Buckingham Palace recently announced that Queen Elizabeth II is currently battling COVID-19, the latest in a difficult past few months for the monarch. While she is reported to have only mild cold-like symptoms, she is apparently continuing to execute “light duties”.
Queen Elizabeth II has tested positive for the coronavirus, Buckingham Palace announced Sunday. The British monarch is experiencing “mild cold like symptoms,” the palace said, but is expecting to continue “light duties” at Windsor over the coming week. https://t.co/uY2Lv37GUd
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 20, 2022
The news broke Sunday morning, and just since midnight GMT on Sunday, there have been 613,640 mentions of the queen’s name across social media. Those mentions skyrocketed throughout Sunday, reaching more than 402K mentions, as people around the world took in the news.
Top themes on social media include the phrases “God save the Queen” as well as “speedy recovery.” As with many COVID-19 related topics, sentiment remains split, with nearly 60% of the mentions being coded as positive. However, as many people tweet support, negatively valanced words and phrases describing COVID itself may skew the machine-learning.
That said, with how polarizing the monarchy and much of British politics in general has been in recent years, certainly sentiment remains all over the board. Some Tweets discuss the implications of a 95-year-old COVID patient continuing to work, despite her age and illness, and what that says to everyday citizens who do not have the resources and support system the queen does. Others are using the moment to discuss and critique other leaders like Prime Minister Boris Johnson and First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, especially as Johnson ended COVID-19 restrictions in the United Kingdom just today. Perhaps his timing could have been a little better.
Following a tumultuous year that saw the death of Prince Philip, the ongoing legal drama surrounding Prince Andrew’s sexual assault charges, Harry and Meghan stepping away from royal duties, and health woes that prompted the queen to withdraw from multiple events and even spend time in the hospital, it’s no wonder social traffic encompasses many themes and sentiments of discussion from people around the world.
Even Nicki Minaj offered up well wishes, from one queen to another:
God save THE QUEEN.
Sending my love & respect to The Queen & her palace.
Wishing you a speedy recovery. 🇬🇧
— Nicki & The Barbz
— Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ) February 21, 2022
Americans are offering up posts aplenty, having mentioned the queen 97.6K times. Also unsurprisingly, the United Kingdom comes in a close second in mention volume, with 84.2K. Other former dominions or current commonwealth realms like Canada (14.6K mentions), India (11.3K mentions), and Australia (7.5K mentions) round out the top-five nations of discussion.
Meanwhile a search for the terms “queen AND covid” returns 257,209 mentions in the same time window. While much of this content also critiques Boris Johnson’s COVID protocol, this more-focused traffic demonstrates the high level of concern many people feel toward the queen, conveyed in a map of the most-used emojis: the praying hands emoji, along with the British flag and crown, dominate the visual landscape.
Author: Kayleigh Jackson
