Table 6:
Most frequently mentioned (normalized) symptoms in the COVID19 tweet dataset listed with an example mention. All tweets have been paraphrased to preserve anonymity.
| Normalized Symptom | Perc of all symptoms | Example of symptom mention with span highlighted |
|---|---|---|
| Malaise | 13.70% | I’m sick and googling if I have a cold or coronavirus. |
| Cough | 11.33% | For the last 4 days I’ve had a runny nose and a tickling cough at night. |
| Pyrexia | 10.15% | Someone told me u normally dont run a high fever with pneumonia plus I’ve had a headache the whole time. |
| Pneumonia | 3.93% | My 15 year old has had a fever and dry cough for a week. Today he tested positive for pneumonia. |
| Influenza | 3.70% | I’m not sure yet if I will test positive for coronavirus, but I do know that I had the flu in mid-Dec. |
| Dyspnoea | 3.26% | So today I find out if what brought me in with bad breathing issues and a high fever is coronavirus. |
| Pain | 2.81% | Have someone in my house who is more than likely infected with the coronavirus. They’re an er doctor and they’ve come down with a 102 degree fever and body aches. |
| Oropharyngeal pain | 2.59% | Yup. I have GERD which means that I have a sore throat and shortness of breath most days. |
| Fatigue | 2.15% | Since a week or so into isolation: Sore throat, GI, dry cough, low fever, fatigue, all mild, spread between us. |
| Headache | 1.63% | SAME AF! then my anxiety starts making me think the headache is coronavirus, which makes my anxiety 50x worse. |
| Bronchitis | 1.26% | I was denied testing multiple times because I didn’t have a fever AND because I have history of bronchitis and pneumonia so I wasn’t a priority test. |
| Asthma | 1.19% | When they tested me I had the flu, viral pneumonia, and viral sepsis. Now I am asthmatic and have 2 inhalers. |
| Anxiety | 1.19% | Since someone told me I was exposed to covid-19, I’ve realized lots of covid symptoms overlap with anxiety. Shortness of breath, nausea, headache, dizziness. |
| Chest pain | 0.96% | Wife had fever, chest pain, cough. Quarantined in our bedroom for 2 weeks. Never able to get a test. A week into the quarantine, she mentioned a weird kind of athletes foot…but more painful and burning. Looked JUST like this. #covidtoes |