Department of Economics, Statistics and Finance, University of Calabria, Calabria, Italy.
Institute of Management, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2021 Jan 25;11(1):2147. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-81333-1.
We analyze data from Twitter to uncover early-warning signals of COVID-19 outbreaks in Europe in the winter season 2019-2020, before the first public announcements of local sources of infection were made. We show evidence that unexpected levels of concerns about cases of pneumonia were raised across a number of European countries. Whistleblowing came primarily from the geographical regions that eventually turned out to be the key breeding grounds for infections. These findings point to the urgency of setting up an integrated digital surveillance system in which social media can help geo-localize chains of contagion that would otherwise proliferate almost completely undetected.
我们分析了来自 Twitter 的数据，以揭示 2019-2020 年冬季欧洲 COVID-19 疫情爆发的预警信号，此时距离首次公布本地感染源的消息还有一段时间。我们的研究结果表明，在多个欧洲国家，人们对肺炎病例的担忧程度出人意料地上升。这些警示信号主要来自后来成为感染主要滋生地的地理区域。这些发现表明，迫切需要建立一个综合的数字监控系统，其中社交媒体可以帮助定位传染病链，否则这些传染病链将几乎完全未被察觉地扩散。
