Table 4.

Social issues: negative themes, descriptions, and corresponding sample comments.

Theme	Description	Sample comments
Wrong societal attitude	Blaming people’s wrong attitude as causing or fanning the spread (eg, disobeying instructions from governments and health care professionals and eating bats and wild animals)	“Cannot believe how irresponsible people are being in regard public health. We all have a duty of care to each other, please abide by the social distance rules”a (C4924) “...We are only going to die from our own arrogance if people keep going outside gathering, believing they will never get it or infect others...” (C2557)
Domestic violence	Rise in domestic violence cases in homes	“Of all women murdered with a gun in the US, half are killed by their intimate partners. COVID19 pandemic is causing a rise in domestic violence. Close the gun stores.” (C56) “...a police station in China received 162 reports of domestic violence in February compared to 47 for the same month in 2019. Advocates attribute this rise in cases to the lockdown.” (C100)
Harassment	Harassing and blaming people from certain countries, race, or religion as responsible for the COVID-19	“...stop being so racist against Northeastern state of India. We are not Corona. Get your damn information right. The most affected places with is not Northeast. Instead of being a racist and criticising others, why do not you be more careful?” (C1413) “An Asian American couple in Minnesota found a racist note taped to their front door blaming them for the coronavirus” (C921)

^aAll comments are included verbatim, including spelling and grammatical mistakes.