Describing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on alcohol-induced blackout tweets.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction and aims

COVID-19, considered a pandemic by the World Health Organization, overwhelmed hospitals in the USA. In parallel to the growing pandemic, alcohol sales grew in the USA, with people stockpiling alcohol. Alcohol-induced blackouts are one particularly concerning consequence of heavy drinking, and the extent to which blackout prevalence may change in the context of a pandemic is unknown. The purpose of the current study is to describe the prevalence of publicly available tweets in the USA referencing alcohol-induced blackouts prior to and during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Design and methods

We used Crimson Hexagon's ForSight tool to access all original English tweets written in the USA that referenced alcohol-related blackouts in 2019 and 2020. Using infoveillan

SUBMITTER: Ward RM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7675321 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature