We incorporate location - specific COVID-19 case and death counts into our analyses , as well as counts for the US as a whole . Such data represent immediate indicators of COVID-19 severity and are likely the factors driving Google searches for masks , hand sanitizer , and disinfectants . Although case fatality rates and the prevalence are epidemiologically better indicators of the severity and the transmissibility of the virus spreading in communities , at the time of the study , news outlets were presenting both the number of deaths and the confirmed cases separately , which were driving the public perception about the risk associated with COVID-19 . Therefore , for each state and city considered in the study , daily cases and death counts are obtained from New York Times data repository and used . 3 Fig . 4 shows the COVID-19 daily cases and deaths at the three locations of interest as a time series .