ABSTRACT
The outbreak of the novel Coronavirus in late 2019 brought severe devastation to the world. The pandemic spread across the globe, infecting more than ten million people and disrupting several businesses. Although social distancing and the use of protective masks were suggested all over the world, the cases seem to rise, which led to worldwide lockdown in different phases. The rampant escalation in the number of cases, the global effects, and the lockdown may have a severe effect on the psychology of people. The emergency protocols implemented by the authorities also lead to increased use in the number of multimedia devices. Excessive use of such devices may also contribute to psychological disorders. Hence, hence it is necessary to analyze the state of mind of people during the lockdown. In this paper, we perform a sentiment analysis of Twitter data during the pandemic lockdown, i.e., two weeks and four weeks after the lockdown was imposed. Investigating the sentiments of people in the form of positive, negative, and neutral tweets would assist us in determining how people are dealing with the pandemic and its effects on a psychological level. Our study shows that the lockdown witnessed more number positive tweets globally on multiple datasets. This is indicative of the positivity and optimism based on the sentiments and psychology of Twitter users worldwide. The study will be effective in determining people's mental well-being and will also be useful in devising appropriate lockdown strategies and crisis management in the future.
ABSTRACT
Corona viruses are a large family of viruses that are not only restricted to causing illness in humans but also affect animals such as camels, cattle, cats, and bats, thus affecting a large group of living species. The outbreak of Corona virus in late December 2019 (also known as COVID-19) raised major concerns when the outbreak started getting tremendous. While the first case was discovered in Wuhan, China, it did not take long for the disease to travel across the globe and infect every continent (except Antarctica), killing thousands of people. Since it has become a global concern, different countries have been working toward the treatment and generation of vaccine, leading to different speculations. While some argue that the vaccine may only be a few weeks away, others believe that it may take some time to create the vaccine. Given the increasing number of deaths, the COVID-19 has caused havoc worldwide and is a matter of serious concern. Thus, there is a need to study how the disease has been propagating across continents by numbers as well as by regions. This study incorporates a detailed description of how the COVID-19 outbreak started in China and managed to spread across the globe rapidly. We take into account the COVID-19 outbreak cases (confirmed, recovered, death) in order to make some observations regarding the pandemic. Given the detailed description of the outbreak, this study would be beneficial to certain industries that may be affected by the outbreak in order to take timely precautionary measures in the future. Further, the study lists some industries that have witnessed the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on a global scale.
