Changes in Public Response Associated With Various COVID-19 Restrictions in Ontario, Canada: Observational Infoveillance Study Using Social Media Time Series Data.

BACKGROUND: News media coverage of antimask protests, COVID-19 conspiracies, and pandemic politicization has overemphasized extreme views but has done little to represent views of the general public. Investigating the public's response to various pandemic restrictions can provide a more balanced assessment of current views, allowing policy makers to craft better public health messages in anticipation of poor reactions to controversial restrictions. OBJECTIVE: Using data from social media, this infoveillance study aims to understand the changes in public opinion associated with the implementation of COVID-19 restrictions (eg, business and school closures, regional lockdown differences, and additional public health restrictions, such as social distancing and masking). METHODS: COVID-19-related tweets in Ontario (n=1,150,362) were collected based on keywords between March 12 and October 31, 2020. Sentiment scores were calculated using the VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner) algorithm for each tweet to represent its negative to positive emotion. Public health restrictions were identified using government and news media websites. Dynamic regression models with autoregressive integrated moving average errors were used to examine the association between public health restrictions and changes in public opinion over time (ie, collective attention, aggregate positive sentiment, and level of disagreement), controlling for the effects of confounders (ie, daily COVID-19 case counts, holidays, and COVID-19-related official updates). RESULTS: In addition to expected direct effects (eg, business closures led to decreased positive sentiment and increased disagreements), the impact of restrictions on public opinion was contextually driven. For example, the negative sentiment associated with business closures was reduced with higher COVID-19 case counts. While school closures and other restrictions (eg, masking, social distancing, and travel restrictions) generated increased collective attention, they did not have an effect on aggregate sentiment or the level of disagreement (ie, sentiment polarization). Partial (ie, region-targeted) lockdowns were associated with better public response (ie, higher number of tweets with net positive sentiment and lower levels of disagreement) compared to province-wide lockdowns. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrates the feasibility of a rapid and flexible method of evaluating the public response to pandemic restrictions using near real-time social media data. This information can help public health practitioners and policy makers anticipate public response to future pandemic restrictions and ensure adequate resources are dedicated to addressing increases in negative sentiment and levels of disagreement in the face of scientifically informed, but controversial, restrictions.

Did the UK COVID-19 Lockdown Modify the Influence of Neighbourhood Disorder on Psychological Distress? Evidence From a Prospective Cohort Study.

Background: National lockdown in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic severely restricted the mobility of residents and increased time spent in their residential neighbourhoods. This is a unique opportunity to understand how an exogenous factor that reduces mobility may influence the association between neighbourhood social environment and mental health. This study investigates whether the COVID-19 lockdown may modify the effect of neighbourhood disorder on psychological distress. Methods: We tracked changes in psychological distress, using the UK household longitudinal survey across the pre-COVID and lockdown periods in 16,535 adults. Neighbourhood disorder was measured along two subscales: social stressors and property crime. Fixed-effects regression was used to evaluate whether the widespread reduction in mobility modifies the association between the subscales of neighbourhood disorder and psychological distress. Results: The effect of neighbourhood social stressors on psychological distress was stronger in the lockdown period compared to the pre-COVID period. Compared to the pre-COVID period, the effect of being in neighbourhoods with the highest social stressors (compared to the lowest) on psychological distress increased by 20% during the lockdown. Meanwhile, the effect of neighbourhood property crime on mental health did not change during the lockdown. Conclusion: The sudden loss of mobility as a result of COVID-19 lockdown is a unique opportunity to address the endogeneity problem as it relates to mobility and locational preferences in the study of neighbourhood effects on health. Vulnerable groups who have limited mobility are likely more sensitive to neighbourhood social stressors compared to the general population.