Exploring People’s Reaction and Perceived Issues of the COVID-19 Pandemic at Its Onset

The experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic has varied considerably from individual-to-individual. Little is known about the changes in the level of experience general people went through during the first few months after the coronavirus (COVID-19) was declared as a Pandemic. This longitudinal qualitative study explores the general public’s reports of their experience with the COVID-19 Pandemic during its early stage. An online survey was conducted using a convenience/snowball sampling technique in March and again in May 2020, where North American adults with at least a college-degree, and female majority, shared their experiences with the COVID-19 Pandemic in response to an open-ended question, apart from completing questionnaires assessing transitional impact and psychological well-being. Open responses were first content analyzed to identify themes most commonly reported, and then, the quantitative analysis examined the reliability of the changes of themes between the two-time points. Text-analysis of the open-responses from the two waves identified seven themes, namely emotional response, social contact, virus-infected, financial impact, impact on plans, disease, and non-disease related concern, as well as social-distance. These themes indicated that, (a) people were distressed and having negative affective thoughts; (b) they spoke more about their plans-and-goals that were affected by the Pandemic than their financial condition; (c) people mostly used digital platforms to maintain contact with their social network, although they preferred face-to-face interactions; (d) they spoke more about the infection experienced by people in general than infection experienced by themselves and individuals they know. Surprisingly, (e) people mentioned more about the way the Pandemic had disrupted their day-to-day activities than the disease-related health concern. Finally, (f) most of the respondents approved of the practice of social distancing while some expressed its negative or neutral effect on their social lives. The quantitative measure determined that as time passed, people’s experience with the Pandemic became quite different as people talked more about getting infected, and their affected goals-and-plans. We concluded with a remark that this Pandemic would most likely leave an impression on people’s lives and that these online comment-style responses might provide us with insights into people’s perspectives as the Pandemic unfolds, helping us in understanding the uniqueness of the Pandemic experience of individuals for an effective tailored intervention to protect their well-being during a health-crisis.