by The earliest days of the Coronavirus Pandemia were many things: disturbing, frightening and in some cases inspiring. They were also incredibly confusing.
Faced with all this uncertainty, many people watched the internet for clarity. Google search data from March 2020 offers a window on some of the most urgent questions about the heads of Americans during this time, from whether Covid could live on surfaces to what exactly, Tiger king went all the way.
Here is a look at what we were looking for at the start of the pandemic.
When Covid forced the nation for the first time to close, scientists crawled to understand how it was spread. In mid -March 2020, research was released that suggests that objects or surfaces can be an important source of transmission. In that guidance, people wondered if they should disinfect their mail, wash their groceries or wash everything that came in from the outside world. We now know that COVID is mainly transmitted by drops that release infected people in the air when they breathe, speak or sneeze. It is not impossible to catch the touch of a surface with the living virus on it, but it is much less likely than initially feared.
COVID-related lockdowns sent a shock wave through the American economy, so that millions of suddenly inactive American employees wondered how they could meet. At the end of March 2020, the congress assumed an economic stimulation package of $ 2.2 trillion that, under the many provisions, a plan included in stimulus checks worth $ 1,200 per person and an extra $ 500 for their children. This was the first of three rounds of stimulus payments, with later episodes in December 2020 and March 2021.
A silver lining of Covid Lockdowns is that many people were with an enormous amount of free time to flow into their cultural obsessions. No work of entertainment is an example of that trend better than Tiger king. The documentary series from Netflix about former so -called Meekeer and condemned Felon Joe Exotic was a sensation after it was released at the end of March 2020. It ended the year as the fourth most viewed original series of 2020, with more than 15 billion total minutes streamed, according to Nielsen.
One of the odening aspects of the first weeks of the pandemic was an abrupt shortage of toilet paper in stores throughout the country. Although it was often characterized as the result of hoarding at the time, researchers have since argued that it is more accurate to say that the deficiency was caused by a self -convincing cycle of “panic purchases” by people who were convinced that they had to hit toilet paper because it was so scarce.
At the beginning of March, the Surgeon General Jerome Adams then posted a message on Twitter in which the audience begged to “stop masks!” Because, he argued, they were ‘not effective’ to the general public and medical employees they desperately needed to take care of sick patients. As scientists have gained a better understanding of how the virus is spreading in the coming weeks, that image began to change. Towards the end of the month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention weighed whether they should advise the audience to wear masks when they were outside. Ultimately, designer cloth masks and more effective masks for medical quality would become available on a large scale, but at that time the only option was for many people to make their own.
National business closures led to an explosion of the number of Americans who had no work without work. The unemployment rate rose from only two months from only 3.5% to 14.8%. That led to a huge increase in the number of people who made unemployment benefits. Given the extraordinary circumstances, the congress made the unemployment system much more generous, including adding an extra $ 600 in weekly benefits.
At the same time, much of the American workforce without work was forced, whose jobs could be carried out remotely, had to scramble to find out how to be productive while working from home. In many cases, that meant learning how to use Zoom. In the video conference platform, the user base of only 10 million in early 2020 to more than 200 million only three months later. Products such as Zoom have made it so manageable that a large part of the external employees has still not returned to the office – and maybe never go back.
Making sandwiches at home had such an extraordinary moment during the pandemic that sourdough bread still remains one of the sustainable cultural test stones of the Lockdown era. It seemed as if every other person was talking about the state of his starter or conspiracy to acquire flower from a secret source. There is no clear answer why sourdough, from all possible ways we could have spent our time, became a national obsession. Perhaps it was the comfort to work with our hands, the satisfaction to create something at a time when everything came to a halt or the simple fact that people were worried about where they would get their bread. Whatever the reason, Sourdough still has a special place on the plates of the Americans.
March 11, 2020, is often cited when the day that the pandemic became ‘real’ for the most part of America. One of the most shocking moments that took place that day was news that actor Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, had tested positively on the virus while playing in Australia. At this early stage, most people did not know that someone who was confirmed that he contracted the virus, so the announcement of the beloved actor was perhaps the first time that someone touched with whom they felt a personal bond. Fortunately, Hanks and Wilson have only experienced minor symptoms before they fully recovered. Hanks would later describe himself as a ‘celebrity canal in the Coronavirus coal mine’ and argue for Americans to ‘do your part’ to prevent the virus from spreading.
