Analysis of Social Media Text. Eighth International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM-14). Ann Arbor, MI, June 2014.