A recent surge of Yankee Candle reviews published on Amazon protested the goods' lack of fragrance. Is this a sign that another COVID-19 spike is on the way? It's difficult to say. Although with formal case reports progressively undercounting, individuals are turning to alternative sources of data to measure patterns.
Jorge Caballero, a San Francisco Bay-based anesthesiologist that has been tracking coronavirus-related patterns on his prevalent Twitter profile, wrote on Twitter screenshots of the latest one-star Amazon reviews for Yankee fragranced candles on Sunday, claiming that "Yankee Candle feedbacks appear to suggest that COVID is set to surge suddenly."
That spontaneous tweet generated a flow of laughs, but it has subsequently become proven by scientific research: there is a link between Covid instances and the number of reviews claiming that Yankee Candles don't smell. In early 2022, the surge in bad evaluations paralleled the rise in official case counts.
Caballero's tweet highlighted the work of Nick Beauchamp, a Northeastern University political science professor as well as a statistician who released a peer-reviewed article online this year concerning the link between Yankee Candle rating and Covid statistics. Beauchamp, whose primary work involves studying online comments to forecast political processes, told that he became engaged by mistake upon tweeting about the candles during Christmas break and becoming viral: "I thought, I should do this. So he finished the research and delivered it three weeks later - "quicker than I'd ever prepared a paper," Caballero exclaimed, stated from a Guardian report.
COVID, Candle Statistics
Beauchamp tracked Yankee candle ratings from September 2018 until January 2021, controlling for seasonality overlapping of colds, cases of flu, and candle sales. He discovered that somehow a rise in COVID occurrences seems to anticipate a spike in "no smell" ratings: "For every 100,000 new covid-19 cases weekly in the US throughout the research period, the percentage of Yankee Candle reviews indicating the products seemed to have no scent rose by 0.25 percent on average."
Most COVID-19 instances came before the unfavorable evaluations; however, when Beauchamp included information from the previous 6 months, along with the Omicron surge, there was a turnaround. "It is now anticipatory inside the sense that, in principle, these ratings provide us a tiny forewarning," he notes.
Despite discussing the study, though, Beauchamp is self-deprecating. He believes that his research has not revolutionized the science of COVID, scent, or social media; however, he acknowledges the possibility that he has discovered a newly untapped stream of data, according to an article from The Focus.
Scented candles on display at the Yankee Candle company store. In the absence of consistent COVID-19 data, some are looking to online candle reviews for signs of cases surging.
Current COVID Situation
On October 5, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discreetly stated that it will not immediately disclose accessible statistics on daily COVID-19 contexts and fatalities in the United States. Rather, commencing Oct. 20, the CDC expects to issue weekly regular updates, a radical difference from the statistics the organization had published for the duration of the pandemic.
Throughout months, the CDC's information has really been considered a significant underestimation due to how numerous individuals to test for COVID-19 at home and do not disclose their findings to the local health departments (who then notify the CDC).
Yankee Candles, according to Caballero on Twitter, have become an excellent method to "spot-check" patterns since Amazon combines ratings for different candle smells collectively, making it simpler to examine a larger amount of data. On the other hand, a spokesman for Yankee Candle was unable to immediately reply to a request for clarification, as per Philadelphia Inquirer.
Individuals have a higher probability to remain indoors together with others when the weather cools, instead of going to open-air places wherein COVID becomes less susceptible to spreading. Diseases are currently on the rise in Europe, which now has historically been such a forerunner to comparable rises in the US.
As per Beauchamp's assessment, "conventional measures, as well as sources of data, have now been reduced, and therefore individuals who are concerned about monitoring the still-ongoing COVID are now being pushed to explore additional indirect information," Beauchamp concludes.
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