2302: 2020 Google Trends

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2020 Google Trends

Title text: As the 'exotic animals in homemade aprons hosting baking shows' YouTube craze reached its peak in March 2020, Andrew Cuomo announced he was replacing the Statue of Liberty with a bronze pangolin in a chef's hat.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a BRONZE PANGOLIN STATUE. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This comic is another comic in a series of comics related to the 2020 pandemic of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19.

Randall wants to go back in time to show a 2019 person a Google Trends graph. The coronavirus has massively impacted everyone's lives and what they search for. This graph shows how people have been impacted, albeit in an awful representation.

All of these trends are attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• "Sewing machine" refers to people making their own cloth face masks.
• "Webcam" refers to the massive increase in virtual meetings and video conferencing.
• "Andrew Cuomo" is the governor of New York, the state hit hardest by the pandemic in the United States.
• "Flour" refers to an increase in baking due to people staying at home. This is also referred to in 2296: Sourdough Starter. The little lump at the end of November and December can probably be attributed to people baking for Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• A pangolin is a mammal found in Africa and Asia. This search term refers to the claim that the virus originated in wild animals sold in wet markets in Wuhan, China.

The title text is a possible "guess" by the 2019 person for these search terms having an increase together: a YouTube craze of exotic animals (which includes pangolins) in homemade aprons hosting baking shows which leads to a response by New York governor Andrew Cuomo.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[A line chart plotting the popularity of various search terms from May 2019 through April 2020: sewing machine (blue line), webcam (red), Andrew Cuomo (yellow), flour (green), and pangolin (purple). The yellow line starts at the bottom of the chart, and rises about halfway up at the end of March 2020 before decaying to about 20 percent by the end of April. The purple line starts at the bottom of the chart, and has a small lump in February 2020 and a slightly bigger lump in March 2020 before trending back down. The blue line starts at about 10 percent up the chart, and then spikes up to 50 percent at the beginning of April before decaying to 40 percent at the end of April. The red line starts at about 20 percent up the chart, has a small lump in September 2019, and then jumps up to 40 percent in March 2020 before trending back down. The green line starts at about 30 percent up the chart, has a small lump in December 2019, and then spikes up to the top of the chart at the end of March 2020.]

[Caption below comic:] I want to show someone from 2019 this Google Trends graph and watch them try to guess what happened in 2020.

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Discussion

The graph for US searches for those terms for the past year from Google Trends can be seen here: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2019-05-05%202020-05-04&geo=US&q=sewing%20machine,webcam,andrew%20cuomo,flour,pangolin

OK, now I want to see a Google Trends graph for the above exact search! John.Adriaan (talk) 01:00, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Here is the searches but done by topic instead of exact search (its generally recommended to do it this way) https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2019-05-05%202020-05-04&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F0llzx,%2Fm%2F0mynm,%2Fm%2F02pjpd,%2Fm%2F0fkw3,%2Fm%2F0dh5j

Anyone have any idea about the September spike and December bump in webcam searches? 162.158.74.93 22:49, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

The September spike seems to be due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dorian. This can be traced down by google trends when narrowing down the date range and looking at the top search phrases that hint at the Bahamas. 22:52, 4 May 2020 (UTC) --- The hurricane theory seems to agree with a similar spike in mid 2018, days before hurricane Florence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Florence as seen in https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2018-08-01%202018-10-01&geo=US&q=webcam. I'd hope webcams would last more than a year...

I agree. There's a spike for webcams every September since 2017, along with a small spike aligning with Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and a spike in October 2018 with Hurricane Michael. 162.158.78.104 00:03, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Why is the webcam search profile so different for worldwide vs. US? 172.68.132.229 23:36, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Is there a possibility that some of the September Spike in webcams is a (later in years than I'd expect, and surely quashed a bit by smartphones) sudden demand for Family Time with newly departed higher-education students? A modern equivalent remnant of the old September Madness that was at first boosted and then rendered moot by The Eternal September..? (But if it is hurricane season that drives it, and I'm not sure it would be, the fact that (for example) "In Hertford, Hereford, and (not-New) Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen" might explain why it isn't a worldwide driver.) 141.101.107.164 01:47, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

I would say it is exactly that. A Freshman off to college for the first time, and they and the parents want to make sure they can stay connected. -boB (talk) 20:50, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

RE: All the webcam speculation: There is a spike not due to people buying a webcam, but watching a webcam of the storm surge hitting. Keep in mind that "BEST WEBCAM TO TALK WITH GRANDCHILDREN" and "HURRICANE XYZ WEATHER WEBCAM" both contain the indicated search terms. I'm interpreting the comments above as the first scenario here, instead of the latter. OhFFS (talk) 15:04, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

GOOMHR! (damn, haven't wrote/read that in quite a while) - I was just checking random Google Trends few days ago and wondered what would people from the past think of it. Some examples (both positive and negative trends here): [1] (I especially like the "how to cook" one with its predictive spikes for the past few years). Those are better viewed one by one, instead on a single graph, though. BytEfLUSh (talk) 01:55, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Also: Why not a paper pangolin, or at least a paper chef's hat? [2] =) BytEfLUSh (talk) 03:44, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for spamming, but this is too much fun: [3] [4] BytEfLUSh (talk) 04:29, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Indeed it is! The pandemic shows up in the google trends for soooo many widely different categories. I had some fun creating several different plots that would be as confusing as possible without the appropriate context: Yeast, China, Netflix, football, cinema; delivery, test, hotel, how to, meeting; tour, bike, flight, alcohol, workout (note how bike and tour are usually correlated but diverge during the lockdowns); office chair, hockey, laptop, furlough, pasta; candle, adopt, barbecue, trip, clapping; restaurant, paris, italy, toilet paper, coffee Rebekka (talk) 06:39, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Technically there are a few people every year that are indeed from past years: Those that woke up from a long coma. Fabian42 (talk) 09:27, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

A non-coma version can be read in https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52332899 (not from a 2019 perspective; saw the start early this year, but did not realise it hadn't petered out into the expected obscurity). Didn't the Germany/similar version of Big Brother also have to deliberately break the news to the participants? Forgot to look that up, too. 162.158.159.82 13:37, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Should the explanation include some reason/event why the peaks begin when they do? Like "Sewing Machine" begins pretty late and I think that corresponds to the CDC changing from telling people "If you're not a healthcare worker, don't bother with masks just keep your distance from people" to "if you have to go out, wear a mask to minimize your chance of spreading the virus". The early rise of flour could be the combined effect of people who are stuck at home doing more baking, and the panic buying clearing out the grocery store shelves. Pangolin rose early and slowly, but dropped off before the end of march; speculation on exactly how the virus started in Wuhan would be more interesting before the virus is in your country, so as it spread the search interest changed over to topics that impact a person directly more than speculation.162.158.187.187 12:53, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

IIII is a clock error.172.69.63.173 23:12, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

People from China may have guessed it based on pangolin, as it was hit hard by SARS-CoV-1 virus in 2003, and there were already speculations that pangolin or other wild animals sold in markets got the virus and passed it to humans. COVID-19 is caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus and pangolins become a suspect again. History rhymes really hard this time. Lamty101 (talk) 08:02, 26 September 2023 (UTC)