When the pandemic first hit (and still to this day), government officials and policymakers were hit with an incredibly conflicting stance on how to navigate an entire nation through this hardship. In particular, there was a deep divide on whether or not to have a strict lockdown until cases and hospitalization rates were declining. Emanuel Ornelas, a professor at the Paulo School of Economics, explains one of the issues as weighing the economic costs against the marginal benefits of the lockdown. In theory, the optimal level of lockdown would be where the marginal economic costs (i.e. the additional economic cost of an additional day of lockdown) is equal to the marginal health benefits (i.e. the additional health benefit obtained from an additional day of lockdown) (Ornelas, 2020). This economic model, however, is incredibly simplistic, as it does not take into account any hybrid solutions nor does it provide an accurate measure of actual marginal benefits or costs. 

Taking this issue to the microcosm of each American household, people are divided on weighing the risks of going back to work versus staying at home. On the one hand, households stuck in lockdown can pose major threats to survival: without the ability to work, families are left with severe financial burdens that can impede access to food, electricity, or other necessities of a lockdown (Graham and Pinto, 2020). This can lead to a rapid decline in mental and/or physical health, which unfortunately then leads to “deaths of despair”(Graham and Pinto, 2020). On the other hand, households that continue to work can face explicit health risks by continuing person-to-person contact, which can surely prolong the length of the pandemic and exacerbate hospitalization and death rates. While this is just a simple summary of this deeply complex issue, it represents the general debates that took place on Twitter. To further analyze the varying perceptions-- particularly in relation to political stances-- we decided to compare and contrast the two hashtags, #NotDying4WallStreet and #ReopenAmerica. 

 

Fundamentally speaking, the two hashtags represent contrasting views: #reopenAmerica is in favor of a more laissez-faire approach to regulating person-to-person contact, while #NotDying4WallStreet proposes stricter regulations and a potential lockdown. When looking at the top 20 hashtags used along with each hashtag, almost all that were used are the same but in varying orders. For instance, the hashtag #TrumpDiesAmericansLie is one of the top five used for #NotDying4WallStreet, but for #ReopenAmerica is in the bottom tier. The hashtag #MAGA is also included in #ReopenAmerica but not #NotDying4WallStreet, which most likely correlates with a pro-Trump sentiment within these tweets. Lastly, #NotDying4WallStreet overall contains a lot more anti-Trump hashtages, such as #TrumpPlague, #TrumpVirus, #TrumpSlushFund, and #ArrestTrumpSaveLives. With this visualization, it can be seen that there is a strong political role in deepening the divide of this lockdown debate. 

 

To better understand the politics behind it, research shows that “about eight-in-ten Biden supporters (82%) say the coronavirus will be very important to their vote, compared with just 24% of Trump supporters'' and that “while voters who support Trump (84%) are more likely than Biden supporters (66%) to rate the economy as very important, far more Biden supporters say health care is very important (82% vs. 44% of Trump supporters)” (Dunn, 2020). From this, there seems to be a disproportionate emphasis on the coronavirus pandemic within Biden supporters, most likely pointing to the fact that they make up the bulk of those in support of a lockdown as well. This in turn points to user frustrations about what is important during this time, such as with Biden supports more likely prioritizing health and science and Trump supporters more likely prioritizing capitalism and the economy. While we did not dive into the actual content the tweets or user demographics, the political affiliations with each hashtag seem strongly implied. Further research can be done on the demographics of each group of supporters to analyze this intersection between politics and pandemic and what that can mean for certain communities and the level of burden they will inevitably take on as a result.