Argentina and Venezuela, the two countries where the word dollar is searched more on Google than coronavirus

Santiago Gomez

10/23/2020 10:21 AM

• Clarín.com

• Society

Updated 10/23/2020 10:21 AM

On Thursday, March 19, 2020, with the announcement of the first quarantine, the coronavirus settled permanently in Argentina.

From that day on, the pandemic became an obligatory topic of conversation.

However, it is not the only one.

Although the barrier of one million infected has been crossed and the daily deaths continue to increase, in the last 30 days a striking fact occurred:

.

And it is not by chance ...

Three months ago, the blue dollar already had a substantial difference with the official one (89.25 versus 65.46 pesos), but it was still far from the current gap, of 140% and with the parallel dollar at 190 pesos.

That is why, since then, in Argentina a unique phenomenon began to occur: that the term "dollar" was googled in almost the same proportion as "coronavirus".

But since September 16, everything changed.

Or rather, the "dollar" passed over the "coronavirus".

That Wednesday, the

And this is demonstrated by Google Trends, the tool that allows you to measure the interest linked to a term or word and also compare it with up to four others.

And that although it does not show the number of total searches, it has an index that goes from 0 to 100, in which 100 indicates the maximum popularity of a term.

This is exactly where the "dollar" got that day.

And although it then fell, it never fell behind "coronavirus" again.

Since the Government strengthened the stocks, the dollar took a leap in Argentina.

In Argentina, terms such as "weather" and "pool" are historically a trend due to the large volume of searches they have.

The "dollar", badly that the Government, too.

In this 2020 coronavirus was added and in a short time it became a strong indicator.

Although that, in the last month, was modified.

The last peak of searches for "coronavirus", in fact, occurred on July 26, when the Government of the City of Buenos Aires, headed by Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, had enabled daily recreational outings for children under 16 years of age, accompanied of a responsible adult person.

And it was also the date that lawyers and public accountants would return to work.

At that time, the term "coronavirus" had obtained 35 points on the scale of 0 to 100 of Google Trends.

Later, the "dollar" began its overwhelming growth.

What were the top dollar searches in the last three months?

Those referring to the acquisition of green tickets.

"How do I know if I can buy dollars?", Who can't buy dollars? "," How do I know if I can buy dollars? "," Who can buy dollars? "And" Anses, buy dollars "make up the top five of the queries.

One of the peculiarities of this change in "habit" is that the Argentine phenomenon is unique.

It is not repeated almost anywhere on the planet.

Why?

Simple: in many countries people are not aware of the dollar or, at least, they are not used to living with economic crises like those of these lands. 

There is an exception and it is not accidental.

It is about

And except between March 13 and April 18, when Nicolás Maduro decreed a state of emergency in the face of the first confirmed cases of the virus, the US currency reigns supreme in Google searches.

Except at the beginning of the pandemic, in Venezuela the dollar was always more sought after than the coronavirus.

Known as "black dollar",

.

Oh, and a peculiarity that also helps to understand its high search volume: people find out that information on encrypted pages or on social networks, since the media do not publish the value for fear of being fined or blocked.

Neither more nor less the same that Luis D'Elía proposed for Argentina a few hours ago.