Coronavirus is more popular than sex (except in South Africa)
I was wanting a way of judging just how serious the coronavirus outbreak is in Iran. Alas government figures are not to be trusted. And figures from other sources - mostly anti-government blogs and the like - are also not to be trusted (as they have an agenda).
I went for the old fall-back. Google Trends.
Here is the google trends for coronavirus in Iran. It is clearly skyrocketing.
Okay - but this does not help me. I needed something to judge it against.
I figured that it would need to be something that was searched for a lot. So I went for the staple: sex.
Here is coronavirus vs sex in Iran.
I am beginning to conclude that coronavirus is more popular than sex (at least as a search topic).
It sounds pretty serious.
So I thought I should benchmark it.
I figured the British are likely to be big searchers of sex. Maybe I am mistaken - but there seems something desperately English-schoolboy about googling "sex".
Yep - coronavirus is more popular than sex in the UK too.
And so it was with almost every jurisdiction I tried.
Except South Africa.
Sex is more popular than coronavirus in South Africa.
Is that because the South Africans are really into sex or that they are not scared of coronavirus?
I have no idea.
Not all research is productive.
John