“…Data were extracted at a daily frequency starting on January 17, 2020, the first date for which pandemic anxiety indexes were available, and ending on February 16, 2022, prior to the collapse of the Russian stock market following the invasion of Ukraine. Regarding the fear in the market and uncertainty, and following several recent studies on the pandemic ( Baig et al, 2021 , Cepoi, 2020 , Haroon and Rizvi, 2020a , Tan, 2021 , Umar and Gubareva, 2020 , Umar et al, 2021 ), we measured the level of relationship between stock market returns of G7 countries and BRICS and the fear created by COVID-19. For this purpose, RavenPack’ Infodemic, Media Coverage and Media Hype indexes were used for each country as proxies for pandemic anxiety.…”