How do Covid-19 lock-downs affect wine blog readership?

In short, negatively.

I have written once before about the Covid-19 pandemic (There seems to be a lot of public misunderstanding about the coronavirus). Most of what I said then is still true now, in hindsight.

However, there are number of quite significant things that have become obvious since then, with hindsight. The extent to which many people are asymptomatic is perhaps the biggest thing, because these people are unknowingly spreading the virus (SARS-CoV-2) to others. This is perhaps the main reason why we have a pandemic rather than a simple outbreak (such as with annual flu hot-spots) — it is estimated that anything up to 85% of cases (virus infections) have gone unreported (as the disease) in some countries.

This is an important point, given that a number of places are now starting to ease their quarantine restrictions, popularly known as lock-downs or shut-downs. These lock-downs have had very variable success at decreasing the rate of spread of the virus. For example, comparing countries near my home, they seem to have worked well in Norway and Finland, but much less well in the United Kingdom. Indeed, the UK has a worse infection rate than we have here in Sweden, where the quarantine strategies are voluntary rather than mandatory. The USA, of course, has an even worse infection rate than the UK.

The specialists are all warning of a resurgence of infections, as the successfully quarantined people (ie. never infected) come out from behind their locked doors and meet infectious situations (ie. people and places with the virus). This usually happens with infectious diseases, and so there is no reason to think it won’t happen this time, as well. It seems that people retain the virus in their bodies for anything up to 4-5 weeks after infection, rather than merely the 10 days or so during which they have disease symptoms.

This means that the virus is still circulating in our environment, even though many people are now immune (ie. they got the virus, and now have produced antibodies to it). This is why testing of asymptomatic people is seen as a key to our future response to the pandemic (for a wine-related report, see Coronavirus: asymptomatic testing for vineyard where worker tested positive).

Blog readership

Anyway, it is time to consider something that I have not seen reported, as yet, by bloggers. I keep a bit of an eye on the readership of my various blog posts, and it has been obvious that the lock-downs had a quite quick effect on the weekly number of page-views of my blog. If we exclude the possibility that (i) I suddenly started writing boring posts (which cannot be excluded completely), or that (ii) people are too busy reading about the economic, social and biological effects of viruses to have much time for wine blogs (which seems unlikely), or (iii) many of my readers have become ill (which would be very sad), then we might conclude that the drop in blog readership is due to changed social behavior by some of my previous readers.

Overall blog readership is shown in the first graph, which simply counts the total number of page-views for each of the past 7 months. The April readership is 78% of the average for the prior months. This is not too bad.

However, the most obvious effect is on the readership of individual posts. Most of my blog readers access each post on the day it is posted. Only a few of the posts continue to attract new readers thereafter. So, a graph of the page-views for each post since the beginning of the year is very revealing about weekly readership. This analysis provides data for 10 pre-virus posts and 8 post-virus posts, if we exclude the post that was actually about the virus itself (on March 23rd), rather than about wine.

If we compare the pre- and post-virus posts (next graph), then the readership of the latter is only 35% of the former, on average. This is a pretty serious drop in readership, as two-thirds of my regular readers have disappeared into the æther. (Mind you, this is slightly less than the estimated four-fifths drop in champagne sales.)

This dip among readers started during the first week of March, which does coincide with the first global effects of the coronavirus. Although lock-downs in the USA were not fully enforced until the end of March (except in North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming), most things started much earlier. The World Health Organization declared a worldwide pandemic on 11th March; and even the tardy United Kingdom started their lock-down 12 days later. Moreover, the USA started implementing stay-at-home recommendations during the same week as the WHO declaration. American restaurant reservations took a dive on 9th March, although New York started its decline 10 days earlier (How coronavirus is devastating the restaurant business); and hourly jobs posted on Snagajob actually started dropping from March 5 (Hourly job market update: categories where jobs are growing, and where they are gone).

The immediate cause of the drop in readership may well be a combination of reduced work-based access to computers, as well as a lack of work-based activity of any sort. The USA officially had 15% unemployment back in April, with a “currently-not-employed” level higher than that; and Los Angeles now reports a 24% unemployment level, which has not been seen since The Great Depression (24.9% in 1933).

The pandemic has certainly been disruptive for most parts of the wine industry, and the hospitality business in general. Sadly, this is likely to continue, because most current media surveys indicate that people are not going to be returning to restaurants and bars in a hurry. More to the point, the anticipated ongoing customer-distancing (quarantine) requirements are not going to be economically viable in an industry that usually requires 80% capacity just to break even,

If nothing else, with a slow return to something closer to normality, it will be a relief to start reading some wine-related writing that isn’t about the depressing effects of Covid-19.

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Footnote

The biggest wine-related effect of the pandemic on me, personally, has been my inability to get the wines I want. I have mentioned in previous posts that the wines of usual interest come as part of the “occasional assortment”, which has releases every couple of weeks, as they come in small supply (Wine monopolies, and the availability of wine). I usually have to order these wines, for delivery to my local store, because my town is poorly serviced in the shops (My annoyances with my alcohol monopoly). Well, this is the only service that Systembolaget has changed — they have cancelled order delivery of these particular wines, and these wines only. If the wine is not in your local store, then tough. So, I have not bought much wine lately, apparently unlike most of the rest of the world. How ironic!