Covid-19 Bulletin 30/03: Sleeping, Sport, and Surveys

According to the data, the Chinese and UK governments have done the best in getting their citizens on board. Italians and Americans are nearly evenly split on their opinion, while the French and Spanish are the least happy with their leaders.

Covid-19 will likely have profound effects on the political situation in many countries. How governments address the pandemic, and how successful they are at doing so, is going to influence voters in upcoming elections.

As it stands, the United States will be the first of these countries to conduct a general election. How Covid-19 will affect the result, let alone how they’ll even run it, is yet to be seen. We can bet politicians the world over will be watching even more carefully than usual though.

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Counting sheep: the rise of #cantsleep

With all that’s going on in the world, it wasn’t surprising when we woke up to find #cantsleep trending.

For over 400k unique authors, getting sleep in this pandemic is a problem. And according to The Sleep Health Foundation, it’s a pretty big one. News, social media, and a lack of routine all impact our sleep, which in turn increases stress and anxiety levels.

When we investigated the causes behind this trend, we found Covid-19 was having an impact. Between Jan 1 and Mar 29, there were 7k posts mentioning both a lack of sleep and the virus.

We found other issues being linked to a lack of sleep too. Anxiety came up 10k times, news fatigue 6k, and stress another 5k.

Of emotionally-categorized conversation, 47% of mentions were categorised as angry, with people raging against the state of the world. A lack of hope contributed to the 16% of sad mentions we found, while another 16% were fearful, with many worried about their friends and family.

We also found people are more likely to struggle to sleep as Sunday night turns into Monday morning. This will come as little surprise to the countless people whose work week starts on a Monday.

This data should be of interest to all companies, no matter what they sell or produce. Your employees are your life force and these issues will be affecting them. This is a prime time to check in with your HR department to ensure all is being done to look after the wellbeing of your workers.

Soccer’s new home: Belarus

Soccer matches the world over have been called off. No Premier League. No Champions League. No Euros. For millions of people soccer is more than an idle interest, it’s a passion. Now many of them are looking to find a replacement football fix.

Enter Belarus. The Eastern European country has yet to call off their soccer games. The country’s top league is still going, attracting thousands of spectators, online and off.

Usually Belarussian football gets little attention, but that’s all changed. The number of people discussing the topic has increased by 412% year-on-year.

There’s also been a big jump in press attention as publications report on the sudden interest.

Using BuzzSumo we found there were 132 articles on the subject published in March, with over 20k shares between them. Prior to this, there’s never been a month in the last year with more than 20 articles or 2k shares.

This means the league and its clubs are in a much better position sponsorship-wise, although it remains to be seen if anyone takes advantage. Few brands will want to associate themselves with what many would consider a dangerous and irresponsible situation.

Holiday lets flood the rental market

The number of long-term rental property listings have skyrocketed as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. With tourist numbers down, holiday property landlords are turning to the rental market to bring money in.

Using Consumer Research, we sought out conversations about holiday lets switching to long term rental properties, and the resulting falling rents taking place.

The US was our first stop. New York City had the most mentions of short-term rentals becoming long-term, with 164k, followed by Florida with 62k, then San Francisco with 58k.

In the UK, London had 27k mentions, followed by Glasgow and Edinburgh, with 21.8k and 24.7k mentions respectively.