Risk perception about the covid-19 pandemic and its effect on self-medication practices in population of northwestern Mexico

Soto, Nissa Yaing Torres; Franco, Guillermo López; Soto, Norberto Alonso Torres; Roa, Alejandra A; Curiel, Alicia Monzalvo; Peña-Torres, Edgar Fernando; Armadillo, María de Lourdes Rojas

doi:10.15174/au.2022.3189

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 30 publications

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“…Based on psychometric models of health and crisis communication, existing studies have found publics' increased perception of their level of involvement to be an important factor influencing such communicative behaviors [30]. As personal involvement with COVID-19 was perceived or expected to be high, people would become increasingly concerned about treatment and medication information and resources [31,32].…”

Section: Topics About Personal Vs Social Risk Of Covid-19 Medication ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Topic and Trend Analysis of Weibo Discussions About COVID-19 Medications Before and After China’s Exit from the Zero-COVID Policy: Retrospective Infoveillance Study

Lan,

Ren,

et al. 2023

J Med Internet Res

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Background After 3 years of its zero-COVID policy, China lifted its stringent pandemic control measures with the announcement of the 10 new measures on December 7, 2022. Existing estimates suggest 90%-97% of the total population was infected during December. This change created a massive demand for COVID-19 medications and treatments, either modern medicines or traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Objective This study aimed to explore (1) how China’s exit from the zero-COVID policy impacted media and the public’s attention to COVID-19 medications; (2) how social COVID-19 medication discussions were related to existing model estimates of daily cases during that period; (3) what the diversified themes and topics were and how they changed and developed from November 1 to December 31, 2022; and (4) which topics about COVID-19 medications were focused on by mainstream and self-media accounts during the exit. The answers to these questions could help us better understand the consequences of exit strategies and explore the utilities of Sina Weibo data for future infoveillance studies. Methods Using a scrapper for data retrieval and the structural topic modeling (STM) algorithm for analysis, this study built 3 topic models (all data, before a policy change, and after a policy change) of relevant discussions on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. We compared topic distributions against existing estimates of daily cases and between models before and after the change. We also compared proportions of weibos published by mainstream versus self-media accounts over time on different topics. Results We found that Weibo discussions shifted sharply from concerns of social risks (case tracking, governmental regulations, etc) to those of personal risks (symptoms, purchases, etc) surrounding COVID-19 infection after the exit from the zero-COVID policy. Weibo topics of “symptom sharing” and “purchase and shortage” of modern medicines correlated more strongly with existing susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (SEIR) model estimates compared to “TCM formulae” and other topics. During the exit, mainstream accounts showed efforts to specifically engage in topics related to worldwide pandemic control policy comparison and regulations about import and reimbursement of medications. Conclusions The exit from the zero-COVID policy in China was accompanied by a sudden increase in social media discussions about COVID-19 medications, the demand for which substantially increased after the exit. A large proportion of Weibo discussions were emotional and expressed increased risk concerns over medication shortage, unavailability, and delay in delivery. Topic keywords showed that self-medication was sometimes practiced alone or with unprofessional help from others, while mainstream accounts also tried to provide certain medication instructions. Of the 16 topics identified in all 3 STM models, only “symptom sharing” and “purchase and shortage” showed a considerable correlation with SEIR model estimates of daily cases. Future studies could consider topic exploration before conducting predictive infoveillance analysis, even with narrowly defined search criteria with Weibo data.

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Section: Topics About Personal Vs Social Risk Of Covid-19 Medication ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Topic and Trend Analysis of Weibo Discussions About COVID-19 Medications Before and After China’s Exit from the Zero-COVID Policy: Retrospective Infoveillance Study

Lan,

Ren,

et al. 2023

J Med Internet Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Topic and Trend Analysis of Weibo Discussions About COVID-19 Medications Before and After China’s Exit from the Zero-COVID Policy: Retrospective Infoveillance Study (Preprint)

Lan,

Ren,

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BACKGROUND After 3 years of its zero-COVID policy, China lifted its stringent pandemic control measures with the announcement of the 10 new measures on December 7, 2022. Existing estimates suggest 90%-97% of the total population was infected during December. This change created a massive demand for COVID-19 medications and treatments, either modern medicines or traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). OBJECTIVE This study aimed to explore (1) how China’s exit from the zero-COVID policy impacted media and the public’s attention to COVID-19 medications; (2) how social COVID-19 medication discussions were related to existing model estimates of daily cases during that period; (3) what the diversified themes and topics were and how they changed and developed from November 1 to December 31, 2022; and (4) which topics about COVID-19 medications were focused on by mainstream and self-media accounts during the exit. The answers to these questions could help us better understand the consequences of exit strategies and explore the utilities of Sina Weibo data for future infoveillance studies. METHODS Using a scrapper for data retrieval and the structural topic modeling (STM) algorithm for analysis, this study built 3 topic models (all data, before a policy change, and after a policy change) of relevant discussions on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. We compared topic distributions against existing estimates of daily cases and between models before and after the change. We also compared proportions of weibos published by mainstream versus self-media accounts over time on different topics. RESULTS We found that Weibo discussions shifted sharply from concerns of social risks (case tracking, governmental regulations, etc) to those of personal risks (symptoms, purchases, etc) surrounding COVID-19 infection after the exit from the zero-COVID policy. Weibo topics of “symptom sharing” and “purchase and shortage” of modern medicines correlated more strongly with existing susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (SEIR) model estimates compared to “TCM formulae” and other topics. During the exit, mainstream accounts showed efforts to specifically engage in topics related to worldwide pandemic control policy comparison and regulations about import and reimbursement of medications. CONCLUSIONS The exit from the zero-COVID policy in China was accompanied by a sudden increase in social media discussions about COVID-19 medications, the demand for which substantially increased after the exit. A large proportion of Weibo discussions were emotional and expressed increased risk concerns over medication shortage, unavailability, and delay in delivery. Topic keywords showed that self-medication was sometimes practiced alone or with unprofessional help from others, while mainstream accounts also tried to provide certain medication instructions. Of the 16 topics identified in all 3 STM models, only “symptom sharing” and “purchase and shortage” showed a considerable correlation with SEIR model estimates of daily cases. Future studies could consider topic exploration before conducting predictive infoveillance analysis, even with narrowly defined search criteria with Weibo data.

show abstract

Risk perception about the covid-19 pandemic and its effect on self-medication practices in population of northwestern Mexico

Cited by 2 publications

References 30 publications

Topic and Trend Analysis of Weibo Discussions About COVID-19 Medications Before and After China’s Exit from the Zero-COVID Policy: Retrospective Infoveillance Study

Topic and Trend Analysis of Weibo Discussions About COVID-19 Medications Before and After China’s Exit from the Zero-COVID Policy: Retrospective Infoveillance Study

Topic and Trend Analysis of Weibo Discussions About COVID-19 Medications Before and After China’s Exit from the Zero-COVID Policy: Retrospective Infoveillance Study (Preprint)

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