Study finds Plano is second in the nation for COVID-19 stress – The Dallas Morning News

Plano is the nations second most stressed-out city when it comes to worrying about COVID-19, according to a study by Babylon, Inc.

Babylon, a digital health care company, came to that conclusion by analyzing posts on Twitter. The tweets were gathered from May 14 to May 18 and then analyzed using a program that detects stress in text.

According to Babylons analysis, 40.7 percent of tweets from Plano showed high levels of stress. That earned the city the number two ranking in the nation. Stockton, California came in first with 43.7 percent. Forty percent of tweets from Naperville, Illinois indicated high levels of stress, earning it the third spot.

No other Texas cities were in the top 10 and the state did not register in the top ten most stressed states, which was led by Wyoming.

The coronavirus pandemic is undoubtedly causing stress for millions of people across the US, but after analyzing Twitter to tap into local consciousness around the virus, weve found that some states and cities are much more stressed than others, Babylons study states.

Each tweets each contained at least one or more words relating to COVID-19 such as quarantine, corona, virus, COVID, self-isolation, social distancing, pandemic, epidemic, vaccine, mask, PPE (personal protective equipment, ventilator, antibody and antibodies.

The level of stress was determined by a tool called TensiStrength, which was developed by Mike Thelwall, professor of information technology at Wolverhampton University in the United Kingdom. TensiStrength estimates the stress levels in short texts based on the classification of words in the text related to stress, frustration, anxiety, anger and negativity.

The tweets that were analyzed came were from the top five most populated cities for each state in the US, according to Babylon. Also included were the top 100 most populated cities in the country.

The top three stressed-out states, based on their tweets, were Wyoming (40.1 percent), Delaware (38.8) and Mississippi (38.7). Texas was not in the top 10.

In all, more than 2.5 million tweets were collected and 155,177 were included in the final analysis, according to the study.

A city of nearly 300,000, Plano has 684 active cases of COVID-19 and 253 recoveries as of Tuesday afternoon. Ten people in Plano have died from the illness. The citys website has a COVID-19 webpage that frequently updates the number of cases and other related information.

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Study finds Plano is second in the nation for COVID-19 stress - The Dallas Morning News