Yankee Candle reviews on Amazon may be an indicator of COVID's surge nationwide.
Some customers who recently purchased from the scented-candle brand using Amazon are flooding the site with negative reviews that claim the candles have a barely noticeable scent or no scent at all. Reviewers gave the candles five stars and described the scent as reminiscent of Christmas trees, but others said they couldn't smell anything or could only smell burning wax.
I've bought this candle before, and the scent would fill the room. The one barely has a scent. The Yankee Candle's scent was reviewed on December 20.
Unless you faceplant into the glass vessel, there is no scent. Another review wrote on December 19 that they burned it for eight hours.
Customers may have lost their sense of smell because of the candles.
One of the defining symptoms of COVID is the loss of smell. Some people are able to smell again after recovering from COVID, but others are unable to smell for months or even a year.
The top three Yankee Candles on Amazon were tracked by an assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University. The Omicron variant led to a new wave of COVID cases in the US.
December 22, 2021.
Yankee Candle did not respond to Insider's request for comment on the reviews.
This isn't the first time candle reviews have predicted a surge in the number of infections. The Washington Post's Christopher reported that a researcher at a college found that reviews of the top scented candles on Amazon dropped between January 2020 and November 2020 with the proportion of reviews claiming the candles had no scent tripling.
The data seems to be evidence of a surge, but it shouldn't be treated like a scientific study, warned both Beauchamp and Petrova.
"I wouldn't take this seriously," he said. There seems to be a seasonal surge in 'no smell' each winter.
