‘Zero scent’: could negative reviews of smelly candles hint at a Covid surge?

"America's favorite brand of premium scented candles", Y ankee Candle offers over 600 fragrances, including "Spiced pumpkin" and "Warm apple pie", which are designed to fill your living room with homey holiday vibes.

There was a sharp rise in negative reviews about the candles before Thanksgiving 2020. The person wondered if it was a sign of the Covid wave. There are over 100,000 reviews on Amazon for the candles.

A correlation has been found between Covid cases and the number of reviews complaining that Yankee Candles don't have a smell. The rise of negative reviews mirrored official cases.

There has been a noticeable increase in reviews complaining that the candles don't work. Yankee Candle didn't reply to a request for comment.

The smell of the "Mountain Lodge" candle was too subtle, not like any other Yankee candle I've burned in the past 35 years, according to one reviewer. Doesn't fill a room. The person who bought the candle was excited to light it, but was disappointed.

As more Americans seem to be giving up on Covid measures, theYankee Candle reviews indicate that Covid is about to get a lot worse. It is necessary that you please.

The correlation between Yankee Candle reviews and Covid data was the subject of a peer-reviewed paper published earlier this year. He told me that he got involved accidentally after he got involved in analyzing online posts to predict political outcomes after he got involved in the candle debate. He submitted the study three weeks after he finished it.

According to his study, detecting the effect of Covid Anosmia on Amazon reviews using a statistical method, each additional 100,000 Covid cases resulted in an estimated 0.25% increase in the number of "no smell"

He wanted to make sure that the increase in reviews wasn't just due to people buying candles in the winter. There was no correlation between reviews and Covid cases or reviews and flu cases.

The relationship between reviewers complaining about "no smell" and official Covid data was somewhat weaker than the relationship between reviewers complaining about "no smell" and official data.

The study found no correlation between reviews and Covid cases and that the reviews only mirrored rather than predicted the data.

It looks like that has already changed. The Omicron wave data was added in June. He found that the parameters of the model had changed and that the reviews had become more Predictive of Covid cases than before.

The official accounts were lagging the actual cases and it was taking longer for these effects to show up. As a result, the reviews become more useful as signals.

The last four months of data were added to the analysis on Monday. While complaints for Yankee Candles have increased over the last couple months, the case counts for Covid have gone in a different direction.

The two curves that have been following each other for almost three years are starting to break apart. Yankee candles reviews are no longer able to predict official case counts because nobody is reporting them.

Maybe that is the reason that doctors like Caballero are looking at Yankee Candle reviews. He warned that the candle reviews are not something people should use to make decisions. Yankee Candle data isn't good if we have to rely on it. The person did not reply to the request for comment.

As more people hear about candles and public health, it may become less useful as a data source.

This method could serve as an indication that people are still trying to stay safe from Covid at a time when they are ready to give up.

A reviewer said that the scent of the candles was so strong that he couldn't walk within 50 feet of a display without feeling like a pumpkin pie. You have Covid if you can't smell it. Get tested, booster, and mask up.