Toilet paper, Tom Hanks and Tiger King: Here's what we were Googling at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic
The earliest days of the coronavirus pandemic were many things: disruptive, terrifying and — in some cases — inspiring. They were also incredibly confusing.
Faced with all of this uncertainty, many people looked to the internet for clarity. Google search data from March 2020 offers a window into some of the most pressing questions on the minds of Americans during this time, from whether COVID could live on surfaces to what, exactly, Tiger King was all about.
Here’s a look at what we were searching for at the beginning of the pandemic.
When COVID first forced the nation to shut down, scientists scrambled to understand how it was spread. Midway through March 2020, research was released suggesting that objects or surfaces could be a significant source of transmission. That guidance had people wondering whether they had to disinfect their mail, wash their groceries or sanitize anything that came in from the outside world. We now know that COVID is primarily transmitted through droplets that infected people release into the air when they breathe, speak or sneeze. It’s not impossible to catch it from touching a surface with the live virus on it, but it’s far less likely than initially feared.
COVID-related lockdowns sent a shockwave through the U.S. economy, leaving millions of suddenly idle American workers wondering how they would be able to make ends meet. In late March 2020, Congress passed a $2.2 trillion economic stimulus package that, among its many provisions, included a plan to send stimulus checks worth $1,200 per person and an additional $500 for their children. This was the first of three rounds of stimulus payments, with later installments coming in December 2020 and March 2021.
A silver lining of COVID lockdowns is that many people found themselves with an enormous amount of free time to pour into their cultural obsessions. No work of entertainment exemplifies that trend better than Tiger King. Netflix’s documentary series about former zookeeper and convicted felon Joe Exotic became a sensation after it was released in late March 2020. It ended the year as the fourth most-watched original series of 2020, with more than 15 billion total minutes streamed, according to Nielsen.
One of the odder aspects of the first weeks of the pandemic was an abrupt toilet paper shortage in stores across the country. Though 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 shortage was caused by a self-perpetuating cycle of “panic buying” by people who had become convinced that they had to stock up on toilet paper because it was so scarce.
In early March, then-Surgeon General Jerome Adams posted a message on Twitter begging the public to “STOP BUYING MASKS!” because, he argued, they were “NOT effective” for the general public and medical workers desperately needed them to care for sick patients. As scientists gained a better understanding of how the virus spreads over the following weeks, that view began to change. By the end of the month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was weighing whether to advise the public to wear masks when they were outside. Eventually designer cloth masks and more effective medical-grade masks would become widely available, but at the time the only option for many people was to make their own.
Nationwide business closures led to an explosion in the number of Americans who were out of work. The unemployment rate jumped from just 3.5% to 14.8% in the span of just two months. That led to a massive increase in the number of people who were filing for unemployment benefits. Given the extraordinary circumstances, Congress made the unemployment system much more generous, including adding an additional $600 to weekly benefits.
At the same time that much of the American workforce was forced out of work, those whose jobs could be performed remotely had to scramble to figure out how to be productive while working from home. That meant, in many cases, learning how to use Zoom. The videoconference platform saw its user base increase from just 10 million at the beginning of 2020 to more than 200 million just three months later. Products like Zoom made remote work so manageable that a huge share of remote workers still haven’t returned to the office — and may never go back.
At-home bread making had such an extraordinary moment during the pandemic that sourdough bread still remains one of the enduring cultural touchstones of the lockdown era. It seemed like every other person was talking about the state of their starter or was conspiring to acquire flour from some secret source. There’s no clear answer as to why sourdough, out of all of the potential ways we could have been spending our time, became a nationwide obsession. Maybe it was the comfort of working with our hands, the satisfaction of creating something at a time when everything was grinding to a halt or the simple fact that people were worried about where they would get their bread. Whatever the reason, sourdough still holds a special place on Americans’ plates.
March 11, 2020, is often cited as the day the pandemic became “real” for most of America. One of the most shocking moments that happened that day was news that actor Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, had tested positive for the virus while on set in Australia. At this early stage, most people did not know someone who had been confirmed to have contracted the virus, so the beloved actor’s announcement may have been the first time it touched someone they felt a personal connection to. Thankfully, Hanks and Wilson only experienced minor symptoms before making a full recovery. Hanks would later describe himself as a “celebrity canary in the coal mine for coronavirus” and advocate for Americans to “do your part” to prevent the virus from spreading.